Abstract

Family and educational background; activism in the Tudeh Party; structure and mode of operation of the Tudeh Party; divisions within the Tudeh Party; recollections of Khalil Maleki and the Third Force Party; Iran’s intellectual and artistic climate in the 1960s and the 1970s; political organization among Iranian writers; Prime Minister Alam’s co-optation of Tudeh activists; on Amini’s premiership; on the events of 1963-64, and their political implications; on social change in Iran; political activities of the dissident groups in the 1970s; roots of the religious establishment’s alienation from the Pahlavi state; on the intellectuals and bureaucrats’ support for the Revolution; personal encounters with the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamene’i; reminiscences of Ali Shari`ati; politics in Iran after the Revolution; on meetings between Abol-Hasan Bani-Sadr and Ardeshir Zahedi; government’s reaction to revolutionary upheaval; reasons for leaving Iran.