Since the Iranian Revolution, Soviet writers have evidenced two general perceptions of that phenomenon. On the one hand, they perceive it as an anti-imperialist movement motivated by desires for socioeconomic development free of capitalist fetters. On the other hand, they cannot easily fit this revolution into the general theory of social change that is to be found in writings dating from Lenin and Stalin to more contemporary doctrines of the National Democratic State and the Revolutionary Democratic State.

This paper assesses the Soviet image of the Iranian Revolution by comparing and contrasting the arguments adopted by such theoreticians as Primakov, Stepaniants, Demchenko, Ulianovskii, Zagvozdkina, Vasil'ev, Timofeev, Nikol'skii, Trubetskoi, and others. They have tried to clarify the differences between what they term Islamic “orthodoxy” (fundamentalism), Islamic “reformism,” and Islamic “modernism.” In their view, the classification scheme is based on two factors: (1) the linkage of the movement to Islamic dogma; (2) the class basis of the movement.

When Dihkhuda published his poem Inshallah gurbah ast (“God willing, it's a cat”) in 1933, he created quite a stir in Iranian literary circles. The great scholar Muhammad Qazvini, for example, was inspired to call the poem “without a doubt one of the masterpieces of modern literature.” Even a poem of lesser quality, however, would have been the cause of some wonderment, for Dihkhuda's pen had been silent for nearly fifteen years. After transforming Persian prose during the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 with his column Charand parand (Chit-Chat), Dihkhuda gave up writing satirical social commentary in the tumult and disillusionment of the First World War. While sitting out the war in the mountains southwest of Isfahan, Dihkhuda occupied himself with the only book he had available—a Larousse French Dictionary.

Only three out of her 36 short stories are available in English (two translated by the writer herself), and yet Simin Daneshvar (b. 1921) is Iran's first woman novelist and one of the country's most significant fiction writers. Daneshvar has published Savooshoon (the most popular Iranian novel), three collections of short stories, ten translations, and a memoir about her late husband, Jalal Al-e Ahmad. Having retired from her teaching position at Tehran University, she lives in Iran and is now working on her second novel, The Wandering Island.

Daneshvar's literary work is a celebration of the feminine—her taste for life and love, her art of endurance and strength. While most of her female characters manage to survive, none reveals such stamina or resilience as the narrator of Jalal's Sunset. Confronted with the unexpected death of a husband, a colleague, and a collaborator, Daneshvar in this text portrays a real survivor.

This article is actually an outline of history of anthropology in Iran. In part, it traces the development of the field and the problems that some of its practitioners have been endeavoring to overcome. In part, it recounts some of the experiences of the author and the frustrations she and others encountered in trying to broaden the scope of the permissible range of study of anthropology.