Politics and writing in the shadow of the Cold War in I Was a Soviet Spy in Iran

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, the phantom of the Cold War loomed over the international relations of countries and created tensions, both foreign and domestic. In the case of Iran, the so-called Azerbaijan Crisis (1946) brought Iran-US relations into a new phase which changed power equations. Iran's strategic importance as part of the 'Northern Circle' of countries was known to both the United States and the Soviet Union; therefore, they struggled to gain a firmer foothold in Iran by any means. There were four main political discourses of power in Iran from September 1943 to August 1955: Royalist, Marxist, Islamist, and Nationalist. This article examines how they clashed and interacted and how these tensions were reflected in a literary work of the time: Karim Roshaniyan's roman feuilleton I Was a Soviet Spy in Iran, published serially in Tehran-e Mosavvar weekly from May 1949 to May 1950.