Kanoon from inside

Behrang Sadighi

A Branch in the Darkness of Forest consists of five interviews by Ali Mirzaei, one of the directors of the Centre for the Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents — here simply called Kanoon — between 1971 and 1980, describing this quasi-governmental institution that emerged during the second Pahlavi period. One of the interviews conducted by Mirzaei is with Lily Amir-Arjmand, the founder and director of the institution (1965-1978), and four others are interviews with the author about the Kanoon. Although the interviews have been published here and there before, their collection in this newly edited book provides a consistent and important source for understanding the role of this leading Iranian institution. The book has an appendix of photographs related to the Kanoon and provides a subject index as well.

There are a few books written so far about the Kanoon, but we lack original research in this regard. Although Mirzaei’s book is not a research work and apart from the inevitable repetitions that are characteristic of the genre of interviews and oral history, it gives a clear and attractive picture from within this institution, providing relevant data for future research works.

The importance of the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents cannot be emphasized enough and the book A Branch in the Darkness of Forest, as far as the inside of the Kanoon is concerned, does not come short in this regard. The book is full of useful information about the Kanoon, not only related to the period when Mirzaei worked there, but from its formation in1965 up to the years after the revolution. The process of formation and expansion of the Kanoon, its internal mechanisms, the changes it went through over the years, the dimensions and areas of its work and its relationship with other institutions and people at all levels, from managers to librarians, are among the topics discussed in this book.

Through this book, we fully understand the Kanoon’s path of gradual change in organizational and managerial aspects. We know that based on the idea of ​​Lily Amir-Arjmand, in 1965, Kanoon first started to work in the libraries of several schools followed by establishing a library in Laleh (Farah) Park. It gradually became a cultural and artistic center with 250 fixed and mobile urban and rural and nomad libraries, with more than 2,500,000 books, 20 libraries under construction, and about two million children and adolescents members by the mid-1970s. This institution, which was originally supposed to be just a library, over the years, became a cultural institution that, in addition to providing books to children and adolescents, expanded its scope of work to a wider area; from library and publishing to educational workshops as well as production in the fields of cinema, music, animation, sculpture, theater, puppet theater, etc., as well as holding a children’s film festival. This cultural and artistic institute attracted the cooperation of a large army of first-class artists, writers, editors, and poets, whose talents later flourished, or who reached scientific and academic degrees in Iran and abroad (p. 129). Among them some familiar names are Mohammad Reza Lotfi, Hossein Alizadeh, Majid Derakhshani, Marzieh Boroumand, Behrouz Gharibpour, Houshang Kamkar, Susan Taslimi, Ahmad Reza Ahmadi, Gholam Hossein Saedi, Bahram Beizaei, Dariush Ashouri, Noureddin Zarin-Ghalam, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, Abbas Kiarostami, Mahmoud Dolatabadi, Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh, Bijan Mofid.

According to Mirzaei, important factors that made this achievement possible were the young age of Kanoon’s managers, healthy organizational relationships, healthy work environment, non-governmental and non-bureaucratic management, directors free from corruption, and a collective sense of identity among employees (pp. 106-110). But in this book, we get acquainted not only with the achievements of Kanoon, but also with the weaknesses of its performance. The most important weakness, according to Mirzaei, was the lack of an organized planning, monitoring, and permanent evaluation system. Therefore, no accurate assessment of the effectiveness of the measures and costs to advance the goals of the institute was made (p. 140).

Of course, the management of the Kanoon was aware of this weakness and in the late 1970s, tried to put in place a new organizational structure and assigned the task to the Industrial Management Institute. One of the results of this new structure was the creation of a unit called Planning and Supervision of the Center’s Activities with Mirzaei as its director, which ironically began to operate on the eve of the Revolution of 1979 and therefore stopped (pp. 141-143). In addition to this weakness, there were also problems that were actually imposed on Kanoon. One of them was the problem of providing manpower for the cultural and artistic jobs at the Kanoon. The unique characteristics of Kanoon required a unique staff, and this, in turn, required to train its own manpower while on the job, which meant inexperienced manpower with a high probability of error, which put extra pressure on Kanoon’s functioning. The other was the rapid development that the Kanoon was experiencing, both in terms of the number of libraries and the scope of activities. This created difficulties for coordination between the staff and line units.

Mirzaei, while enumerating the weaknesses and problems, constantly reminds us that “at the same time, remember one thing: we are talking about 40-45 years ago.[1] What seems to be a problem today was, in some cases, very natural in those days. During this time we have all changed and our view of different issues and categories has also changed.” (P. 140)

Among these changes are the developments that emerged in Mirzaei’s view over the years, and this is another aspect of this book. In fact, through the narratives of this book, we get to know Ali Mirzaei more accurately; not only with the activities he has carried out, but also with his concerns, of which the lack of a management view, as a science, in Iran, is among the most important.

Ali Mirzaei, who was hired at the age of 23 following the decision of the then director of the Kanoon to modernize the library management and was appointed as the director of Tehran libraries, soon became the manager to oversee the activities of the Kanoon libraries in the whole country. This young man and most of the other young people who worked at the Kanoon were “a group of young people who were well-read and idealistic” but unfamiliar with management methods.” In Mirzaei’s words, “Our management was intuitive and instinctive… We used spontaneous and primitive methods …we were young idealistic people full of energy who wanted to solve the problems with whatever we had in mind (from the books we had read) not with managerial and methodical thinking…. In a word, we fell in love with Iran and our work and the Kanoon … (pp. 30-31).” Understanding this point eventually leads him to learn management science and later, in his other positions after the Kanoon in post-revolutionary government institutions, he benefited from it.

The book, in addition to the rare information it provides about the Kanoon, also shows an important gap, which is the inattention to one of the most important trends that began in the 1960s and is an important aspect in understanding the socio-political context of that time; an aspect that has been less studied. In fact, the period of the establishment of the Kanoon coincides with two important trends in the relationship between the government and political groups. On the one hand, since 1963, political groups were widely suppressed, symbolically seen in the Siahkal incident; and on the other hand, we face a process that can be called an attempt to attract and integrate the opposition within the government. Institutions such as the Kanoon were examples of how members of political groups from different spectrums were attracted.[2] According to Mirzaei: “… most of the colleagues who were in the Kanoon, I mean the directors and officials and a group of experts, were political; most of them were prosecuted, they had gone to prison, some of them were convicted. … We looked at reading books and the expansion of libraries as a political, social, and moral commitment.” (P. 95)

One example that demonstrates this point is the presence of Firouz Shirvanlou in the Kanoon between 1966 and 1971. He had a history of membership in the World Confederation of Iranian Students in England with a leftist orientation and was accused and arrested during the shooting of the Shah in Marmar Palace in 1965 along with Parviz Nikkhah, Ahmad Mansouri, Ahmad Kamrani, Mohsen Rasouli, and Mansour Pourkashani. After his release, he was invited by Lily Amir-Arjmand to join the Kanoon and manage the publications, the cinema department, and later the research center. In particular, the research center of the Kanoon was one of the sections in which the presence of political forces was prominent. “In 1971, with the help of people who were assigned to work with Shirvanlou and through Ms. Amir-Arjmand, an education group was formed, consisting of Fereydoun Shayan, Nozar Tayeb, and Mahmoud Ghaderi. The relationship of the librarians … with this group, especially Shayan, who was the head of the group, was not good, because instead of librarianship, they taught Darwinism and parts of Marxist-Leninist teachings by reading Stalin and works of other Russian leaders … Honestly, at that time, we were not opposed to these teachings, but our protest was that they did not realize that the Kanoon should not become a cell of the Tudeh [Communist] Party or any other political party or group.” (pp182-183)

Among other well-known figures who worked in the Kanoon at this period, were Hamid Momeni, Ata Nourian, Morteza Behnia, Mahin Mohtaj, and Kamal Pouladi, some of whom were later imprisoned or killed.

Mirzaei points out that the Kanoon was not a cover for their political activities, and notes that “if I say that the people in the Kanoon were political, it does not mean that the Kanoon was a base for guerrilla operations. No! It was a center for the activities of idealistic young people who were active political thinkers and used their political thoughts in the service of cultural commitment to serve children and adolescents, and to earn an honorable living.” (p. 105) Elsewhere, he makes his point clearer: “The goal of the Kanoon was that … the members of libraries should read as many books, watch as many movies, read poetry, work on music, listen to music, work on paintings, see as many paintings, and talk, … so that their thoughts and minds develop, open up, do not become ignorant, do not become fanatical, do not be deceived, do not be dumb, and not to be so obedient, that every time they put more burden on their back, they would say OK! If what the Kanoon was doing is called ‘political guidance’, then yes, this is what we did. But if someone says that we were directing politics towards a specific political goal or in the service of a particular group, ideology, or party, this is nonsense” (p. 122).

With this in mind, he does not believe that the Kanoon’s publication of Samad Behrangi’s book, Little Black Fish, was based on a pre-determined plan — including to promote the theory of armed struggle, as Manouchehr Hezarkhani proposed in his commentary on the book at the time — but thinks that the effect of the book on children was inconsistent with what was stated in these commentaries. In his words: “According to the librarians of those days … the first message that [the children] received from the Little Black Fish was that if a child did not listen to the elders, the same disaster would happen to him that befell the little black fish!” This message was the opposite of what the intellectual community received from the story of the Little Black Fish. If anyone wants to say that the ten- to twelve-year-olds learned the theory of armed struggle from this book, that is another matter.” (pp. 124-125)

The role of the regime’s security apparatus is important in the process of recruiting and integrating the political forces mentioned above. Through Mirzaei’s interviews, it becomes clear that SAVAK supervised the activities of the Kanoon. For example, Parviz Sabeti, the head of the Third Department (the most important pillar of SAVAK) and the head of Tehran SAVAK office, gave a speech for the staff of Kanoon around 1976: “We know what you are doing, we know what you meant in so and so book or film. We know what you mean by putting such and such program in a library. Do not think that we do not know.” (p. 126) It seems that these sorts of threats to show that “they knew everything and were in control of the situation” were not very restrictive of the activities of the Kanoon’s staff: “I testify today that if I had a hundred ideas for my work in the Kanoon, I was able to implement 99 of them. The others felt the same. The librarians were free as well … Of course, there were security controls, but I cannot say that we wanted to fly Apollo and they wouldn’t let us! No, I did what I wanted to do. If I did not do something, it was because I did not how to do it; nothing else.” (P. 94)

Why did the imperial regime tolerate the Kannon? This is one of the key questions that Mirzaei is asked in one of the interviews to which he does not have a definite answer and says that this point makes him think too. Nevertheless, despite the doubts, he offers two possible analyzes: perhaps the tolerance was the result of the efforts of the reformist faction in the Pahlavi regime, which did not allow the regime to “simply shut down the Kanoon by an order.” On the other hand one can say that “a person might come up with an idea — I mean Lily Amir-Arjmand — and start the job, and the right atmosphere helps her to continue the work she started; then a group, overtly and covertly, rises to support it; it takes root, and continue to go on.” (pp. 137-136)

But the importance of this question is that it opens the door to another kind of analysis of the actions of the second Pahlavi regime, which, although Mirzaei does not address, his book can actually play an important role in its development. An analysis that, contrary to the uniform approaches to government performance — implicitly embeded in the above question — is based on the multiplicity of forces within the regime. At first glance, one of the dimensions of this pluralism can be seen specifically in the royal court, the different components of which seek to expand their influence and increase their share of power in this period. These are the components that formed various semi-governmental organizations since the mid-1960s, the Kanoon being one of them, which is set up under Farah’s special office. Other institutions include the Imperial Office of Social Services under Ashraf Pahlavi and the Imperial Legion of Human Servants under the Special Office of the Shah. Such quasi-governmental institutions, the number of which is not limited to the above mentioned cases and in which many members of the political opposition were active during this period, provide the space for a new kind of relationship between the political forces and the state apparatus. However, contrary to Mirzaei’s analysis, the issue may be more related to the contradictions and multiplicity of forces within the state apparatus rather than the efforts of the regime’s reformist faction or individual initiatives.

These institutions, with their capabilities, seemed to have a great deal of appeal, especially to the so-called “bent” opponents, to turn them, in the words of the established (non-bent) revolutionaries, into the “puppets of the ruling political apparatus.” Although these individuals were largely absorbed by the regime after passing through the SAVAK apparatus and ensuring that their policies had changed from a revolutionary to a reformist approach, their mere existence was sufficient to provide a safe space for socio-political activities in various ways, including by exploiting the gaps in the regime. In other words, these institutions acted as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they were colorful showcases that the regime’s propaganda apparatus could use as a sign of cultural promotion, as well as portraying itself as a tolerant regime in the face of its radical opponents. On the other hand, although the activities and employees of these institutions were under constant surveillance, there was no overall monitoring apparatus that could exercise comprehensive control over them without any seams or cracks. Also, every part of the government apparatus resorted to the same institutions to expand its sphere of influence among the social forces.

The references to the above aspects in A Branch in the Darkness of Forest form a good basis for investigating such views. Mirzaei’s book not only provides coherent and accurate information from within the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents, but is a remarkable book in terms of promoting new ideas that go beyond the internal organization of this institution and cover the entire Pahlavi regime; ideas that, of course, need a thorough study on its own right.

Author: Ali Mirzaei (born 1949), a graduate of political science and librarianship, from 1971 to 1980 worked in managerial positions in the Center for Intellectual Development of Children and Adolescents (Kanoon). After that, he went to the Ministry of Interior and was appointed as the director general of Kohgiluyeh va Boyer-Ahmad governor’s office. From 1982, he was hired by the Plan and Budget Organization and became the Secretary of the National Planning Councils, then the director of the Center for Socio-Economic Documents and Publications, leading the Education and Research Office of this organization at the same time. Until 2000, when he was retired, he worked as deputy and senior consultant in the National Iranian Steel Company. Ali Mirzaei, in addition to being the editor of Daneshmand monthly in its the golden ages (1986-1994), has been the regular editor of Negah-e Now [New Look] journal for nearly thirty years. Among the works he has published are: Farhang, Mardom-Salari, Tose’e [Culture, Democracy, Development] (Negareh Aftab, 2009), Zohur va Soqut-e Sepahbod Haj Ali Razm-Ara, maqalat-e digar [The Rise and Fall of General Haj Ali Razmara, several other articles] (Negareh Aftab, 2010), and Asheq-e Footbalam, Vali az Faqr Motenaferam [I Love Football, Hate Poverty!], (Negareh Aftab, 2017).

[1] This quote is taken from an interview with Mirzaei in 2015.

[2] Other institutions with the same function were the Institute for Social Studies and Research, the Imperial Social Services Organization, and the Imperial Legion of Human Servants.