Technology and the state
The first modern technical devices found their way into Iran during the Qajar period and at that time it was mostly the ruler himself who initiated their introduction. Two daguerreotype cameras were sent to Mohammad Shah as presents from the British queen and the Russian tsar respectively in the 1840s.8 Mozaffar al-Din Shah placed the order to buy a motion-picture camera during his journey to Europe in 1900.9 Since their use was restricted to members of the court, modern technical devices became status symbols of the aristocracy. Qajar elites used technology mainly for their own personal benefit and primarily in a private context. When, at the turn of the century, the first foreign companies attained permission to sell technical devices like gramophones,10 cameras, watches, and automobiles, such objects gradually became more widely traded commodities and were particularly widespread among the Iranian upper class.
Large-scale promotion of technology started only during the early Pahlavi period, when the state embraced a modernization programme to stimulate the country’s economic development. Initial steps included the construction of factories to produce consumer goods such as textiles, sugar, and matches in order to reduce Iran’s immense dependency on imports.11 Other measures, like the expansion of a nationwide road and railway network, aimed at facilitating trade, but served also, from an early date on, the non-economic, political purpose of creating national unity and internal security. For instance, already in 1926 the government concluded a contract with the German Junkers Company to establish regular air traffic, connecting the major cities of Iran.12 Airplanes were also used to bring the government’s directives to even the most remote parts of the country: for instance, leaflets were dropped over tribal areas, informing local chiefs in Lorestan and Borujerd about Reza Shah’s plan to pacify the whole country and to initiate development and prosperity.13 Such campaigns indicate the state’s intention to penetrate the lives of its subjects more efficiently by using modern technology. This ambition becomes much more visible in the foundation of the Organization for Public Enlightenment (Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar) in 1939.14 Afshin Marashi has characterized it as “the Iranian state’s first attempt to present itself to its public through the use of new technologies,” which comprised print media, radio, and cinema.15 Even though the radio seems to have been the most important tool among these propagandistically used media, it has not yet been the subject of a more elaborate analysis or study.16
Radio Tehran was inaugurated on 4 Ordibehesht 1319 (24 April 1940) by the crown prince Mohammad Reza.17 At 7p.m. he pressed the button and the programme started with the national anthem. It was followed by the opening speech of Prime Minister Ahmad Matin-Daftari and continued with music and announcements of Radio Tehran’s first broadcast in five languages.18 Later on, Radio Tehran was on air for eight and a half hours every day.19 Special time slots were reserved for Iranian music, but Western music was also played regularly, either by the radio orchestra or from gramophone records. Radio broadcasts were instrumental in popularizing new forms of music.20 Due to its close connection to the Organization for Public Enlightenment, Radio Tehran’s programme included to a great extent public tutorials:
Generally, the radio programme consists of three parts: news, music, and
the educational part. ... The instruction programme of the radio comprises features (goftar-ha) about farming, hygiene and sports, history and geography of Iran, as well as housekeeping.21
Music and public instruction made up the major part of the programme, so that the radio was an important tool for exerting cultural influence and thus became a key medium of official propaganda. Consequently, the entire programme was subject to strict censorship: all news, feature programmes, and commentaries had to be approved by the police or other state institutions before being broadcast.22 The radio as a state-owned institution with an exclusive broadcast monopoly was much easier to control by the authorities than the several existing journals and newspapers, which - except for Iran-e Emruz - were in private hands and employed their own editorial staff.23
Several other aspects made the radio more attractive for state propaganda than newspapers and journals. First of all, it had a much wider range than the print media, since the rate of illiteracy in Iran at the beginning of the 1940s was still very high.24 Even if it was quite common by then among urban middle- and upper-class Iranians to read a newspaper regularly, it was not yet a mass phenomenon. Even the paper with the highest circulation, the Ettela‘at, cannot be regarded as a mass medium at that time.25 Radio broadcast could hence reach a greater audience than print media, particularly since the transmission at public squares was free of charge and accessible for people from the lower classes.26 Beyond that, the radio as a sound-transmitting novelty enjoyed great popularity and was more appealing than the press, especially since its music programmes were highly entertaining.
This audio dimension made the radio also instrumental in the enforcement of another prominent project of Reza Shah’s cultural reform agenda: the purification of the Persian language. Before Radio Tehran began to broadcast, the new words approved by the Iranian Academy (Farhangestan-e Iran) had been published in the newspapers. This was an effective way of introducing the spelling of neologisms, but not their pronunciation.27 With the start of Radio Tehran’s language programme, the Farhangestan had an acoustic tool at hand that enabled it to introduce the correct articulation of new words - an aspect which was regarded as one of the fundamental duties of the radio. Therefore, two or three times a week, the Farhangestan sent an instructor, usually Sa‘id Nafisi, to the radio station to teach the announcers how to pronounce the new words correctly and how to apply them.28
Apart from this domestic function, Radio Tehran now provided the government with a valuable platform for positive publicity outside the country. The Persian programme on foreign radio stations like the BBC or Radio Berlin was well received in Iran and certainly raised the Pahlavi state’s awareness that it had to counter external propaganda with its own media.29 Domestic news was soon announced in five, later even six, foreign languages.30
Even in comparison to motion pictures, the radio occupied the predominant position as a propaganda medium. The first films had been commissioned by the government already in the 1920s, and from 1932 onwards, sound newsreels were screened regularly in Persian.31 The propagandistic use of motion pictures apparently climaxed in 1934, when a film about Reza Shah’s journey to Turkey was dispatched to all parts of Iran32 and a state-sponsored film about the life of Ferdowsi was screened commercially as part of the poet’s millennium celebration.33 The relevance of films in the realm of state propaganda declined, however, in the second half of the 1930s, at the same time as the development of a national cinema came to a halt: no single feature film was produced in Iran during the decade from 1937 to 1947.34 And so, the radio must indeed be regarded as the most important medium for official public instruction, possibly benefitting from its rather late establishment.35 Reza Shah’s rule was actually almost over when Radio Tehran started its programme in 1940. Only at this late stage of his reign can a planned and organized state propaganda be discerned, first and foremost in the creation of the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar.36 However, to what extent this institution actually enabled the state to use mass propaganda, as Hamid Mowlana has suggested,37 is not entirely clear and cannot be answered as long as an in-depth evaluation of the activities of the Sazman-e Parvaresh-e Afkar remains a desideratum.38
