The Soviet Union and the Iranian revolution Knowledge, ideology, and the end of modernization paradigms

Open Access
Authors
Supervisors
Cosupervisors
Award date 14-12-2021
ISBN
  • 9785001255659
Number of pages 335
Organisations
  • Faculty of Humanities (FGw) - Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR) - Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES)
Abstract
The 1978-79 Iranian revolution shook one of the basic principles accepted by Cold War superpowers – the belief in social progress through modernization espoused by socialism as well as liberal capitalism. For Moscow and Washington, the revolution was above all an ideological challenge that analysts and decision-makers in both superpowers struggled to understand and incorporate into their worldview. This thesis examines the Soviet struggle to deal with this ideological challenge and frames the Soviet reaction to the Iranian revolution in the context of the global Cold War. It traces the way scholars, analysts, and policymakers in Moscow tried to make sense of events in Iran and how they ultimately had to revise their thinking on religion, regional geopolitics, and the superpower competition. This research engages three important historiographical discussions. First, it sheds new light on the role played by ideology in the Cold War international relations. Using the Iranian revolution as a case study, this thesis reveals the importance of the ideology as a worldview that in particular prevented the Soviet leadership from seeing the new religious regime of Iran as viable. Consequently it shows that the Iranian revolution revealed the limitations of the Soviet leadership’s worldview, and the way that worldview restricted the ability of the Soviet leadership to deal with new challenges. Second, this thesis examines the role of knowledge and its relation to ideology by studying the role of the Soviet expert community. While often marginalized in the decision-making process of the Brezhnev’s collective leadership, the expert community found new relevance as a result of the revolution. At the same time, that community was often blinded by its own ideological background and its reliance on Iranian leftists for information. Third, this study contributes to recent debates on the role of religion in the Cold War. In the late 1970s- early 1980s religion was revived as an openly proclaimed ideological notion, and Iran here was among other examples of this revival. Along with the overall ideological challenge, the rise of religion as a political ideology was among the factors that contributed to the end of the Cold War by changing the way Soviet leaders and policymakers thought about world affairs.
Document type PhD thesis
Language English
Downloads
Permalink to this page
cover
Back