The materials of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU called the revolution in Iran "a major event in the international life of recent years" and at the same time emphasized its "special character", "complexity and inconsistency", and indicated that internal and external reactions seek to change its popular and anti-imperialist content. Regarding the Islamic slogans put forward in Iran, as well as in other Eastern countries, it was noted: "The main thing is what goals are pursued by the forces that proclaim these or other slogans. A liberation struggle can unfold under the banner of Islam. This is evidenced by the experience of history, including the most recent one. But he also says that the reaction that raises counterrevolutionary riots also operates with Islamic slogans. The whole point, therefore, is what the real content of a given movement is. " 1

The Iranian revolution, which began in January 1978 and achieved an important victory by February 1979 - the overthrow of the Shah's regime, in its subsequent development revealed a very peculiar confrontation between the ideas and goals of the liberation, national-democratic struggle, which were carried by progressive political forces of Iranian society, with narrow-minded, socially limited class-group forces. corporate aspirations of the Islamic-theological leadership of the revolution, which objectively reflected the interests of the pro-bourgeois and bourgeois forces of the country and at the same time tried to keep the broad masses of the people under its control.

Soviet authors have already published a number of monographic works and articles 2 that reveal the origins and causes of the Iranian revolution, identify its immediate prerequisites, analyze the course and results of the events of January 1978-February 1979, and draw conclusions about the general nature and some specific features of this revolution. However, the subsequent stages of the development of the revolutionary process in Iran have not yet received sufficient in-depth coverage, 3 although on this basis it is possible not only to concretize the details-

1 Materials of the XXVI Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1981, p. 13.

2 See: Agaev S. L. Iran in the past and present (Ways and forms of the revolutionary process), Moscow, 1981; Ulyanovsk R. The Iranian Revolution and its features. - Kommunist, 1982, N 10; Reznikov A. B. Iran: the fall of the Shah's regime, Moscow, 1983; Iran: history and Modernity, Collection of articles, Moscow, 1983; et al. A number of generalizing works on the origins, causes, and course of the Iranian revolution have also appeared in Western historiography: Fischer M. Iran. From Religious Dispute to Revolution. Cambridge. 1980; Кeddie N. R. Roots of Revolution. An Interpretive History of Mocern Iran. N. Y. 1981; Zabih S. Iran since the Revolution. Lnd. 1982; a. o.

3 In two books published in 1984 by the author of these lines ("Iran: The Birth of a Republic" and " The Iranian Revolution, the United States and International Security. 444 days held hostage") covers only certain periods of the Iranian revolution. Due to the popular nature of both books, the problem of its theoretical analysis remains open.

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It is necessary to analyze the conclusions made earlier, but also to give a more complete and comprehensive assessment of the modern Iranian revolutionary phenomenon.

This article attempts to summarize the main events of the internal political struggle in Iran in 1979-1983, identify its main stages and patterns, and reveal the place of these events in the overall development of the Iranian revolution. Foreign policy issues are covered only to the extent necessary to understand the nature and characteristics of the revolutionary process in the country.

The rise of the popular movement in Iran in the late 70s was a vivid example of the fact that the broadest masses of Eastern countries reject the ways imposed on them by bourgeois social modernization and Westernization of their original way of life. Opposition to the Shah's imperialist-backed policy of accelerated capitalist development of Iran, following the Western model, resulted in the conversion of various segments of its population to traditional cultural and spiritual values, among which the Islamic religion has always played an important role. It is not by chance that Islam became the banner of the revolutionary struggle under these conditions.

The broad anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist revolutionary movement in Iran has embraced virtually all sectors of society, with the exception of a narrow stratum of the large financial and industrial bourgeoisie, which is closely associated with the Shah's court and transnational corporations. Workers of modern and traditional (artisanal and semi - artisanal) enterprises, middle urban strata-both traditional (small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, independent merchants and artisans) and "new" (persons of "liberal professions", scientific and technical support) - took part in the spontaneous united front of the struggle against the monarchist regime and American imperialism. intellectuals, employees of the public and private sectors, students), intermediate layers (peddlers, hawkers, day laborers), "cadre" lumpen proletarians and huge masses of rural migrants. They were pushed out of the villages as a result of the Shah's agrarian reforms and either replenished the already overpopulated urban "bottom", or found shelter and help in the communities formed at the mosques. It was these two strata - the lumpen and rural migrants, who had just awakened to political life, but were not yet experienced in politics, illiterate for the most part, and strongly influenced by religious ideology-that formed the main striking force of the mass movement.

In view of this, as well as other objective reasons, the distinctive feature of the revolutionary movement in Iran was that it proceeded under religious slogans and under the direct leadership of the Muslim (Shiite) clergy. Under the specific conditions prevailing in the country, this large and politically influential social stratum was able to push the small, economically weak national bourgeoisie out of the leadership of the revolution and express in the most accessible form the most urgent demands of the national-democratic struggle related to the elimination of the monarchy and imperialist domination. The powerful but spontaneous desire of broad strata of the people for social justice and a radical reorganization of public life in accordance with original national and cultural traditions was expressed in the slogans of the "Islamic republic" and "universal Islamic justice"put forward by religious figures.

The national-democratic aspirations of the broad masses were reflected by the clergy, of course, through the prism of their own corporations.-

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The aim was to create social conditions that could perpetuate the socio-economic status of religious worshippers 4 and consolidate their political leadership. This predetermined the specific features of the clergy's program of action - anti-Western - isolationist, Islamic-integrist (i.e., designed to unite the entire socially diverse Muslim community) and petty-bourgeois-populist (i.e., claiming to express the interests of "the entire people"). These features were fully identified only after the achievement of the immediate task of the revolutionary struggle - the overthrow of the Shah's regime; but even after that, they sometimes manifested themselves in such a form that in the mass public consciousness they were easily identified with the course of consistent anti-imperialism, strengthening the alliance of all popular forces and general prosperity.

The unity of various circles of the clergy on the basis of common corporate interests, of course, did not eliminate internal contradictions among them, reflecting social antagonisms. Radical extremist groups, the centrist-conservative wing, the moderate-liberal wing, and other political movements stood out in the ranks of the clergy. However, the presence of a real common enemy in the face of the Shah's regime and a potential one among those socio-political forces in the revolutionary camp that could form an opposition to the political hegemony of the clergy, encouraged most religious leaders, if not to smooth out differences, then at least to restrain open strife. The close unity of the clergy was the most important condition for strengthening the broad political movement that was formed under its auspices. The soul and heart of this most powerful movement was the universally recognized leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, 5 who not only successfully regulated the ratio of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies of various groups in the clerical camp, but also became an almost absolute arbiter between the Islamic and other political trends - liberal and left.

The liberal movement is generally pro-bourgeois, but with various shades of domestic and foreign policy orientation (from pro-Western to nationalist)-it recruited its adherents mainly from representatives of the "new" middle urban strata, whose specific interests were very sharply at odds with the corporate aspirations of the clergy. Some of them held exclusively secular positions, while the majority considered Islam as a cultural tradition that could only form the external veneer of a liberal-democratic regime copied from Western (bourgeois or social - reformist) models. The ideal of a Shiite theocracy nurtured by the clergy, although dressed in modern parliamentary and representative forms, repelled not only clearly pro-Western right-wing liberals, left-liberal (nationalist, social-democratic in spirit) circles, but also pro-Islamic liberals of the centrist persuasion.

Right-wing liberals have completely discredited themselves in the last one and a half to two months of the monarchist regime's existence. Consent of the representative of the pro-Western right-liberal circles Sh. Bakhtiyar to take the post of prime minister offered to him by the Shah and his attempts to bring down the revolutionary wave "from above" did not receive an open response.-

4 The expressions "ministers of worship", "clergy", "clergy", etc. are used in this case conditionally, since in Islam and in its Shiite branch there is no organized church hierarchy.

5 In the days of anti-Shah revolutions, he was simultaneously called imam (the highest Muslim spiritual title, previously almost never used by Iranian Shiites).

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even among the majority of liberals, who preferred to join the general front of the anti-Shah and anti-imperialist struggle in the face of the growing national movement. According to its social tendencies, Bakhtiar's policy expressed the interests of large and medium-sized capital, whose representatives advocated the capitalist path of development of Iran, but without the political excesses of the Shah's regime.

The left - wing movement - generally popular, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist-was formed mainly from representatives of the educated urban stratum and various strata of working people who are more or less associated with modern forms of production. The incompleteness of the bourgeois social differentiation of society and the resulting lack of development of class contradictions explain the extremely diverse composition of the left movement, which included, along with the People's Party of Iran (Tudeh), paramilitary youth organizations that were at various stages of evolution from left-wing radicalism to revolutionary democracy. The most important among them were "Self-sacrificing partisans of the Iranian people" (Fedayeen) and " Fighters for the holy cause of the Iranian people "(Mujahideen). At each new turn of the revolutionary struggle, small left-wing radical groups broke away from these organizations, adding to the motley and noisy camp of left-wing extremist forces, which, however, did not have any significant social weight.

The People's Party of Iran, the country's oldest party, was the most mature, most cohesive and organized branch of the left, although it was significantly weakened by the repression that began after its ban in 1949. Using every opportunity of the anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist struggle, Tudeh has supported and promoted all the speeches of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was in exile, against the Shah and the United States for the past decade and a half. Having resumed broad practical activities in the country since the beginning of the revolutionary movement, the party stated that it fully supports the revolutionary initiatives of the clergy, and also recognizes the leading role of the imam in the revolution and his progressive positions. The primary task of the central organs of the party was party building, which had to be carried out in difficult conditions. Somewhat later, the leaders of the Tudeh noted that " on the eve of the rise of the revolutionary movement, the position of the party, both in terms of influence among the masses and in terms of its quantitative composition, was very unfavorable." 6
The Fedayeen organization, which was formed in the second half of the 60s under the guise of a partisan struggle against the Shah's regime, declared itself an "independent Marxist-Leninist" group. It motivated its commitment to armed methods of struggle by the need to bring the working class and other anti-dictatorial and anti-imperialist forces out of a state of "apathy and indifference", to show them the vulnerability of the Shah's regime, and thereby to promote their organization, the growth of political consciousness, and the transition from passive support for the struggling revolutionary vanguard to active participation in armed actions .7 However, since the second half of the 70s, the Fedayeen actually abandoned armed actions and began to conduct an underground political struggle. In the context of the revolution that has unfolded since 1978, they combined participation in peaceful nationwide demonstrations with local armed actions. At the same time, they are constantly-

6 Problemy mira i sotsializma [Problems of Peace and Socialism], 1981, No. 11, p. 32.

7 19 bachman. Daneshdzhui (Studencheskaya). B. M., 1976, N 2; Charik (Partizan). B. M., 1977/78, 1978/79 (in Persian).

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but they had to resist the attempts of the religious leadership to isolate them from the main stream of the struggle of anti-Shah forces. In their statements, the Fedayeen emphasized their commitment to "ideological pluralism" in the revolutionary movement, since "any claim to a monopoly over our revolution can only undermine this revolution." 8
The Mujahideen organization, which took shape around the same time as the Fedayeen organization and went through almost the same path from guerrilla struggle against the Shah's regime to underground political activity and again to local armed actions, 9 from the very beginning, it tried to "combine" the dogmas of the Islamic religion with the ideas of scientific socialism , and therefore received the name Mujahideen. an "Islamic-Marxist" group. Although religious Mujahideen dissociated themselves from "purely Marxist" elements on the eve of the revolution , 10 the Mujahideen organization remained the most left-wing and most democratic group at the intersection of secular and Islamic revolutionary forces. In the course of the anti-Shah struggle, the Mujahideen showed a clear desire to get closer to the supporters of Khomeini, who, however, treated them as leftists using Islamic ideology for their own purposes.

Relations between the three main units of the left were characterized by the absence of any official contacts or tactical alliances, mutual alienation, and sometimes hostility. This, of course, made it difficult to solve the common task for all left forces to gain a broad national and political base, while the clergy could take advantage of the political inexperience and organizational weakness of the industrial proletariat (which, by the way, was outnumbered even by civil servants). In the context of the country's characteristic blurring of social and class boundaries and the resulting diversity of the political spectrum, the Islamic trend, due to its populist-integrist essence, which is easily accessible to the mass public consciousness, was least susceptible to a gap at the class and political levels. The prevailing leadership of the anti-Shah movement on the part of the clergy was shaken only once (and then only briefly), during the armed uprising of February 9-11, 1979.

The leader of the revolution, Khomeini, was guided by the peaceful way of seizing power, which was considered both as the logical conclusion of the nonviolent methods he encouraged and as the best way to keep the revolutionary wave in the Islamic shores, to direct the masses to a solution of the question of the state structure that would lead to the creation of an "Islamic republic"in the country. The driving motives were quite simple: to avoid an armed confrontation between the people and the army and the possible strengthening of left-wing organizations, especially the Fedayeen and Mujahideen, who constantly called for armed struggle. Intensive negotiations between Khomeini and Bakhtiar's emissaries, acting through intermediaries and with some form of participation of representatives of the armed forces, continued until 11 February 1979.11

However, all the plans of the top combinations were disrupted. Attempt of the Shah's guards of the "immortals" on the evening of February 9, 1979 to "punish" the technical personnel of one of the air bases in Tehran-

8 Christian Science Monitor, 23.I.1979.

9 Abrahamian E. The Guerilla Movement in Iran, 1963 - 1977. -MERIP Reports, March -April 1980, N 86, p. 11.

10 Chub in Sh. Letrist Forces in Iran. -Problems of Communism, 1980, Vol 29 N 4, pp. 15 - 16.

11 Agaev S. L. Iran in the past and present, p. 212.

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rana, who participated in popular demonstrations the day before, provoked an armed uprising. Led by detachments of Fedayeen and Mujahideen and small armed groups of Tudeh members, the rebuff to the "immortals" resulted in a general protest of the capital's population against the old authorities. The situation during the uprising was almost completely out of control of religious circles. But after his victory, the clergy relatively easily and quickly regained their leading positions in relation to the broad masses of the people and then completely isolated all left-wing forces from real sources of political power. 12

The events of February 9-11, 1979, which Khomeini called the "Islamic Revolution", once again clearly showed that the balance of social and class forces was leaning with a huge preponderance towards the religious leadership. The shock force of the uprising - the Fedayeen and Mujahideen organizations, which were not political parties in the full sense of the word, in the new conditions turned out to be poorly prepared for the role of a leader of the masses.

The first day of the victory of the armed uprising was the last day of the relative unity that existed in the ranks of the Iranian political opposition during the entire period of anti-Shah revolutionary protests from January 1978 to February 1979. The unanimous joint struggle of all political organizations for the overthrow of the monarchical regime was replaced by a confrontation of heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory ideas about the republican future of Iran.

In the new conditions, the struggle to preserve the national unity achieved earlier became particularly important. The left forces as a whole (but each in its own way) sought to channel this unity in such a way as to ensure the further development of the revolutionary process along the national-democratic path leading to an exit from capitalism. However, the higher clergy, who had established supreme control over state power, used this unity for a different purpose - to implement the idea of an" Islamic republic " with its religiously egalitarian ideal dating back to the times of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali .13 But without the help of the technocracy, the clergy could not immediately and completely master the main levers of managing civil society, and attempts to establish "order and security" in the country for the subsequent transition to "Islamic rule" could discredit religious figures in the eyes of the revolutionary masses and thereby further strengthen the position of the left.

The unofficial head of state, Ayatollah Khomeini, who enjoyed the broadest, unlimited powers, apparently understood all the dangers and - equally-the possibilities of the current situation. His appointment as Prime Minister on February 5, 1979, of M. Bazargan, a representative of the pro-Islamic and reformist centrist circles of the liberal camp, gave the clergy a number of political benefits. Bazargan enjoyed the support of not only the majority of the liberal intelligentsia, both moderate and close to the left-wing circles, but also the masses of bazaar merchants, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, employees of state and private enterprises, and the officer corps. This would undoubtedly help conservation

12 For more information, see: Reznikov A. B. The Collapse of the Monarchy in Iran (January-February 1979). In: The Revolutionary Process in the East. Istoriya i sovremennost', Moscow, 1982.

13 See Lapshov B. A., Khalevinsky I. V. Muhammad (From myth to man). Voprosy istorii, 1984, No. 5.

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the new prime Minister immediately and tirelessly began to promote the thesis that with the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the revolution should end.

True, the desire to restore "order" shared by both the leader of the revolution and the prime Minister had a different meaning: for the former it was a means, for the latter it was an end. But it was precisely this that gave the supreme religious leadership, which was established in the supreme power, the opportunity to use the policy of the civilian cabinet of Ministers in its own interests, without losing the prestige of the "father of the nation". Thus, the Prime Minister's attempts to liquidate the revolutionary committees and tribunals that emerged during the anti-Shah struggle as a result of the independent activity of the masses, helped the clergy to completely subjugate these grassroots organs of popular power, to turn them into an instrument of the "Islamic revolution". The same thing happened to the factory and factory committees of workers and employees. While providing tacit support to Bazargan in restoring the old army and security agencies as tools for stabilizing the overall situation, the clergy simultaneously created their own guard, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, out of unemployed youth influenced by Islam and religious figures.

On the social plane, the main differences between the supreme religious authority and the civil cabinet of Ministers were determined by the nature and form of their reflection of the interests of small and medium-sized commercial and entrepreneurial capital, which formed their main social and class base. The policy of religious leaders expressed these interests not directly and directly, not consciously and purposefully, but only by its general objective content. Subjectively, for the clergy as a stratum, it was more important to provide for the urgent needs of the broad strata of the people, who formed their main political support in the struggle for the creation of an"Islamic republic". The government headed by Bazargan sought to ensure that the middle and small commercial and entrepreneurial circles (and then the non-monopolistic layers of the big bourgeoisie) could use the positive gains of the revolution, which the clergy objectively helped to achieve, but which they could not fully use in the context of its integrist, populist policy.

Despite these differences, Khomeini's Islamic populism did not contradict Bazargan's bourgeois reformism up to a certain point. The latter, under pressure from the clergy, was forced to hold a number of patriarchal-charitable, paternalistic events (in the form of all kinds of gratuitous benefits and donations). This is largely due to the fact that the numerous manifestations of social protest that took place in the country in the first months after the February victory did not have the character of opposition to the authorities in the full sense of the word. Various segments of the population demanded only the speedy fulfillment of their aspirations, which they associated with a victorious revolution and which, according to their ideas, were already reflected in the slogans of the religious leadership about "universal Islamic justice". At the same time, within the framework of the clergy's anti-Western, isolationist aspirations, a number of measures of an objectively anti-imperialist nature were carried out, which also affected the positions of a narrow stratum of the local monopolistic bourgeoisie.

Bazargan, who initially hoped to achieve the autocracy of his government, has repeatedly submitted his resignation since March 1979 in protest against the limited powers granted to him (indeed, the activities of all the ministries of his cabinet were not only controlled, but sometimes duplicated by the created ones.

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of religious figures, a kind of parallel government, which, however, preferred to act behind the scenes). Khomeini always rejected these requests in order not to create favorable conditions for the activities of opposition political forces, whose loyalty to the Imam himself was ensured precisely by the presence of a buffer between them in the person of the Bazargan government. At the same time, the Ayatollah refrained from giving the prime minister unconditional support, as this could give rise to identifying the imam with the government, which was accused by the public of encroaching on revolutionary gains, although in the end it was only a powerless appendage of the ruling clergy. Well-versed in the dialectic of the "stabilizing conflict," Khomeini did not allow himself to explicitly support any of the political groups (including Islamic ones), giving them the opportunity to fight among themselves for the right to interpret the "course of the imam."

The extremely difficult situation that developed in the country after the February victory, which was compounded by the entanglement of the situation in the " lower ranks "and the carefully disguised skilful political maneuvers in the" upper ranks", had a significant impact on the situation in the ranks of the left camp. Joint actions of the left forces during the anti-Shah revolutionary uprisings, and especially during the February armed uprising, did not lead to the creation of all the necessary conditions for tactical and even more so organizational alliances, even between groups that had generally similar program settings. Despite a certain commonality of immediate demands and ultimate goals, the three main left-wing forces of Iran-the Tudeh and the Fedayeen and Mujahideen organizations-followed a different political line towards the new regime.

The differences between the leftist forces were particularly pronounced in their attitude to the measures taken by the authorities to create a new, Islamic structure of state power. The first action in this direction was a referendum on March 30-31, 1979, during which the population had to answer the question: is it for the monarchy or the "Islamic republic"? Tudeh, who immediately supported the idea of a referendum and took an active part in voting for the "Islamic republic", justified her position on the primacy of content over form and the fact that Khomeini connects the corresponding concept with the tasks of ensuring the true independence of Iran, granting democratic freedoms to all the people, improving the welfare of workers and eliminating oppression and exploitation. The Mujahideen participated in the vote with a reservation regarding the limited choice offered, which, in their opinion, forced many to vote for the "Islamic republic" only out of hatred for the former monarchical regime; however, they criticized the very idea of a referendum, since, as they argued, the people had actually already voted against the monarchy by participating in the revolution. The Fedayeen, who believed that the religious ideal of the "Islamic republic" had little in common with the hopes that the masses put into this concept, boycotted the referendum. However, according to official data, the total number of participants in the referendum was 92.5% of those who had the right to vote; less than one percent voted against the "Islamic republic" .14
April 1, 1979 Iran was declared an Islamic Republic, although the new regime did not yet have its own constitution or other written laws, except for those already given in the Koran and Sharia. The left forces tried to use the lessons of the March referendum the day before

14 Ayandegan, 5. IV. 1979; Keihan, 5. IV. 1979.

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and during the elections held on August 3, 1979 to the so-called Advisory Council (or Council of Experts), which was called upon to consider the draft constitution before it was approved by a national referendum (before the February victory, Khomeini repeatedly promised that the constitution would be adopted by a truly representative Constituent Assembly, or Constitutional Assembly). Although individual Mujahideen candidates received up to 300,000 votes, Fedayeen candidates - up to 100,000, and Tudeh candidates - up to 47,000, as a result of the voting procedure adopted, not a single leftist or non-religious organization won a single seat on the council. It was composed almost exclusively of members of the clergy and a few secular figures closely associated with them. The Government was forced to promise to investigate numerous complaints of electoral fraud and fraud in the future, but this was never done. The exact number of people who participated in the voting was not given in the official data. According to the materials of the Western press, it can be concluded that this time it was less than 73% of the electors15 .

Immediately after the election, the authorities launched a long-planned offensive against the political opposition. Since the populist-integrist, anti-Western orientation of the Islamic movement still retained a number of points of contact with the popular, anti-imperialist line of the left, the ruling clergy saw the main danger for themselves at this stage in the activities of liberals, especially their center-left circles, who were trying to unite all opposition forces on their platform. It is no coincidence that the authorities launched their offensive against the opposition with a series of large-scale repressive measures against the leaders of the left-liberal movement.

But the left-wing forces have also been harassed. At the same time, in August 1979, the authorities dealt a heavy blow to the Tudeh, Fedayeen, and Mujahideen, shutting down their headquarters and press offices. Left-wing organizations were forced to move to a semi-legal position. At the same time, Fedayeen armed cells openly joined the movement for national autonomy in Iranian Kurdistan, where just at that time the authorities significantly intensified the previously launched "undeclared war" against Kurdish partisan detachments.

However, the authorities ' actions in this case were aimed not so much at complete elimination as at subordinating opposition organizations by isolating their leadership. The possibility of a final transition of all leftist forces to an illegal position-with a large number of weapons in the hands of many groups, and even in the face of sharply increased armed actions of national minorities - could pose a much greater danger to the "Islamic republic" than their open - and even more so their official activities. In addition, a joint armed struggle against the regime could contribute to the close unity of all left-wing forces, which would probably negatively affect the unity of the majority of the people, without whose mobilization the idea of an" Islamic republic " would have been impossible to implement. In an effort to provide the most favorable conditions for solving this particular problem, the religious leadership, by preemptively striking the opposition, hoped to deprive it of any opportunities to oppose the adoption of the "Islamic constitution".

As early as the beginning of September 1979, after the Consultative Council, at Khomeini's direction, began revising the previously published relatively democratic draft constitution in order to make

15 Figaro, 6.VIII.1979.

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The authorities have launched an operation to return the "lost souls" to the fold of Islam. In this regard, a relatively liberal law on "purging" the State apparatus was adopted and a review of the decision on some of the print media closed in august16 was initiated . Soon, restrictions were lifted on the activities of Tude, which thus became the only officially legalized left-wing organization. However, in the provinces where the Tudeh branches were massacred, the party did not enjoy even the limited freedoms it had come to enjoy in the capital. This type of action by the authorities was clearly aimed at keeping Tudeh under control and depriving her of opportunities to work among the masses, especially among the working class. At the same time, the authorities refrained from officially authorizing the activities of the Fedayeen and Mujahideen (which, obviously, was intended to consolidate the split among the left-wing forces), but at the same time warned them against going underground. As for the left-liberal opposition, since that time it has sharply reduced its social activity, and soon completely left the political arena.

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1979, a sense of disillusionment began to appear among the masses following the clergy. The city council elections held on October 12 showed a sharp decline in the number of voters who participated in the vote. In many cities, no more than 8% of eligible voters turned up at the ballot boxs17 . The economic crisis, the continuing rise in the cost of living and unemployment, corruption and speculation have all contributed to the revival of mass discontent. The youth's struggle for democratic freedoms merged with the women's movement for equal rights with men, with the workers ' struggle to turn factory and factory committees into a real tool for protecting their interests, with the movement of the unemployed for the right to work, with the struggle of landless and "uncultivated" peasants for land. In the last days of October 1979, a wave of popular demonstrations took place in a number of cities of Iran, where students and young people played an avant-garde role. Such demonstrations were not a new phenomenon in post-February Iran. But their demands were new - anti-capitalist and in some cases directed against the ruling regime. It became clear that the majority of the people are striving to deepen the democratic, anti-imperialist content of the revolution, although in general they do not question the leading role of religious figures.

These sentiments could not but affect the clergy and the Islamic political movement in general, whose ability to manipulate the mass public consciousness was far from exhausted. At the same time, various currents of the clerical camp, which is diverse in nature and composition, tried in different ways to translate the mood of the masses into concrete political actions. The radical extremist wing of the Islamic movement was most active in those days, and it sharply criticized the internal and especially foreign policy of Bazargan's cabinet (allegedly contrary to the"course of the imam"). and made calls for a "new revolution", a "second revolution", a "revolution in the revolution" , etc.

The student demonstrations that continued in the first days of November 1979, which until recently were held under pronounced social slogans, as a result of the influence of religious leaders, including Khomeini, who called for strengthening the fight against the United States, became extremely anti-American. November 4 around

16 Bamdad, 2. IX. 1979; Ettelaat, 17. IX. 1979.

17 Teheran Times, 15. X. 1979; Ettelaat, 24. X. 1979.

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400 people claiming to be members of the previously undisclosed "Organization of Muslim Students - Followers of Imam Khomeini's Course" attacked the American embassy in Tehran, took its diplomatic staff hostage and demanded the return to Iran of the former shah, who was allowed to enter the United States for medical treatment in New York two weeks earlier."the York clinic. The actions of the" Muslim students", led by a religious figure close to Khomeini - Khojat-ol-eslam 18 M. Mousavi-Khoeinih, immediately received official approval from the imam, who called the events " a second revolution, even bigger than the first." Bazargan had to resign, which this time was immediately accepted.

With the resignation of the Bazargan government, representatives of the Islamic movement were firmly established at the helm of government in the country. The new authorities declared the beginning of fundamental changes in the economic, social and cultural fields and promised to take measures to improve the living conditions of workers. In fact, the main focus was on instilling Islamic dogmas and customs in the entire political, social and family life of citizens, and the conflict with the United States over hostages was actively used to defuse the revolutionary sentiments of the broad masses of the people. 19 During the 14-and-a-half-month detention of employees of the American Embassy in September 1980, the Iran - Iraq war began the war, which has become another channel for defusing the revolutionary energy of the people (and is widely used by the US ruling circles, like the hostage crisis, to solve the problems of their global strategy).

A month after the seizure of the American embassy, on December 2-3, 1979, a referendum was held in Iran for the adoption of an "Islamic constitution", which provided for the creation of a theocratic regime in the country. The general upsurge caused by the confrontation with the United States contributed to the fact that the number of voting participants increased significantly compared to the October city council elections. According to official data, about 72% of those who have the right to vote participated in the referendum (99% of them voted for the constitution), while according to estimates of foreign mass media, only 40-50% participated .20 The new authorities used the current situation in the country to complete the defeat of the centrist liberals grouped around the popular Ayatollah K. Shariat-Madari in December 1979-January 1980, after which the liberal camp almost completely disappeared from the political scene. At the same time, the persecution of leftist forces intensified, accompanied by vigorous efforts by the authorities to implement the provisions of the "Islamic constitution" concerning the creation of a new, Islamic structure of State power.

An important step on this path was the presidential election on January 25, 1980. They revealed internal contradictions in the ranks of the Islamic movement - between its secular functionaries and the opposing Islamic Republican Party (IRP formed in 1979), the leading political organization of this movement, headed by religious leaders. However, the imam had his own particular view on issues related to the replacement of the presidential post, which, although it was, according to the constitution, purely ceremonial-

18 The second most important spiritual title after Ayatollah.

19 Iran's Seizure of the United States Embassy. Hearings before Ihe Committee of Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-Seventh Congress. 1981. Washington. 1981; Drey fuss R. Hostage to Khomeini. N. Y. 1980.

20 Эттелаат, 4.XII.1979; Financial Times, 16.XII.1979.

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However, it provided the status of a second person in the state. Unwilling to put the clergy in the same position as the Bazargan government, Khomeini continued to seek to secure the political supremacy of religious figures by putting technocrats at the forefront. To this end, he gave tacit support to the" independent " candidate of the Islamic movement A. Banisadr, who was previously his closest adviser on economic issues.

Banisadr's worldview, which received about 75% of the vote in the elections, was extremely vague and uncertain. They eclectically combined the idea of an" Islamic republic "with the concept of a modern" technocratic state", Islamic-radical views on economic development - with liberal ideas of" democratic pluralism", sharp criticism of transnational corporations - with theses on the need to create an axis of the Middle East - Western Europe - Japan 21 . Having played a significant role in removing the Bazargan government from power and now becoming the first president of the Islamic Republic, Banisadr found himself in the same position as the first Republican Prime minister before him. In order to consolidate his power by eliminating all "self-appointed decision-making centers", the president tried to weaken the influence of the"Organization of Muslim Students - Followers of Imam Khomeini's course". Moreover, he tried in every possible way to return religious figures to mosques under the pretext that" all sorts of Richelieu and Mazarin "should enjoy" supranational power " and not interfere in current affairs. Thus encroaching on the positions of the leading political centers of the Islamic movement, the president sought to attract the people to his side by promising to establish "order and security" in the country in the name of "creative work" in order to create an "Islamic economic system".

Objectively, Banisadr, like Bazargan before him, expressed the sentiments of small and medium-sized commercial and entrepreneurial circles, which still had not lost hope of fully realizing the gains of the revolution in their interests. The president's foreign policy platform also had a similar political solution, which, despite sometimes sharp criticism of American imperialism, in fact led to the establishment of a pro-Western orientation.

The policy of "stabilizing conflict", in which the civilian-born presidential power enjoyed the patronage of the imam, provided quite certain opportunities for the IRP, which now saw Banisadr as its worst enemy. Trying in every possible way to discredit the president in the eyes of the people, the IRP leaders gave him the contemptuous nickname "liberal". In the parliamentary elections, which marked an important new step towards the establishment of an Islamic state power structure, they made every effort to compensate for their failure in the presidential election.

The left forces took an active part in the parliamentary elections, which were held in two rounds - in March and May 1980. However, the officially established electoral procedure contributed to the fact that none of the members of left-wing organizations got into parliament, whose candidacies were also sometimes simply deleted from the lists on the pretext that they could not be considered devout Muslims. But even so, in the first round of elections, individual candidates of Mujahideen received up to 530 thousand, Fedayeen - up to 220 thousand and Tudeh-up to

21 Banisadr A. Quelle revolution pour 1'Iran? P. 1980.

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59 thousand votes 22 . About 70% of the seats in parliament were won by the IRP and organizations close to it, while the rest were divided between Banisadr's supporters and other groups. In parallel with the parliamentary elections in April-June 1980, the authorities actively implemented the activities of the "Islamic cultural revolution", a special place among which was occupied by the pogroms of representatives of all left-wing organizations in the country's universities, which were important centers of their political activity. As a result, hundreds of members of leftist groups were killed and thousands were injured .23
Under these circumstances, there were some changes in the political positions of left-wing organizations, which also reflected the changes that took place in the first half of 1980 in the overall alignment of political forces in the country. In June 1980, there was an open split in the Fedayeen ranks between the "minority" who were in favor of continuing military assistance to the Kurdish autonomist movement and against supporting the ruling regime, and the "majority" who came to the conclusion that an armed solution to the Kurdish problem was unrealistic and that it was necessary to support the objectively anti-imperialist tendencies of the religious leadership's policy .24 The new position of the "majority" Fedayeen helped to bring its political line closer to the tactical and strategic course of Tudeh. This made it much easier for both organizations to coordinate their political platform and joint actions. As for the political positions of the Mujahideen, they were characterized by a gradual tightening of the attitude of this organization to the activities of the ruling clergy, which was a consequence not only of the increased repressive actions of the authorities, but also of the aggravation of internal struggle in the ranks of the Islamic movement.

Having won a majority of seats in Parliament and established a self-serving government in the late summer of 1980, the IRP soon pushed Banisadr almost completely out of public affairs. Under these circumstances, the President began to show a penchant for a tactical alliance with the Mujahideen and some other political groups opposed to the authorities. During the outbreak of the war with Iraq, Banisadr actively tried to attract the armed forces to its side. All this prompted Khomeini, who supported Banisadr until the last moment, to change his attitude towards him. In June 1981, the parliament declared Banisadr "politically incompetent", accusing him of collapsing the economy and deviating from the "course of the imam", after which he was removed from his post .25 At the end of the following month, the former president, along with Mujahideen leader M. Rajavi, secretly fled the country.

During the events surrounding Banisadr's ouster, which were accompanied by violent street clashes between his opponents and supporters, the Mujahideen organization issued a "military-political communique" on June 18, in which it announced its intention to "carry out mass punishments of criminals guilty of counter-revolutionary actions" .26 The authorities, for their part, unleashed a massive crackdown on the organization that surpassed in scope and number of victims all similar campaigns undertaken so far. In response, the Mujahideen launched terrorist activities against religious and political leaders. Events: mid-1981, which marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of Islam-

22 Jomhuriyeh eslami, 5. IV. 1980.

23 Chubin Sh. Op. cit., pp. 13, 18.

24 Bill J. A. The Politics of Extremism in Iran. - Current History, January 1982, Vol. 81, N 471, p. 10.

25 Ibid, pp. 11, 13.

26 Keihan, 22. VI. 1981.

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In some circles of the clerical camp, they were interpreted as the "third Islamic Revolution".

What was new in the political life of Iran since the second half of 1981 was that the clergy for the first time assumed responsibility for the direct management of the state administration. In September 1981, Khojat-ol - eslam A. Hosseini-Khamenei became the country's president. All other leadership positions have also been filled by either religious leaders or undividedly devoted secular figures. Under these circumstances, "Shiite theologians somewhat "modified" their previous methods of mass mobilization, adding to them, in particular, such means by which national unity, which until recently overthrew the Shah and expelled American agents, relied mainly on general suspicion, mutual surveillance and denunciations... The authority of the leader of the revolution, whose word until recently immediately became law for the whole country, was now increasingly questioned by other leading theologians. " 27
The transition to direct rule by the clergy did not contribute to the establishment of complete unity of opinion in the highest echelons of state power. At the same time, he placed religious figures in the same position that the Bazargan government and President Banisadr had previously been in. The establishment of" order and security "became the leitmotif of all domestic political activities of legislative, judicial and executive institutions, which constantly demanded that the grassroots authorities strictly observe the" sacred principle "of private property, stop arbitrariness and" illegal " confiscations. Projects of agrarian reform and other more or less progressive reforms were blocked as a result of sharp contradictions among religious leaders. In the course of the ongoing struggle against the terrorist activities of the Mujahideen, the Fedayeen "minority", various left-wing radical organizations and the revived pro-monarchist counter-revolution, the authorities gradually stopped appealing to the people. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other paramilitary organizations created by the clergy have taken the place of the popular masses that were previously periodically brought to city squares and streets for "demonstrations of the unity of the people and the imam". The populist-integrist coloration of the slogans put forward "from above" was preserved only to the extent that it was necessary to wage war with Iraq and prevent mass opposition to the Islamic regime.

In the second half of 1981, the Mujahideen's frontal struggle against this regime, launched on the most dangerous basis for it - in the name of Islam and in the guise of its martyrs, took on a rather broad character. The support provided to the organization by many employees of the state apparatus and even part of the clergy allowed it to carry out a number of major actions. However, the terrorist nature of the Mujahideen's actions did not receive popular support, as a result of which the organization's attempts to switch from political assassination tactics to street fighting tactics ended in failure. The Mujahideen's appeals to Iran's workers to hold a general strike and to the country's armed forces to turn their weapons against the regime were also unsuccessful .28
By the end of 1982, the authorities managed to significantly weaken the scope and effectiveness of the terrorist activities of the Mujahideen and other opposition armed groups. The gradual stabilization of the established regime in the country during this period was observed.-

27 Ulyanovsk River Iran-what's next? Moral principles in politics and moral policy. - Literaturnaya gazeta, 22. VI. 1983, p. 10.

28 Times of India, 15.I.1982.

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a broad "purge" was carried out, designed to remove members and supporters of all left-wing organizations, including the Tudeh and Fedayeen ("majority"), from the administrative apparatus and from more or less important positions in industrial production, prevent their representatives from entering universities, and so on. The closure of bureaus and representative offices of the left forces did not stop in the provinces, the persecution of their print media, arrests and imprisonment without trial of their activists, open incitement by the authorities of the population to crack down on the left. Assurances from Tudeh and Fedayeen (the"majority") statements about their support for the "Islamic revolution" were rejected by the authorities under the pretext that they were supposedly just tactical maneuvers. The leadership of non-Islamic political organizations, even those authorized by the authorities, was forced to adopt a semi-legal position as a precaution .29
Since February 1983, the Islamic authorities have launched a frontal offensive against all leftist forces. Tudeh was particularly harshly repressed, with most of its leaders and activists jailed on trumped-up charges of "high treason" and "espionage." In May of the same year, the authorities announced a ban on the party and invited all its members and supporters to register with the judiciary, and then began mass arrests. At the same time, in order to completely discredit the parties, the authorities began to organize shameful television "shows", during which they forced some of their victims, who were subjected to physical and moral-psychological torture, to come out with a confession of their alleged "espionage activities", as well as with gross distortions of the history of Tudeh and Iranian-Soviet relations. Many party activists were put to death.

The crackdown on leftist forces marked an important turn not only in the internal but also in the foreign policy of the Islamic regime, which began to strengthen trade, economic and political ties with the imperialist powers weakened as a result of the revolution and launched a campaign of slander against the Soviet Union. The country has openly adopted a capitalist path of development, which was previously carefully masked by Islamic-populist slogans. In the social policy of the class-based petty-bourgeois regime, tendencies towards rapprochement with the large non-monopolistic bourgeoisie were becoming increasingly clear.

The Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979 is distinguished by the complexity and inconsistency of its internal structure, which is rare in the world revolutionary practice, due to both the peculiarity of the country's historical development and the peculiarities of the modern era. Popular in its driving forces and methods of struggle, anti-monarchical, anti-monopoly, and anti-imperialist in its main orientation, bourgeois-democratic in its immediate tasks and final results (with certain anti-capitalist tendencies), it can at the same time be called Islamic in terms of the leadership role of the clergy, ideology, set of slogans, and organizational basis.

After the victory of the February 1979 armed uprising, which solved the main problems of the anti-monarchist revolutionary struggle (and thus anti-monopoly and some anti-imperialist tasks), the clergy who came to power directed the revolution in such a direction that efforts to institutionalize its Islamic organizational and ideological forms could determine the main content of the anti-imperialist popular movement. Such a turn was quite natural for this social network-

29 Ibid.

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puffs, which, due to objective historical conditions, was at the head of the revolutionary struggle and refracted national goals through the prism of its own corporate interests.

In this situation, the name "Islamic Revolution" in relation to the post-February period takes on a very definite, concrete meaning. The primary goal of the Shiite clergy who came to power was to establish and strengthen the theocratic regime, to radicalize the entire political, social and family life of citizens in Islam, and to establish "Old Testament" moral and ethical ideals and abstract humanistic goals in the spirit of egalitarian principles of Islam. In accordance with these goals, the leading figures of the Islamic Republic, not without reason, divided the specified period into three stages: the first-from the moment of the establishment of the clergy at the helm of state government in February 1979, the second - from the day of the removal of the Bazargan government from power in November of the same year, the third - from the time of the removal of President Banisadr in June 1981. The culmination of the last of these stages was the massacre of leftist forces in February-May 1983.

The historically unique Iranian revolutionary phenomenon demonstrates the ability of religious and theological forces not only to lead and lead to victory the national anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist movement, but also to use the fruits of this victory in order to consolidate their political leadership and establish their state hegemony in the form of a Shiite theocracy. The combination of political radicalism and social conservatism by the Iranian clergy has its root cause in the Shah's policy of accelerated bourgeois modernization of the country, which had a negative impact not only on the material well-being of religious servants, but also on the degree of their influence among the broad masses of the population and, consequently, on the very foundations of their existence. Having taken the path of revolutionary struggle out of necessity (for in the current circumstances only radical measures could strengthen the position of religion and its adherents), the clergy, even after the victory of the anti-monarchist, anti-imperialist movement, continued in some cases to use radical methods and means of struggle for their socially conservative corporate goals.

This type of action of the clergy was determined by the confrontation with liberal (right-wing and centrist) forces, whose victory would immediately lead to the establishment of an openly bourgeois and pro-Western orientation of government policy. It was precisely this circumstance that at first provided him with broad popular support, and at the same time contributed to a certain disorientation of a significant part of the left forces, who failed to distinguish in time between revolutionary and pseudo-revolutionary methods, between anti-imperialist and pseudo-anti-imperialist ways of acting, between the real interest of religious leaders in maintaining ties with the people and the inherent ability of the Islamic clergy to demagogically manipulate by the broad masses in order to mystify their socio-class and political consciousness.

What is the place of the "Islamic revolution" in the overall development of the revolutionary process in Iran? Clearly defining the entire period from February 1979 to February-May 1983 as counter-revolutionary would be inaccurate and somewhat premature in relation to this period. The stages of the "Islamic revolution" are, in essence, the stages of the gradually deepening crisis of the popular, anti-imperialist revolution of January 1978-February 1979, a crisis that was compounded by-

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He describes the downward trend of the revolutionary process in Iran, which he entered immediately after the February 1979 victory, and reached its extreme point in February-May 1983, when an authoritarian regime in the form of Islamic despotism was fully established in the country as a result of the crackdown on leftist forces. This, of course, does not mean that the chronological framework of the Iranian revolution should necessarily be extended beyond the February 1979 armed uprising.

During the first two stages of the crisis of the revolutionary process in Iran, the Islamic regime directed the main thrust of its repressive policy not so much against opposition left-wing organizations that supported the deepening of the social content of the popular, anti-imperialist revolution (some of their demands were actively "intercepted" by the clergy), but against right-wing elements in the ruling group itself, who sought to "moderate" in order to enable the petty-property strata (and then the non-monopoly circles of the bourgeoisie) to take full advantage of the fruits of the revolutionary gains. Since the main contradictions between these elements and the ruling religious circles rested on the question of the form of state structure, the establishment of an openly theocratic regime revealed its direct social kinship with the overthrown civil power headed by Bazargan and then Banisadr. And this is understandable, because the contradictions between this government and the higher clergy were based not so much on class interests as on social and group interests. The subsequent crackdown on leftist forces, which culminated in the third stage of the crisis of the revolutionary process in Iran, opened the way for bourgeois counter-revolution in political terms.

The zigzags of the Iranian revolution delayed the realization of the age-old aspirations of the country's working masses. But the ideas and traditions of the anti-monarchist and anti-imperialist movement of 1978-1979 will undoubtedly inspire its truly revolutionary forces in their struggle for democracy and social progress.

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