A History of Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian
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To receive land, peasants had to join rural cooperatives administered by the
ministries of agriculture and rural affairs. In some areas the government set
up health clinics and literacy classes. A European anthropologist visiting the
Boir Ahmadis noted: “One is amazed at the high level of centralization
achieved within the last decade. The government now interferes in practi-
cally all aspects of daily life. Land is contracted for cash by the government;
fruits get sprayed, crops fertilized, animals fed, beehives set up, carpets
woven, goods and babies born, populations controlled, women organized,
religion taught and diseases controlled – all by the intervention of the
government.”
21
What is more, as the nomadic population shrank further,
small tribal groups that had given Iran the appearance of being a social
mosaic disappeared into oblivion. Similarly, terms such as tireh and taifeh,
as well as ilkhan and ilbeg, became obsolete. They merely conjured up vague
images of a bygone esoteric age.
While land reform transformed the countryside, five-year plans drawn up
by the Plan and Budget Organization brought about a minor industrial
revolution. They improved port facilities; expanded the Trans-Iranian
Railway, linking Tehran to Mashed, Tabriz, and Isfahan; and asphalted the
main roads between Tehran and the provincial capitals. They financed
petrochemical plants; oil refineries; hydroelectric dams – named after mem-
bers of the royal family; steel mills in Ahwaz and Isfahan – the Soviets
constructed the latter; and a gas pipeline to the Soviet Union. The state
also bolstered the private sector both by erecting tariff walls to protect
consumer industries and by channeling low-interest loans via the Industrial
and Mining Development Bank to court-favored businessmen. Old landed
families – such as the Bayats, Moqadams, Davalus, Afshars, Qarahgozlus,
Esfandiyaris, and Farmanfarmas – became capitalist entrepreneurs. Le Monde
wrote that the shah – much like the kings of early nineteenth-century France –
encouraged entrepreneurs to “enrich themselves,” showering them with
low-interest loans, exempting them from taxation, and protecting them
from foreign competition.
22
Between 1953 and 1975, the number of small
factories increased from 1,500 to more than 7,000; medium-sized factories
from 300 to more than 800; and large factories – employing more than 500
workers – from fewer than 100 to more than 150. They included textile,
machine tool, and car assembly plants in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz,
Ahwaz, Arak, and Kermanshah. The smaller plants specialized in clothing,
food processing, including beverages, cement, bricks, tiles, paper, and home
appliances. The regime’s showpieces were the Dezful Dam in Khuzestan,
the steel mills in Isfahan, and the nuclear plant in Bushire. Key production
figures indicate the extent of this industrial revolution.
Muhammad Reza Shah’s White Revolution 133
The state also pressed ahead with social programs. The number of
educational institutions grew threefold after the launching of the White
Revolution. Enrollment in kindergartens increased from 13,300 to 221,990;
in elementary schools from 1,640,000 to 4,080,00; in secondary schools
from 370,000 to 741,000; in vocational schools from 14,240 to 227,000;in
colleges from 24,885 to 145,210; and in colleges abroad from 18,000 to
80,000. What is more, a Literacy Corps – modeled on the Cuban version –
was declared to be an integral part of the White Revolution. It helped raise
the literacy rate from 26 to 42 percent. Health programs increased the
number of doctors from 4,000 to 12,750; nurses from 1,969 to 4,105;
medical clinics from 700 to 2,800; and hospital beds from 24,100 to
48,000. These improvements, together with the elimination of famines
and childhood epidemics, raised the overall population from 18,954
,706
in 1956 – when the first national census was taken – to 33,491,000 in 1976.
On the eve of the revolution, nearly half the population was younger than
sixteen. The White Revolution also expanded to include women’s issues.
Women gained the right to vote; to run for elected office; and to serve in the
judiciary – first as lawyers, later as judges. The 1967 Family Protection Law
restricted men ’s power to get divorces, take multiple wives, and obtain child
custody. It also raised the marriageable age for women to fifteen. Although
the veil was never banned outright, its use in public institutions was
discouraged. What is more, the Literacy and Health Corps established
special branches designed to extend educational and medical facilities,
especially birth control information, to women.
These changes produced a complex class structure.
23
At the apex was an
upper class formed of a narrow circle of families linked to the Pahlavi court –
the royal family itself, senior politicians and government officials, military
Table 11 Industrial production, 1953–77
1953 1977
Coal (tons) 200,000 900,000
Iron ore (tons) 5,000 930,000
Steel and aluminum (tons) – 275,000
Cement (tons) 53,000 4,300,000
Sugar (tons) 70,000 527,000
Electricity (kw hours) 200 million 14 billion
Cotton textiles (meters) 110 million 533 million
Tractors – 7,700
Motor vehicles – 109,000
134 A History of Modern Iran
5.1 Set celebrating aspects of the White Revolution
5 Stamps (1963–78)
5.2 Set commemorating Reza Shah
136 A History of Modern Iran
5.2 (cont.)
5.3 Stamp set commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Pahlavi dynasty
officers, as well as court-connected entrepreneurs, industrialists, and com-
mercial farmers. Some came from old families; others were self-made men
with court connections; yet others had married into the elite. Together they
owned more than 85 percent of the large firms involved in insurance,
banking, manufacturing, and urban construction. Although the vast major-
ity came from Shi’i backgrounds, a few had Bahai connections, and some
had joined the secretive Freemasons. This provided fuel for those who
claimed that Iran was really controlled behind the scenes by the British
through the Freemasons and by the Zionists through the Bahais who had
located their headquarters in Haifa.
The middle layers were formed of two very distinct classes: the bazaar petty
bourgeoisie which constituted a traditional middle class; and a modern
middle class composed of white-collar employees and college-educated pro-
fessionals. The propertied middle class constituted more than a million
families – as much as 13 percent of the working population. It included not
only bazaar shopkeepers and workshop owners, but also small manufacturers
and absentee farmers owning between 50 and 100 hectares. It also included
much of the ulama – both because of family links and because of historic links
between mosque and bazaar. Despite economic modernization, the bazaar
continued to control as much as half of the country’s handicraft production,
two-thirds of its retail trade, and three-quarters of its wholesale trade. It
continued to retain craft and trade guilds as well as thousands of mosques,
hayats (religious gatherings), husseiniehs (religious lecture halls), and dastehs
(groups that organized Muharram processions). Ironically, the oil boom gave
the traditional middle class the opportunity to finance religious centers and
establish private schools that emphasized the importance of Islam. They were
specifically designed to prepare the children of the bazaaris for the top
universities. Thus the oil money helped nourish tradition.
The salaried middle class numbered more than 700,000 – some 9 percent of
the working population. It included 304,000 civil servants in the ever-expand-
ing ministries; some 200,000 teachers and school administrators; and in excess
of 60,000 managers, engineers, and professionals. The total exceeded one
million, including college students and other aspiring members of the class. In
the past, the term intelligentsia – rowshanfekr – had been synonymous with
the salaried middle class. But with the rapid expansion of the salaried class,
the term had become more differentiated and specifically associated with
intellectuals – writers, journalists, artists, and professors. The intelligentsia
continued to be the bearers of nationalism and socialism.
The urban working class numbered as many as 1,300,000 – more than 30
percent of the labor force. It included some 880,000 in modern industrial
138 A History of Modern Iran
factories; 30,000 plus oil workers; 20,000 gas, electrical, and power plant
workers; 30,000 fishery and lumberyard workers; 50,000 miners; 150,000
dock workers, railwaymen, truck drivers, and other transport workers; and
600,000 workers in small plants. The total grows even larger if one adds the
rapidly increasing army of shantytown poor formed of immigrants squeezed
out of their villages by the lack of land. Migrants scraped out a living as
construction workers, and, if there were no jobs on construction sites, as
peddlers and hawkers. Tehran took in the largest influx of rural migrants,
with population growth from 1.5 million in 1953 to more than 5.5 million in
1979. By the time of the revolution, 46 percent of the country’s population
lived in urban centers.
The rural population – some 40 percent of the labor force – consisted of
three strata: prosperous farmers, hard-pressed smallholders, and village
laborers. The first layer included former village headmen, bailiffs, and
oxen-owning tenant sharecroppers who had benefited most from land
reform. They numbered around 600,000 – less than 17 percent of the
rural population. The second included some 1,100,000 sharecroppers who
had received less than 10 hectares – the minimum needed in most regions.
Many had no choice but to exchange their small plots for shares in state
cooperatives. The third comprised peasants without sharecropping
rights. Having received no land whatsoever, they survived as farm
hands, shepherds, laborers, day commuters to nearby towns, and wage
earners employed in the many small plants that flourished in the country-
side during the early 1970s – small plants manufacturing carpets,
shoes, clothes, and paper. Some migrated to the urban centers. Thus
the White Revolution failed to provide land to the bulk of the rural
population.
social tensions
These changes intensified social tensions in three major ways. First, they
more than quadrupled the combined size of the two classes that had posed
the most serious challenge to the Pahlavis in the past – the intelligentsia and
the urban working class. Their resentments also intensified since they were
systematically stripped of organizations that had in one way or another
represented them during the interregnum – professional associations, trade
unions, independent newspapers, and political parties. At the same time,
land reform had undercut the rural notables who for centuries had con-
trolled their peasants and tribesmen. Land reform had instead produced
large numbers of independent farmers and landless laborers who could
Muhammad Reza Shah’s White Revolution 139
easily become loose political cannons. The White Revolution had been
designed to preempt a Red Revolution. Instead, it paved the way for an
Islamic Revolution. Furthermore, the steady growth in population, com-
pounded by the shortage of arable land, produced ever-expanding shanty-
towns. By the mid-1970s, the regime faced a host of social problems of a
magnitude unimaginable in the past.
Second, the regime’s preferred method of development – the “trickle-
down” theory of economics – inevitably widened the gap between haves and
have-nots. Its strategy was to funnel oil wealth to the court-connected elite
who would then set up factories, companies, and agrobusinesses. In theory,
wealth would trickle down. But in practice, in Iran, as has been the case in
many other countries, wealth tended to stick at the top, with less and less
finding its way down the social ladder. Wealth, like ice in hot weather,
melted in the process of being passed from hand to hand. The result was not
surprising. In the 1950s, Iran had one of the most unequal income
Upper class
Pahlavi family; military officers; senior civil servants,
court-connected entrepreneurs
0.1%
Middle classes
10%
32%
modern (salaried)
professionals
civil servants
office employees
college students
13% traditional
(propertied)
clerics
bazaaris
small-factory owners
workshop owners
commercial farmers
Lower classes
urban
industrial workers
small factory workers
workshop workers
construction workers
peddlers
unemployed
45% rural
landed peasants
near landless peasants
landless peasants
rural unemployed
Figure 1 Class structure (labor force in the 1970s)
140 A History of Modern Iran
distributions in the Third World. By the 1970s, it had – according to the
International Labor Office – one of the very worst in the whole world.
24
Although we have no hard data on actual income distribution, the Central
Bank carried out surveys on household urban expenditures in 1959–60 and
1973–74 – a methodology that would inevitably underestimate real inequal-
ity. The 1959–60 survey showed that the richest 10 percent accounted for
35.2 percent of total expenditures; the poorest 10 percent only 1.7 percent of
expenditures. The figures were worse in 1973–74. They showed that the
richest 10 percent accounted for 37.9 percent; and the poorest 10 percent 1.3
percent of total expenditures. A leaked document from the Plan and Budget
Organization showed that the income share of the richest 20 percent of the
urban population had grown from 57 to 63 percent in the period between
1973 and 1975.
25
It also showed that the gap between urban and rural
consumption had dramatically widened. Inequality was most visible in
Tehran where the rich lived in their northern palaces and the poor in
their shantytown hovels without public amenities – especially a decent
transport system. A member of the royal family was rumored to have
commented that “if people did not like being stuck in traffic jams why
didn’t they buy helicopters?” In the words of a Pentagon journal, the oil
boom had brought “inequality” and “corruption to a boiling point.”
26
Finally, the White Revolution and the subsequent oil boom produced
widespread resentments by drastically raising but not meeting public
expectations. It was true that social programs made strides in improving
educational and health facilities. But it was equally true that after two
decades, Iran still had one of the worst infant mortality and doctor–patient
Table 12 Urban household expenditures (decile
distribution in percent)
Deciles (poorest to richest) 1959–60 1973–74
1st 1.71.3
2nd 2.92.4
3rd 4.03.4
4th 5.04.7
5th 6.15.0
6th 7.36.8
7th 8.99.3
8th 11.811.1
9th 16.417.5
10th 35.337.9
Muhammad Reza Shah’s White Revolution 141
rates in the Middle East. It also had one of the lowest percentages of the
population in higher education. Moreover, 68 percent of adults remained
illiterate, 60 percent of children did not complete primary school, and only
30 percent of applicants found university places within the country.
Increasing numbers went abroad where they remained for good. By the
1970s, there were more Iranian doctors in New York than in any city outside
Tehran. The term “brain drain” was first attached to Iran.
It was true that the White Revolution provided some farmers with land,
cooperatives, tractors, and fertilizers. But it was equally true that the White
Revolution did not touch much of the countryside. Most peasants received
no or little land. Most villages were left without electricity, schools, piped
water, rural roads, and other basic amenities. What is more, government-
imposed prices on agricultural goods favored the urban sector at the expense
of the countryside. This lowered incentives – even for those farmers who
had benefited from land reform. This, in turn, stifled production at a time
of rapid population growth. As a result, Iran, which in the 1960s had been a
net exporter of food, was spending as much as $1 billion a year in the mid-
1970s importing agricultural products. It is true that economic growth did
benefit those who gained access to modern housing and such consumer
goods as refrigerators, telephones, televisions, and private cars. But it is
equally true that this growth tended to widen the gap not only between rich
and poor, but also between the capital city and the outlying provinces. Of
course, the state’s center of gravity was very much located at the capital. The
Industrial and Mining Bank compounded this imbalance by channeling
60 percent of its loans into the capital. By the mid-1970s, Tehran – with less
than 20 percent of the country’s population – had more than 68 percent of
its civil servants; 82 percent of its registered companies; 50 percent of its
manufacturing production; 66 percent of its university students; 50 percent
of its doctors; 42 percent of its hospital beds; 40 percent of its cinema-going
public; 70 percent of its travelers abroad; 72 percent of its printing presses;
and 80 percent of its newspaper readers. One in ten of Tehran’s residents
had a car; elsewhere the figure was one in ninety.
27
In the words of a British
economist: “Those who live in Tehran have the chance of better access to
education, health facilities, the media, jobs and money – to say nothing of
access to the decision-making processes. Not surprisingly people in villages
or other towns are prepared to come to Tehran in the hope of better life,
ignoring the problems of high rents, overcrowding and pollution.”
28
Frances
FitzGerald summed up the overall disparities: “Iran is basically worse off
than a country like Syria that has had neither oil nor political stability. The
reason for all this is simply that the Shah has never made a serious attempt at
142 A History of Modern Iran