Anticolonialism in Middle East

Twentieth-century resistance to colonialism inevitably partook of the general experience of its time, including assertions of national and ethnic identity, which were given added meaning and purpose in the face of alien colonizing. The press, the radio, and political parties and clubs provided new opportunities for disseminating the ideologies of anticolonialism. To these must be added the example first of Germany in the 1930s—a previously fragmented state that had turned its recent unification into a means of challenging the old colonizers, Britain and France; and for much of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s the Soviet Union as a new form of social and economic organization, under which a previously feudal regime was being transformed into an egalitarian welfare state. Such visions were especially attractive to those who had not experienced the realities of daily life under such regimes.