In 1914 Mirza Kuchek Khan launched the longest and most popular armed guerilla movement in Iran's history, the Jangali revolt. Over the next few years, Kuchek Khan and his followers battled Tsarist and British forces as, from 1914 until 1917, he led the Jangalis in a military and propaganda campaign against the presence of foreign powers in Iran, their colonial ambitions and their manipulation of the central government. Subsequently, he formed a tentative alliance with Bolshevik revolutionaries culminating in the declaration of a soviet republic in Gilan in June 1920. As long as the Soviets supported the Jangali movement, neither the British nor the Iranian government could make headway. Thus the revolt proved successful enough to force the British briefly to abandon their positions in Resht and Enzeli. However, internal dissent, the withdrawal of Soviet support with the British-Soviet rapprochement in 1921, and communal fear of further unrest stemming from the Russian Civil War, combined to weaken the Jangali. Finally, in late 1921, forces under Reza Khan successfully suppressed the remainder of the movement. Much of the historiography of this period was conducted by Soviet scholars interested in the collaboration of the increasingly radicalized Jangalis with Russian and Iranian Bolsheviks. As such, it was tailored to suit or justify Soviet ideology. More recent scholarship tends to incorporate the Jangali movement within general studies of tribes, rebellions and politics of the period. Therefore, it fails to recognize the unique opportunity that the study of Kuchek Khan’s revolt presents, namely, an analysis of radical nationalism and politically engaged Shi‘ism in the figure of Kuchek Khan and the Jangali revolt. This paper intends to correct this oversight through the analysis of the political and social aims of the Jangali movement. It seeks to determine the reasons for the movement’s longevity as well as the causes that ultimately undermined the revolt. It will also assess the significance of Kuchek Khan to the broad-based support that sustained the movement in Gilan and beyond. The sources employed will include the weekly newspaper Jangal, produced in 1917-1918, the collected letters of Mirza Kuchek Khan, assorted memoirs, and other materials.