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Iranian Publishing in the Post-Pahlavi Era: at Home and Abroad**

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Wolfgang Behn*
Affiliation:
Staatsbibliothek Preuβischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin

Extract

This discussion is concerned with political, non-commercial publications rather than with the trade publications or the government, documents put out by the Ministry of National Guidance and the Iranian embassies in various Western countries. It must also be stated at the outset that such a survey cannot be entirely comprehensive due to the unreliability of information coming out of revolutionary Iran. Who can claim to have complete bibliographic information at a time of unsurpassed printing activities by all sorts of political groups within Iran, as well as the opposition abroad? However, the events surrounding the overthrow of the Shah must have convinced everyone of the importance of knowing about the current situation so as to formulate an informed opinion. It is futile to speculate what relations with Iran would be like if the decision-makers in the West had taken seriously the publications listed in the writer’s bibliography. The Iranian Opposition in Exile (Wiesbaden, 1979). One is flabbergasted to hear from Western Iranists that “by the 1970s opposition within Iran was dwindling to insignificant proportions and an open, organized form was nonexistent” [Iran under the Pahlavis, ed. C. Lencz-kowski (Stanford, 1978), p. 461]. The misinterpretation of the post-Pahlavi era comes from the failure to realize the adverse effect of Chinese and Soviet support for the Shah.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1981

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Footnotes

**

This is a revised version of the article, “Revolutionary Publishing in Iran from the Overthrow of the Shah until his Death,” that was published in MELA Notes, No. 21.

References

** This is a revised version of the article, “Revolutionary Publishing in Iran from the Overthrow of the Shah until his Death,” that was published in MELA Notes, No. 21.