Social or political revolution? The pattern of revolutionary developments in Iran and Georgia

In 1979 and 2003, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Georgia underwent revolutionary transformations. However, there are significant differences between the two revolutions, including ideology, the scope and extent of revolutionary developments, the nature of social forces and movements, the heart of the former and post-political regimes, and their new foreign policy direction. The country has been very influential in both domestic and foreign arenas. With this in mind, the purpose of this study is to investigate why the Iranian revolution in 1979 became social, whilst the Georgian revolution in 2003 was confined to the political realm. It appears that Iran s Islamic Revolution in 1979, in response to the Pahlavi period s quasi-modernism and inspired by cultural and identity components, resulted in the formation of a discourse known as self-return. It recognized that such a possibility could not be realized without changing political, social, economic, and cultural factors. But the colour revolution in Georgia, under the influence of components of historical memory resulting from the suppression of nationalist and independence-seeking tendencies, saw a change in the ruling political structure as sufficient to achieve this goal. The present study has used documentary (library) and the analytical-comparative method., this comparative study, to examine the above question and hypothesis, first takes a brief look at the background of the formation of the two revolutions and then examines their possible differences and similarities.