The Communist Party of Iran revisited: Historical connections, Bolshevism, and the rise of Reza Shah
MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES (London), vol.0, no.0, pp.1, 2026 (SSCI)
- Publication Type: Article / Article
- Volume: 0 Issue: 0
- Publication Date: 2026
- Journal Name: MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES (London)
- Journal Indexes: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
- Page Numbers: pp.1
- Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
This article examines the Communist Party of Iran, founded in 1920, by situating it within the broader trajectory of Iranian political history. Existing scholarship has often approached the party primarily through the lens of its Soviet connections, interpreting Iranian communism in terms of dependency and foreign intervention. Rather than reducing Iranian communism to Bolshevik influence, this article argues that Bolshevik ideas were reinterpreted and reproduced within an Iranian political context already shaped by constitutionalism, social democracy, anti-imperialism, national independence and modernization. The article develops this argument through several interconnected historical episodes, including the establishment of Adalat Party, the Jangali movement, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, and the party’s shifting position toward Reza Shah. Drawing on Persian-language sources, party programs, newspapers and memoirs, it shows that Iranian communists adapted Bolshevism through existing Iranian political vocabularies and concerns. In doing so, the article challenges reductive ‘Soviet puppet’ narratives and resituates the Communist Party of Iran within the longer development of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iranian political thought.