An investigation on Marxism and the National Question in Iran in years of 1920 to 1980

Ethnicity is one of the trends of the new era which some paradigms, e.g., globe after Soviet fall, globalization, and rise of the Postmodern discourses, has caused its spread through the globe in these years. Ethnicity, in countries with a long history or colonized countries, had not existed or had been a marginal issue. However, during Soviet era, it came to the political scene as a hone and supporter of the political ideologies. As one of the main trends in 20th century, ethnicity has been defined as the "National Question" under "Marxist-Leninist" paradigm which is explored in this paper. As a consequence of Soviet impact on Iran, ethnicity came to Iran, at first, as a complement of the left-Marxist discourses as well as Lenin theories. The "Communist Party of Iran" used this idea in the 1920's. Afterward, other parties, e.g., the "Tudeh Party of Iran" and other leftist parties in Iran used that as the means of their political ends, causing violence and insecurity until 1980's. This paper tries to analysis the Ethnocentrism regarding its basic causes, which mainly is Marxism-Leninism, and shows that Ethnocentrism in Iran is highly influenced by leftist-Marxists discourses. The Research Methodology in this paper is descriptive-analytical and information gathering is based literature review. The main presumption of this paper is that the ethnicity is a part of Marxism-Leninism discourse whereas has been stated as the "National Question" in Left political context. consequently, The leftist parties and organizations used the ethnicity as a political-ideological tool.