Аннотация:[Reza Khan] seemed to me a strong and fearless man who had his country's good at heart. —Sir Edmund Ironside, recalling late 1920 Reza… has never spoken for himself, nor… [his] Government… but only on behalf of his country… —Sir Percy Loraine, January 1922 He is secretive, suspicious and ignorant; he appears wholly unable to grasp the realities of the situation or to realise the force of the hostility he has aroused. —Harold Nicolson, September 1926 I fear we can do nothing to humanise this bloodthirsty lunatic. —Sir Robert Vansittart, December 1933 Born in obscurity about 1878 and soon orphaned, Reza Pahlavi enlisted at fifteen in a Russian-officered Cossack brigade. Rising through the ranks, he provided force for a February 1921 coup d'état, seizing power for journalist Sayyid Zia alDin Tabatabai. Reza Khan provided strength in the new government and rose from army commander to minister of war (April 1921) to prime minister (1923) and, after failing to make a republic in 1924, to the throne in 1925. As shah he ruled with increasingly arbitrary power until Britain and Russia deposed him in 1941. He died in exile in 1944.
