For documenting their history, all the revolutions need to use various research and information tools in order to create strong intellectual bases for various social strata especially the second and third post-revolution generations. Collection, organization and information about Islamic revolution has been a principle to which have been paid attention since the recent decades, and some centers have resorted to compile the history of the revolution and publish books through conducting interviews. A glance at the formation of the revolution’s historiography shows that its emergence and expansion is the result of the society’s historical needs of every decade according to desires, wishes and necessities. This has caused the collection and compilation of the history of the Islamic revolution to be always carried out as an efficient and up-to-date tool in line with the collection, organization and process of the information data related to Islamic revolution at different levels of the users with various goals.
A look at the published books in the field of oral history of the Islamic revolution in Iran shows that despite some difference s regarding the type of compilation and the approach toward the history of the Islamic revolution, almost the whole books have been published revolving around the writing of biography, and even when the pivotal subject in priority of reviewing oral history books has been open, the data resulted from oral history has been caught in the ring of individual look at the subject.
The reality is that the shaping and expansion of using oral history in the field of Islamic revolution is based on the necessities in a way that planning and sense of responsibility and commitment toward information about Islamic revolution has caused its scientific nature to be placed in shadow. Recognizing the compiled oral histories shows that the research has been more in line with justification and description rather than analysis, and oral history has practically been used in line with interpreting special look at the Islamic revolution.
Differences in criteria of writing biography and oral history and its initial and secondary goals, the level of flexibility and commitment in writing biography and oral history, difference in targeting and planning in these two areas, different styles of writing and compilation in writing biography and oral history, diverse structure of factors such as the writing of events, facts and history, the level of the commitment of writing oral history and biography toward correcting and realizing pure-writing and analysis-writing, the difference of look at the connection between the writer’s viewpoint or compiler with the historical reality with the audience’s needs are among the most important aspects of difference between writing oral history and biography the borders of which have been somehow engaged with each other in compiling the oral history of the Islamic revolution.
The reviewing of the situation of using oral history in historiography of the Islamic revolution and various dimensions of its use show that the backgrounds of its backgrounds have been accompanied more with planning rather than awareness. The necessities such as making the model of natural functions of Islamic revolution, pragmatic pathology of the revolution’s historical events and incidents, explanation of the popular structure of the revolution, highlighting a collective identity in the victory of the revolution, recognizing the currents of the lower layers of the Islamic revolution, presenting the models of management and targeting the methodology of the Islamic revolution values can be paid attention in standardizing the using of oral history and variety in compiling its history.
Abolfazl Hassan Abadi (PhD)
Translated by: Mohammad Bagher Khoshnevisan
