About documents from 1968 to 1978

Documents that are important for oral history

Akram Dashtban
Translated by Ruhollah Golmoradi

2018-6-19

Position of documents is important in oral history. Author of such works should refer to valid documents for being the best knowledgeable on the subject. Documents produced in law enforcement, security or political and administrative institutions are important in oral history depending on type of producer institution and organization, being intimate or distance of reporter to intended event or subject. Rahim Nikbakht, author and senior expert in field of history has paid attention to this issue in an article published on the site of Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.

Applying documents in oral history is important to determine exact time of incident and location of an event, identify individuals, find out obscure and questionable aspects of the event, as well as to organize chapters and contents. In some cases, when some events have been forgotten or faded by witnesses, documents complete these "forgottens".

Today there are many books published based on documents, and book of "Documents of Social and Cultural Policies in the Pahlavi II: Proceedings of the Commission on Issues of the Day" is an example of such works. This book includes documents from years 1968 to 1978 and these documents were published in two volumes by efforts of document management experts, Behnam Sadri and Alireza Esmaeili, under supervision of Center for Research and Documents of Vice-President of Communications and Information of Office of the President. This work was published and released by Khane Ketab; the work that has attracted attention of researchers so far and is considered one of the best-selling books of Khane Ketab.

The preface of the work is a general overview of the book and responds to why this two-volume book is being compiled. As some of it says: "Once the book was the only available media, with addition of newspaper, followed by radio and television, as well as development of printing industry, and consequently increase in number of books and diversity of subjects, control of all these media was added to problems of cultural-social policymakers apart from society. Censorship of newspaper in Iran was arisen its very inception as a twin for it. As the most important role of Naseri's Enteba'at (it almost means printing) Bureau was monitoring and controlling few the press of that time. After repression of the 15 Khordad uprising, a deep gap was arisen between government and religious masses arose, and the beginning of the Six-Day War between Arabs and Zionist regime in 1967 caused concern to Pahlavi regime politicians. Because this war could have been an excuse to renew activities of opposition forces, especially religious ones. As a result, a committee called "Intelligence and Promotion" was created to control public opinion, and later it was renamed "Day Affairs Reviewing Commission" and undertook a task beyond its goal of original establishment. What is clear from text of minutes of the commission is the commission's entry into various cultural and social issues, and severe censorship on information flow in community. Publishing minutes of the commission the present book provides a comprehensive picture of socio-cultural policies of Pahlavi regime in a particular moment; a view that illuminates censorship on the most detailed affairs and separation of the regime's agents from reality of society."

For example, in document No. 601 of "Documents of Cultural and Social Policies in Pahlavi II: Proceedings of the Commission on Issues of the Day" we see that Ministry of Information and Tourism of the Pahlavi Government hold the session of the Commission on Issues of the Day With representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Director of Writing of Ministry of Culture and Art, Shahrebani (Police), two Deputies of Minister of Information and Tourism, representative of National Iranian Radio & Television, General Director of internal Press, and General Director of Pars News Agency in office of Press Deputy of Ministry of Information and Tourism at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, September 11, 1974.

Each of these participants points out their own points. Like the representative of Ministry of Culture and Art says book of "African problems" by Ivan Izosimovich, published in 2200^th copies in Aftab Printing House cannot be distributed and should be gathered. The SAVAK representative also says that Ettelaat newspaper published a photo under title "government quota of flour in Mianeh" on pages of cities on August 10, 1974 which is inappropriate. It was intended General Directorate of the Press would give necessary warn to authorities about this case.

The book "Documents of Social and Cultural Policies in Pahlavi II: Proceeding of the Commission on Issues of the Day" contains 642 documents in 1256 pages, and at the end of the book there is a sample image of the document and index.