ABSTRACT
For eleven days in early 1922, the red flag flew over Tabriz and power lay in the hands of a revolutionary committee and a soldiers’ council, the latter headed by the poet and gendarme officer Major Abulqasim Lahuti. Yet this episode, as dramatic as it was brief, has never been integrated into the history of the Iranian Left. Largely forgotten by later generations of Iranian activists, it has been neglected, or even ignored altogether by their historians. Lahuti himself is now remembered for his contribution to poetry and, in particular, the literary awakening of another country, Tajikistan, but he has attracted little interest as a figure of political significance in the development of Iranian social democracy.
