Compare And Contrast The Russian Revolution And Iranian Revolution

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The Russian and Iranian Revolutions have very similar causes: an ignorant leader. In Russia, the Tsar was taking Russia into a dead end. His first mistake was to take personal control over the Russian army, which lead to the people blaming the Szar for every defeat that occurred in World War 1 (Class Discussion). Following WW1, the loss of precious resources and the sacrifice of countless lives lead to Russia to be in a state of extreme famine and poverty (Jerry and Ziegler, 1). The crumbling army, food shortages, numerous uprisings, and taking away people’s right of speech and press in the proletariat class lead to a very successful February Revolution in 1917(Jerry and Ziegler, 1). In Iran, the Shah used a similar method of aloof leadership; he made ties with the West and tried to industrialize Iran. Iran rejected the idea of Westernization because of their disdain of the West caused by previous invasions by America (Michelle Gerken). Along with the Westernization, industrializing …show more content…
However, this dynamic was completely flipped due to the revolution. Iran went in a completely different direction that it started off on; extremists made laws against Western culture, and built a whole government system around their interpretation of the Islamic religion. Iran went through these radical changes in the 1970s whereas Russia went back to where they started. Russia had a totalitarian King, the Tsar, who wasted money and used lower class as laborers on hopeless projects only to be replaced by Joseph Stalin. Stalin appealed to the public with Lenin’s idea of communism lead by a strong proletariat class, but abused his power and money to become another version of the oppressing, violent, and thoughtless of the Tsar. The complete changes in Iran make it much more fundamentally different from the convoluted story of how Russia tried to find peace amongst the proletariat and

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