The outcome of this policy was that the Muslim masses did...

The outcome of this policy was that the Muslim masses did not see any practical role for them in administering the affairs of the country. The only place where people had any apparent role was in the Majlis (Parliament). Even this was in such a manner that a list of the deputies had earlier been made by the Royal Court and approved by the American embassy, and those in the list were the same who would occupy the seats in the Majlis.

Of course, among the elite personalities of the country at that time, some were not amenable with the current policies. For whatever reason, they were not willing to come to terms with the rest, and they laid down the edifice of struggle and formed their own groups and organizations.

One of these groups was the Tudeh Party.[^1] Of course, at a certain point in time, the Tudeh Party was really an agent and tool at the hand of the imperialist East and it had members who inclined toward the Soviet Union and wanted Iran to become a socialist country and a satellite of the Soviet Union, but there were also sincere individuals among them who really knew no way but attaching themselves to the Soviet Union in order to be free from the yoke and domination of Britain and America.

That is, what was inculcated in them was that there were no more than two ways for the Third World countries such as Iran; they should either be under the banner of America or under the banner of the Soviet Union so as to resist against the other. The second group was not many in number, but at least they were present. In sum, a number of the elite during the time rallied behind the Tudeh Party and used to organize themselves.

Now, one should not be negligent of the danger to be posed by this party because it still seizes any opportunity and its members have secretly been engaged in reorganizing themselves.

Among those who had leftist inclination, apart from the Tudeh Party, there were other groups such as the Guerillas Devoted to the Masses [ Cherik-ha-ye Fada’i-ye Khalq ],[^2] Labor Party [ hizb-e kargar ], Rastegar , and different local groups and parties in such regions as Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Khuzistan whose common feature was inclination to Marxism. Yet, it should not remain unsaid that some of those so-called parties had no more than ten or twenty members.