Revolutionary Days


Book Description




Days of Revolution


Book Description

Outside of Shiraz in the Fars Province of southwestern Iran lies "Aliabad." Mary Hegland arrived in this then-small agricultural village of several thousand people in the summer of 1978, unaware of the momentous changes that would sweep this town and this country in the months ahead. She became the only American researcher to witness the Islamic Revolution firsthand over her eighteen-month stay. Days of Revolution offers an insider's view of how regular people were drawn into, experienced, and influenced the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath. Conventional wisdom assumes Shi'a religious ideology fueled the revolutionary movement. But Hegland counters that the Revolution spread through much more pragmatic concerns: growing inequality, lack of development and employment opportunities, government corruption. Local expectations of leaders and the political process—expectations developed from their experience with traditional kinship-based factions—guided local villagers' attitudes and decision-making, and they often adopted the religious justifications for Revolution only after joining the uprising. Sharing stories of conflict and revolution alongside in-depth interviews, the book sheds new light on this critical historical moment. Returning to Aliabad decades later, Days of Revolution closes with a view of the village and revolution thirty years on. Over the course of several visits between 2003 and 2008, Mary Hegland investigates the lasting effects of the Revolution on the local political factions and in individual lives. As Iran remains front-page news, this intimate look at the country's recent history and its people has never been more timely or critical for understanding the critical interplay of local and global politics in Iran.




Days of God


Book Description

A myth-busting insider’s account of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that destroyed US influence in the country and transformed the politics of the Middle East and the world. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was one of the seminal events of our time. It inaugurated more than thirty years of war in the Middle East and fostered an Islamic radicalism that shapes foreign policy in the United States and Europe to this day. Drawing on his lifetime of engagement with Iran, James Buchan explains the history that gave rise to the Revolution, in which Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters displaced the Shah with little diffi­culty. Mystifyingly to outsiders, the people of Iran turned their backs on a successful Westernized government for an amateurish religious regime. Buchan dispels myths about the Iranian Revolution and instead assesses the historical forces to which it responded. He puts the extremism of the Islamic regime in perspective: a truly radical revolution, it can be compared to the French or Russian Revolu­tions. Using recently declassified diplomatic papers and Persian-language news reports, diaries, memoirs, interviews, and theological tracts, Buchan illumi­nates both Khomeini and the Shah. His writing is always clear, dispassionate, and informative. The Iranian Revolution was a turning point in modern history, and James Buchan’s Days of God is, as London’s Independent put it, “a compelling, beautifully written history” of that event.




Cursed Days


Book Description

The Nobel PrizeDwinning author's great anti-Bolshevik diary of the Russian Revolution, translated into English for the first time, with an Introduction and Notes by Thomas Gaiton Marullo. A harrowing description of the forerunners of the concentration camps and the Gulag. Marc Raeff"




The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition


Book Description

This pathbreaking study deals with the thought and activities of the disciples of the renowned revolutionary, Auguste Blanqui, from the later years of the French Second Empire (1860s) through the crisis attending the political campaign of General Boulanger (1880s). It explores the mythological significance of Blanqui for the French Lef, the atheist thoughts of the Blanquists as the foundation of their revolutionary politics, the role of the Blanquists in the Paris Commune of 1871, the relationship between Blanquist and Marxist ideologies, and the influence of the Blanquists as promoters of the cult of the Revolutionary tradition in the early years of the Third Republic. The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition is the first comprehensive study of the Blanquists to appear in French or English. It is also the first to treat seriously the impact of the legend of Blanqui upon his followers and admirers. In tracing their changing conception of the revolutionary cause--from its sources in the radical thought of a Parisian youth movement to its perversion in the proto-fascist doctrine of some aging Blanquists employed myth and ritual to popularize their ideas, and how in the end their efforts to do so transformed their revolutionary party into a conservative sect. Hutton takes issue with the standard interpretation of the Blanquists as unreflective precursors of the Marxists. Far from contributing to Marxist Socialsim, he contends, the Blanquists began with different theoretical assumption and developed a different model of revolution. In describing the antagonisms between Blanquists, guardians of the French Revolutionary tradition, and Marxists, apostles of a new Socialism, the author reveals the obstacles which stood in the way of a unified revolutionary movement in the Third Republic, and sheds light on the ideological divisions which have plagued the French Left ever since. The study raises issue which transcend the French revolutionary experience. In analyzing the Blanquists's conception of revolution as an ultimate concern, it underscores the parallels between religious and revolutionary consciousness. Through the investigation of the myths and rituals of Blanquist revolutionary practice, it offers some observations on the nature of the revolutionary mentality and some perspective upon the phenomenon of revolution in general. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.




Inside the Russian Revolution


Book Description

This is the story of the Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 told through the medium of the personal accounts of those there at the time. It also describes, through the same medium, Russia's involvement in WWI. The author, a socialist sympathiser was in Russia at the time of the Revolution. She says," I saw a people delivered from one class tyranny deliberately hasten to establish another, quite as brutal and as unmindful of the common good as the old one." Rheta Dorr was an American journalist and political activist.




Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran


Book Description

In his book on constitutional revolutions in the Ottoman Empire and Iran in the early twentieth century, Nader Sohrabi considers the global diffusion of institutions and ideas, their regional and local reworking and the long-term consequences of adaptations. He delves into historic reasons for greater resilience of democratic institutions in Turkey as compared to Iran. Arguing that revolutions are time-bound phenomena whose forms follow global models in vogue at particular historical junctures, he challenges the ahistoric and purely local understanding of them. Furthermore, he argues that macro-structural preconditions alone cannot explain the occurrence of revolutions, but global waves, contingent events and the intervention of agency work together to bring them about in competition with other possible outcomes. To establish these points, the book draws on a wide array of archival and primary sources that afford a minute look at revolutions' unfolding.




Connecticut's Seminary of Sedition


Book Description

From the Preface: In the 1700s, American colleges like Yale were hotbeds of intellectual activity that lead the country to revolution. According to author Louis Tucker, this volume is a study that “seeks to assess the role of Yale College in the American Revolution. It especially focuses on the part played by Yale in the development of the spirit of rebellion in Connecticut…A number of Yale trained Whigs carried the torch of rebellion into other colonies and assumed roles of leadership when the political crisis deepened.” As one phase of the Bicentennial observation, The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut has authorized scholars in a wide range of study to write a series of monographs on the broadly defined Revolutionary Era of 1763 to 1787. These monographs [appeared] yearly beginning in 1973 through 1980. Emphasis is placed upon the birth of the nation, rather than on the winning of independence on the field of battle.




The French Revolution and the Russian Anti-Democratic Tradition


Book Description

The political uncertainty following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rejection of the revolutionary model has brought Russian political thought full circle as democratic forces contend with authoritarian nationalism. This volume is essential to understanding the antidemocratic tradition in Russia and the persistent danger of totalitarianism.




Business America


Book Description

Includes articles on international business opportunities.