Solmaz Tohidi-Rustamova. Comintern’s Eastern Policy and Iran, 1919-1943. In Azeri. Khazar University Press, Baku, 2001.

I have been asked to write an evaluation of an important work in the field of modern history. I am pleased to do it. This full length book entitled, Kominternin Sherg Siyaseti ve Iran, 1919-1943, Xazar Universitesi Nashriyyati, Baki, 2001, has been written by Solmaz Tohidi-Rustamova, an accomplished and known historian, who in this monograph made extensive use of recent accessibility of the archival material from the Soviet period. The general historical background of the period marked by the post World War I condition as well as the Russian revolution is provided in first part of the book devoted to the formation of the Third or Communist International known by the acronym of Comintern. More detailed discussion follows in the next part dealing with the 1920 Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East, the topic on which the author had has to her credit another publication. The main underlying issue of the Congress was how to square the Western revolutionary ideas of proletarian internationalism with the aspirations of the peoples of the East, where industrial proletariat hardly existed, but the colonial rule was the norm. The native reply to the existing condition was the rise of the national movements, the potential, if not quite comfortable ally of communism in the struggle against Western imperialism. Hence came the significant modification of the slogan, “Proletarians of all countries unite”, into “Proletarians of all countries and all oppressed peoples of the world unite”, put forward in the Baku Congress by Zinovyev. Although as many as 45 national or ethnic groups were represented among more than two thousand participants in the Congress, the book emphasizes the significance of the three: Turks, Iranians, and Armenians, all of them not only close neighbors of Russia, but in the case of Armenians and Turks locked in a bitter, and fresh antagonism In the Baku debates the dominant note was the issue of the ongoing Turkish national revolution, and there resounded echoes of rivalry between the movement of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Young Turks represented by their exiled leader, Enver Pasha, who came to the Congress, but was not invited to address the audience. Despite the fact that Iranian delegates formed the second largest group in the Congress, the Iran question appeared as secondary in comparison to that of Turkey.