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Chapter
Democratization, Separatism, Nationalization, Coup: Social Movements from 1941 to 1953
DOI link for Democratization, Separatism, Nationalization, Coup: Social Movements from 1941 to 1953
Democratization, Separatism, Nationalization, Coup: Social Movements from 1941 to 1953 book
Democratization, Separatism, Nationalization, Coup: Social Movements from 1941 to 1953
DOI link for Democratization, Separatism, Nationalization, Coup: Social Movements from 1941 to 1953
Democratization, Separatism, Nationalization, Coup: Social Movements from 1941 to 1953 book
ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses Iran's experience in the war and then turns to the attempts of Kurdistan and Azerbaijan to assert their regional and ethnic rights in 1945-1946. Though elections remained subject in large measure to the control of the shah, army, large landlords, and the foreign embassies, there was a gradual democratization of the system in the 1940s. The struggle for control of the state culminated in the 1951-1953 oil nationalization movement led by Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadiq, which activated the second full-scale twentieth-century version of Iran's urban multi-class populist alliance. The post-war movements for autonomy in Azarbaijan and Kurdistan were the first tests of the potential for new social movements in the changing domestic and international environments of post-Reza Shah Iran. The 1951-1953 oil nationalization movement differed from the earlier revolution in that it emphasized the struggle against external dependency more than the internal conflict with the shah.