Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 3

Why was oral history brought up?

Maryam Rajabi
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2019-3-12

According to the website of Iranian Oral History, the second session of the meeting " Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense" was held in the Qasr-e Shirin Hall of the Islamic Revolution Museum and Holy Defense on Tuesday 5^th of February 2019 attended by Hojjat al-Eslam Saeed Fakhrzadeh, Habibollah Esmaeeli and Morteza Mirdar.

Morteza Mirdar who was the head of the Oral History Department of the Office of Islamic Revolution Literature for years said in the meeting, "Oral history is an important tool for reflecting the events and incidents of the years of fighting and defense from the Islamic revolution. We have in our religious culture that if Hazrat Zeinab (PBUH) did not exist and narrate, the Ashura events remained in Karbala. This important and valuable event could have been lost in history if it was not narrated. If we did not write the history of an event, it seems that the event has not happened. If our Islamic revolution which is in fact the continuation of that Ashura culture is not registered and recorded correctly, we will face with many problems in the future. Imam Khomeini (God bless his soul) said, "We who are living now and following the current issues which have happened in front of our eyes, see the opportunists and profiteers who express and write religious and Islamic movement issues wrongly with fearing any scandal. No doubt that these baseless writings in the name of history have many horrific impacts on the next generations. Thus, the events of the Islamic revolution form the very beginning till now and the events which will happen in the future (namely after Imam Khomeini (God bless his soul)) are important issues that the writers and religious scholars should dealt with them." All of these reflect the significance of our history.

Alongside the traditional historiography which existed and was based on documents, what happened that oral history was brought up in the Islamic Iran? If you refer to the universities, they do not attach much credit for oral history and believe that oral history is not a historiographical method, but a tool for collecting one-dimensional resources of historiography and do not consider these as history but regard as historical resources which have been later named as the so-called oral history. The reason why the issues was shaped in our society is related to the characteristics and conditions of the enthusiasts. Due to the incidents and events that happened in the Islamic revolution, a number of people who had much information left this world and there was no written culture to resort to writing their memories and transfer the information to the future in this way. The conditions and events of the revolution and the scared defense were somehow that the written documents or the mechanisms existed for writing the available information were not comprehensive. The only organization or center which have written the events of the second Pahlavi era in details is SAVAK (the Shah's secret police). But the same SAVAK which have owned millions of sheets of documents, have not published many events and incident because it was not informed, and we cannot have access to those events through the SAVAK documents. During the campaign period, many campaigners did not write anything as much as possible intentionally, because if they were written and the torture agents obtained them, it would have been possible that others were arrested through them or they pressured to get information. They not only did not register and record them, but tried not to keep the names in their memories and had put fake and idiomatic names for each other. The campaigners said that we even tried to forget the names in order not be forced to confess under the hardest tortures.

The second point is about the scenes of the sacred defense. Facilities had been provided in the army’s mechanism like the world armies in a way that a series of historian were present in the war alongside the divisions and units in order to write the events, but basically, the historiographical body of the army was not used and did not become active because the army’s structure was not ready to do this and its art was to make armored units active. The issues had conspired to shape an approach toward receiving information through oral history in the society. The first measures which started after the victory of the Islamic revolution in relation to the revolution’s historiography was the work carried out by Hojjat al-Eslam Seyed Hamid Rouhani Ziarati. He was a clergy and a close friend of Imam Khomeini. He made an attempt to collect the Imam’s information. He collected any document he found. Once he told me that he emptied the garbage can of the Imam’s house at nights because he separated the wet and paper garbage. He flattened the paper ones which were related to the Imam and the revolution’s events and kept in a place. His measure became familiar among the Imam’s close friends gradually and anyone who found a document gave to him. When the revolution was triumphed and the Imam and his entourage returned, the revolutionary forces seized some organizations and institutions and obtained a series of documents related to Pahlavi era. Those who knew Mr. Rouhani, delivered the documents to him and little by little, many documents were collected and later, the Imam gave Mr. Rouhani a mandate to continue his work. Seyed Hamid Rouhani’s view was a documented and written one not an oral history view unless in the places that he thought it was needed; he went and talked to the individuals. This was the first work carried out in the area of the revolution’s historiography. Another work was also done at the very beginning of the revolution. A number of the cultural revolutionaries got together and set up the Foundation of Islamic Revolution History. I remember that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ma’adikhah were the members of the foundation. They were active in the area of the revolution’s historiography. Mr. Ma’adikhah started his work as the foundation’s secretary. But, misters Shakouri and Gholam Hossain Karbaschi were responsible in the section of oral history and memories. They started to interview the individuals from the very beginning so that a sequence was created in the interviews. The interviewers tried to increase their skill over time. Sometimes, when I looked at their complementary interviews, they were more sophisticated and complete and had advanced deeper in comparison with their early ones. Different events like the border insurgencies happened since one year or so after the revolution. These were important events but the Iraqi imposed war against Iran was an event which had attracted the attention of the system from all aspects and all cultural and intellectual forces focused on the sacred defense and in practice, the historiography of the Islamic revolution waned and was not seen anymore. Thus, they focused their attention to the issue of the historiography of the sacred defense.

As far as I know, two groups started working during the war in the field of the historiography of the sacred defense which later another group was added to them. The two groups were in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). One was the members of the IRGC war research which according to the decision made by the war commandership, small tape recorders were given to them. They accompanied the commanders and recorded the whole conversations, meetings and their orders. We had also stories about them that the war commanders wanted to escape from them. They said that we wanted to be comfy for a few minutes, asking them not to record. But the members of the IRGC war research were stubborn, faithful and active persons some of who were martyred in this way. What I remember is that they recorded some thirty thousand hours of conversations until the end of the war and made a very valuable archive. It is fair to say that the IRGC commandership was given many facilities to them at that time. I recall Brigadier General Mohammad Zadeh who was in the political office as well as Brigadier General Mohsen Rashid who guided the work. Another group was shaped in the war and front propaganda that I should recall Brigadier General Nik Khah who was among the persons in charge of the propaganda and among our heads. Another group called Registration of War Memories was also set up in IRGC which had a cultural view at the war mostly. Well, now, this war is happening with this military dimensions, we want to see what the combatants are doing? How is their culture and life? How do they treat with each other? What happens between them? With what motivation have they come? With what motivation do they continue? What are their problems and difficulties? The group Registration of War Memories had this view. First, a beautiful booklet had been provided. Questions had been raised in the booklet. In fact, it had guided the combatants. Maps from the war zones and photographs had been designed. Sayings from the great men such as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution who was the president of Iran at that time had been mentioned about the significance of the combatants' work. As far as I remember, one million volumes of the booklet were published and distributed among the combatants in various times. As far as I witnessed, a few of the booklets were returned and all kept them. Later, we carried out something for the families of the martyrs and provided a booklet for them and distributed among them. Some of the families of the martyrs sent the copies if the combatants' booklets in which they had written their memoirs and it was very interesting for us.

This process continued till the end of the war. I joined the group in 1984. Since I was a cleric (with laughter), I was chosen as the person in charge of Registration of War Memories and although there were other experienced members, I stayed in this post till the end of the war. It was in the middle of the war that the members of the Jihad Sazandegi (holy war of construction) came to the arena. They had an office in Tehran's Enqelab Square and had made a special booklet and started their work. A person called Mr. Fatehi was in charge of the office who worked hard.

These were the cases in which we witnessed the work of historiography inside the country. In the first decade after the victory of the Islamic revolution, the foreigners also work a lot; the BBC and Harvard and the communists in Germany. The oral history of communist women was also carried in the Netherlands. The westerners provided the Iranians living overseas with money and capital. The issues were mostly registered and recorder from their own view. They thought of recognizing the phenomenon of the Islamic revolution. They had no information about the dimensions and volume and content of the Islamic revolution and launched such things to obtain information. I do not know whether they gained the information or not."    

Live History: A Study of 40 Years of Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense – 2: Oral history is the same as history

Live History: A Study of Forty Years Oral History of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense-1: Flourishing and the culmination of oral history in Iran