Introduction

The revolutions in Russia and China, two of the world's largest and most populous countries, not only had tremendous impacts on their own populations but also affected how other nations and peoples would react to future revolutionary movements. Many critics of the Russian Revolution viewed the installation of a one-party political system as a perversion of revolutionary ideals. The Vietnamese revolution, apart from being a major movement in Asia for political and economic transformation, became a central cold war test case for US opposition to communist-led revolutions. The Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Iranian revolutions were also, in part, reactions to foreign intervention. The Iranian revolution was one of the major events in the Middle East during the cold war period. The anti-imperialist and moralist aspects of the Iranian revolution, themes present to some extent in other revolutions, contributed to an exceptional outcome, the establishment of the religiously dominated Islamic Republic.