Iran's moment

Watching what is happening now in Iran is quite frustrating, because you realize the deep unknowability of what is happening there. Our current media environment is both very broad and very shallow, and presents the dangerous impression that we know what is happening, when in fact we don't. I often think about this in the context of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The other day, I had occasion to spend some time at Sawyer Library reading through the 1991 run of The New Republic. What's left of the historian in me loves spending time this way, and I always marvel at how things have changed. The first thing that struck me is the amount of writing about what was happening in Russia. There were detailed observations about changes in state news telecasts, about the ominous violence between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, about price changes in the markets and the splits between Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn in the dissident community. The coverage was extensive and informed, and overall pretty good and insightful. And yet, it was slightly off. Throughout the spring, writers frequently referred to "glasnost" in the past tense. There was a tenor that Gorbachev was pulling back from reform, as demonstrated by the growing number of perceived hardliners he was putting in place in the Kremlin. Of course, those reactionaries would lead a coup against him that August, whose failure sealed the fate of the Soviet Union once and for all. But no one could accurately see the ways that Gorbachev was being pressured from within, or just how dramatically the Russian people had moved away from the regime. These are the moments that force everything out into the open, and time will tell what the current unrest in Tehran says about the regime and its relationship with the people. From what I've read so far -- and I'm by no means an expert -- we've been hearing in the media for a long while about the Westernizing, reform-minded, young generation in Iran, and that demographics and political pressure suggested change was in the air. But what seemed to happen in the election is that the conservative "silent majority," with an assist from the authorities, have stepped in. It remains to be seen if this is going to be more like the August Coup or Tiananmen Square.