Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran by Touraj Atabaki (review)

Book Reviews 257 I want to conclude this review by addressing one of the concerns that Bozdoğan says she had as she was writing the book—namely that the interdisciplinary nature of the study might lead either to confusion on the part of her readers or to compromise on her own part. “Does one explain,” she asks, “who Le Corbusier was for nonspecialist readers outside the field of architecture? Does one give basic historical information such as the date of the proclamation of the Turkish republic for readers unfamiliar with the history of Turkey and the Middle East?” (p. 15). My own reading of the book suggests that this concern was unfounded. Bozdoğan provides an effective background and context for non-specialist readers while at the same time challenging specialists to reconsider conventional wisdom on a variety of political, historical, and theoretical issues. The book is an excellent example of interdisciplinary scholarship grounded in detailed, carefully considered empirical work. Ruth Miller University of Massachusetts, Boston Atabaki, Touraj. Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Xvi, 246 pp., map. Cloth, $24.50. ISBN 1860645542. Touraj Atabaki’s Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran details the history of Azerbaijani movements in Iran from the Constitutional Revolution (1905–09) to the Soviet occupation of northern Iran (1945–46), and analyzes the effects of those events on the development of the Azerbaijani identity in Iran. Atabaki grounds his descriptions of historical figures and events in pertinent primary sources, which makes Azerbaijan a leading resource for researchers of Azerbaijani history. One of Atabaki’s main goals for Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran was to discuss the development of Azerbaijani ethnic identity and how it interacted with the developing Iranian identity. Though both Azerbaijanis and Iranians sought a less centralized Iran, Azerbaijanis also sought cultural and linguistic rights, which became a politicized issue for Azerbaijanis during the Constitutional Revolution and in the development of the National Autonomous State of Azerbaijan in 1945. The shah and the Persian-dominated government in Tehran endeavored during both upheavals to create a unified Iranian state with little tolerance for linguistic or cultural diversity. The issue of the linguistic rights of Azerbaijanis created the greatest detour in the development of Azerbaijani and Iranian identity in the first half of the twentieth century. Although Atabaki’s goal was to focus on the Azerbaijani population’s political development, the book would have benefitted from more purviews into the major political issues of other ethnic minority groups from 1905 to 1946 in Iran, such as the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Baluch. While these groups’ struggles are not entirely JOTSA 1:1-2 (2014) 258 absent from the book, a more detailed look at their activities during the same time period would shed light on the scale of the rebellions in Azerbaijan in relation to the social and political disturbances in other minority communities in Iran. Atabaki’s second goal was to use Iranian Azerbaijan as a paradigm to elucidate the problems encountered by the theoretical nation-state when it is confronted with the question of regional autonomy. By clearly depicting the day-to-day struggles of the Azerbaijan province to secure some measure of regional autonomy and linguistic freedom, Atabaki successfully demonstrated that when a centralized power repudiates a homogenous segment of the population’s desire for greater selfsufficiency and cultural rights, it can lead to rebellion, even if the population does not desire to separate from the state. Atabaki approached his goals on an individual level of analysis by meticulously unraveling the biographies of all the leading figures of the Azerbaijani movements through a close examination of their personal and public writings and by relying heavily on historical government documents. By first determining the individuals who were most influential in the development of an Azerbaijani identity in modern Iran, Atabaki then effectively defended his interpretation of the course of events. The personal goals of the movements’ leaders—primarily to establish an Azerbaijani province in Iran that would provide Azerbaijanis full linguistic freedom and more autonomy from the government in Tehran—became the aspirations of the...