Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – June 6, 1981

Early in the morning, for the first time since the victory of the Revolution, I went to the old Parliament building to see the condition of the library. I spent a full hour inspecting the various sections. It is a well-equipped library, but it has few readers. On average, only ten people visit it each day. It has five hundred thousand books and more than twenty people work there. Then we inspected Library No. 2 at the Parliament building. This one is more active and more disciplined, with fewer facilities, but it too has few visitors.

I summoned several Parliament employees and investigated allegations against one of the employees concerning the writing of indecent letters to a female employee of the Parliament. The offense was established.

Mr. [Abdolhamid] Deyalameh came and made some statements to clear himself of the accusation of being a member of the [Hojjatieh] association. We accepted his explanation. Dr. [Hassan] Habibi came, and we talked. He is on the Imam’s line and proposed greater interaction with Mr. Bani-Sadr. He was concerned about the consequences of the disagreements. He wanted arrangements to be made to legitimize his absence from the Parliament so that he could participate in the Cultural Revolution Headquarters.

In the afternoon, I met with the Soviet ambassador. He wanted to learn about all our internal disputes, but he got nothing out of me. I compared them with the Soviet Union’s disputes with China and Yugoslavia, etc. He was upset that Iranian officials called the Soviet Union an enemy of the Iranian Revolution. I said that your invasion of Afghanistan creates such an attitude, and I asked him to end your aggression and leave Afghanistan to itself. He tried to link the matter to American influence in the southern Persian Gulf, and I responded to him.

I also had a lengthy interview with the Libyan News Agency. Several seminarians from Qom also came and wanted land. At night, I attended a meeting of friends who supported the party at Mr. Mirshakari’s home. Messrs. Khamenei and Bahonar were also there, and we watched a film about Guards Day, which was interesting, Hezbollah-oriented, and anti-liberal.