From a Personal Archive to a Book: Genealogy of Bagher Mortazavi’s Collected Papers & Books

"From a Personal Archive to a Book: Genealogy of Bagher Mortazavi’s Collected Papers and Published Books"In this book talk at Stanford University, Mr. Bagher Mortazavi discusses the years-long effort to accumulate internal documents and letters pertaining to the activities of the Party of the Toiling Masses (PTM) and his new book, "From Unity to Disintegration."The book is a documented history of PTM and its predecessor, The Revolutionary Organization of the Tudeh Party of Iran (ROTPI). The documents in the book and others in Mr. Mortazavi’s archive offer a window into parts of the history of the Left in Iran. Bagher Mortazavi was born on March 25, 1946, in Khosroshah in the province of Tabriz in Iran. He left Iran in 1969 and moved to Germany to study engineering. In 1975 he joined the Revolutionary Organization of the Tudeh Party of Iran (ROTPI) returning to Iran on the eve of the revolution in 1979. While in Iran Mr. Mortazavi continued his political activities. After a few years with the rising tide of oppression he was forced to leave Iran. Back in Cologne, he parted ways with the Party and founded a printing house and began collecting his archive and writing about the organization’s tumultuous history. His latest book, "From Unity to Disintegration," reflects Mr. Mortazavi’s search to better understand the history of the Party.