Tudeh Party of Iran حزب توده ایران | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Abbreviation | TPI, HTI |
| International Secretary | Navid Shomali[1] |
| Spokesperson | Mohammad Omidvar[1] |
| Founders | The Fifty-Three |
| Founded | 2 October 1941; 84 years ago (1941-10-02)[1] |
| Banned | 5 February 1949; 77 years ago (1949-02-05) (by thePahlavi State) February 1983; 43 years ago (1983-02) (by theIslamic Republic) |
| Preceded by | Communist Party of Persia |
| Headquarters | Berlin, Germany London, England Leipzig,GDR (1949–1979) Tehran,Iran (1943–1983) |
| Newspaper |
|
| Youth wing | SJT |
| Women's wing | Democratic Organization of Iranian Women |
| Military wing | Officers' Organization |
| Parliamentary wing | Tudeh fraction |
| Worker wing | CCUTU |
| Ideology | Communism Marxism–Leninism Left-wing nationalism[2] Stalinism (Historical)[3] |
| Political position | Far-left[4] |
| National affiliation | UFPP (1946–1948)[5] |
| International affiliation | IMCWP |
| Colors | Dark Red Black |
| Slogan | “Iran is not just Tehran” |
| Anthem | Anthem for Tudeh (composed byParviz Mahmoud)[6] |
| Website | |
www | |
TheTudeh Party of Iran[a] is an IranianMarxist-Leninistcommunist party. Formed in 1941 withSoleiman Mirza Eskandari as its leader, the organization held significant influence in its early years and played an important role duringMohammad Mosaddegh's campaign to nationalize theAnglo-Persian Oil Company, as well as throughout his term as prime minister.[7] From theIran crisis of 1946 onwards, Tudeh became a pro-Soviet organization and remained prepared to carry out the dictates of theKremlin, even if it meant sacrificing Iranian political independence and sovereignty.[8][9] The crackdown that followed the1953 coup against Mosaddegh is said to have "destroyed" the party,[10][11] although a small part of it survived. The party still exists but has remained much weaker on account of beingbanned in Iran and mass arrests by theIslamic Republic in 1982, as well as theexecutions of political prisoners in 1988. Tudeh identified itself as the historical offshoot of theCommunist Party of Persia.[12]
The Tudeh Party is often described as "Stalinist",[3] or as a traditional communist party that supported theSoviet Union while also adoptingnationalism to appeal more to Iranians.[2] It is also sometimes described simply as "leftist" or even "left-leaning" by other sources.[13]
| Part ofa series on |
| Communist parties |
|---|
 |
Asia
Former parties |
Europe
Former parties |
Oceania
Former parties
|
International organizations |
The history of thecommunist movement in Iran dates back to the late 19th century, whenMarxism was first introduced to the nation's intellectual and working classes as a result of the rapid growth of industry and the subsequent transformation of the country's economy from afeudalistic system into acapitalistic one. Being close to the Soviet Union and theCaucasus, northern Iran became the primary center of underground Marxist andsocial democrat political activity, and many such groups came into being over the years.
TheCommunist Party of Iran was founded in June 1920 inBandar-e Anzali, in the province ofGilan, as a result of the first congress of Iranian social democrats.Haydar Khan Amo-oghli, who was one of the leaders of theConstitutional Revolution of Iran, became the national secretary of the new party. At the same time,Mirza Kuchik Khan, another major leader of the Constitutional Revolution and also the leader of the revolutionaryJungle "Jangali" Movement (Foresters' Movement), established theSocialist Soviet Republic of Gilan with the assistance of theRed Army of the Soviet Union.[14][15][16]
With the defeat of both the newly formed Soviet Republic of Gilan and the Communist Party, communist and social democrat activity once again went underground. In the early 1920s the Qajar dynasty finally collapsed, andReza Shah ascended to the throne in 1925, establishing thePahlavi dynasty. The new Shah introduced many reforms, such as limiting the power of theShia clergy, but also in turn established anauthoritarian dictatorship.
In 1929–30, the party organized strikes in anIsfahan textile mill, theMazandaran railways,Mashhad carpet workshops, and most importantly, in the British-owned oil industry. The government cracked down heavily and circa 200 communists were arrested; 38 were incarcerated inQasr Prison in Tehran. Along with theStalin purges, which took a heavy toll on Iranian communist exiles living in the Soviet Union, these arrests meant the Communist Party of Iran "ceased to exist for all practical purposes outside the walls of Qasr."[17]
The British-SovietAlliedinvasion of 1941–42 resulted in the end of Reza Shah's reign and his forced exile toSouth Africa. Many political prisoners subsequently received general amnesty by his son and successorMohammad Reza Pahlavi,[18] and under this new atmosphere,nationalist andsocialist groups once again flourished. Members of the Marxist "Group of the 53 members" comprised a portion of these political prisoners.[18] In Iran's post-Reza Shah era, the latter became a component ofSoviet strategy, interests, and plans.[18] Following their release, some of the "Group of the 53 members" includingIraj Iskandari met with a Soviet representative at the residence ofSoleiman Eskandari to form theHezb-e Tudeh-ye Iran ("the Party of Iranian masses"), aMarxist–Leninist party appealing to the broad masses.[19] They founded the Tudeh party on 29 September 1941, electing Soleiman Eskandari as party president.[20]
Initially the party was intended to be "aliberal rather than a radical party", with a platform stressing the importance of "constitutional" and "individual rights", protecting "democracy" and "judicial integrity" fromfascism,imperialism, andmilitarism. "At Soleiman Eskandari's urging", the party initially attempted to appeal to non-secular masses by barring women from membership, organizingMoharram processions, and designating "a special prayer room in its main clubhouse." This orientation did not last and the party moved "rapidly to the left" within months of its founding.[21]
In 1944, the party entered the 14thMajlis elections and eight of its candidates were elected. It also established the secretTudeh Party Military Organization of Iran, or TPMO (Sazman-e Nezami-ye Hezb-e Tudeh-ye Iran) made up of officers in the military. The TPMO provided the party with intelligence and information from the military to protect it from the security forces and give it military strength, though historians believe the party had no plan at that time to use the TPMO to stage a coup.[22]
At the same time, Tudeh took a strong stand in favor of women's rights, starting in 1943. This included advocating for equal pay for equal work, two months of maternity leave for female workers and otherwise standing for women's social rights, working with those who had been fighting for these goals for years and weresocialist.[23]Even so, issues ofreproduction,sexuality, and other elements within family life were not discussed.
From this point on the party grew immensely and became a major force in Iranian politics. By early 1945, the party had managed to create the first mass organization in Iran's history. Police records later revealed it had an estimated 2,200 hard-core members – 700 of them inTehran – "10,000s of sympathizers in its youth and women's organizations, and 100,000s of sympathizers in its labor and craft unions."[24] Its main newspaper,Rahbar (Leader), boasted a circulation of more than 100,000 – triple that of the "semi-official newspaper"Ettela'at. British ambassadorReader Bullard called it the only coherent political force in the country, andThe New York Times reckoned it and its allies could win as much as 40% of the vote in a fair election.[25]
This period has been called the height of the party's intellectual influence which came in large part from the prestige and propaganda of theSoviet Union as "the world's most progressive nation." Few intellectuals "dared oppose" the party "even if they did not join." Marking the end of the "near hegemony of the party over intellectual life" in Iran was the resignation from the party of celebrated writerJalal Al-e-Ahmadc. 1948 to form asocialist splinter group –Third Force– in protest against the Tudeh's "nakedly pro-Soviet" policies.[26]
Tarnishing the appeal of the Tudeh in the next two years 1944–46 were Soviet demands for apetroleum concession in northern Iran and the Soviet sponsoring of ethnic revolts inKurdestan andAzerbaijan. Despite the fact that Tudeh deputies in theMajles had previously vigorously demanded thenationalization of the whole petroleum industry, the Tudeh party supported granting the Soviet petroleum industry in Iran its wishes on grounds of "socialist solidarity", "internationalism," and "anti-imperialism."[27]
From theIran crisis of 1946 onwards, Tudeh became a pro-Soviet organization and remained prepared to carry out the dictates of theKremlin, even if it meant sacrificing Iranian political independence and sovereignty.[8][9] Based on increasingly available archival material from Russia,Iranologist Soli Shahvar contends that this was true much earlier—dating back to the Tudeh Party's inception, not just during the Fourteenth Majlis election campaign.[8]
During this time the rest of the international communist movement was also thriving. The communist world expanded dramatically in the decade followingWorld War II withEastern Europe,China,North Korea, andVietnam all becoming states dominated by their respective communist parties, usually via military victory. In the United States, Iran was seen as the holder of reserves of petroleum with "vital strategic" value to western countries,[28] and as part of "a Northern Tier" of countries (along with Greece and Turkey) that constituted a geopolitical "first line of defense" for theMediterranean and forAsia,[29] To counter the activities of the USSR, the CIA establishedOperation TPBEDAMN in the late 1940s, funded at $1 million a year. It prepared both "disguised (`gray` propaganda) or deliberately misrepresentedblack propaganda" in the form of "newspaper articles, cartoons, leaflets, and books" which it translated into Persian, most of which "portrayed the Soviet Union and the Tudeh as anti-Iranian or anti-Islamic, described the harsh reality of life in the Soviet Union, or explained the Tudeh's close relationship with the Soviets and its popular-front strategy."[30] In addition, it paid "right-wing nationalist organizations" and someShia religious figures. Its agents provoked "violent acts" and blamed them on the communists, and hired "thugs to break up Tudeh rallies."[31]
Nonetheless, for three months in 1946, the Cabinet included three ministers who were Tudeh members[32] and the party was able to fill the streets of Tehran and Abadan "with tens of thousands of enthusiastic demonstrators" forMay Day in 1946.[33]
In February 1949, there was an attempt on the life of ShahMohammad Reza Pahlavi. The party was blamed by the government and banned. The government "confiscated its assets, dissolved affiliated organizations, especially the Central Council and rounded up some 200 leaders and cadres."[34]
The party continued to function underground however and by 1950 it had organized its supporters under the banner of the Iran Society for Peace (Jam'iyat-e Irani-ye Havadar-e Solh) and was publishing three daily papers,Razm,Mardom, andBesui-ye Ayandeh.[22] In December 1950, the TPMO, its military organization, managed "to arrange for the escape of key members of the party leadership who had been in jail since early 1949."[22]
Such suppression was assisted by conservatives detesting the Tudeh Party, which was later outlawed and allied with Mossadegh.[35] One Iranian conservative newspaper even editorialized:
"...the Tudeh Party, with its satanic doctrine of class struggles, has incited ignorant workers to violate the sacred right of private property and inflict social anarchy upon the center of the country. This uprising proves that Tudeh is an enemy of private property, of Iran, and of Islam. If the government does not stamp out Tudeh, the local revolt will inevitably spread into a general revolution."
The party played an important role both directly and indirectly during the pivotal era of Iranian history that began with the 1951nationalization of the BritishAnglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), and ended with the 1953 overthrow ofMohammad Mosaddegh by aCIA-ledcoup d'état. The party's policy "fluctuated", first attacking Mosaddeq as 'an agent of American imperialism', then giving him some support during and after the July 1952 uprising. On 15 August a coup attempt against Mosaddeq was thwarted thanks in part to information uncovered by the Tudeh TPMO military network, but two days later party militants inadvertently helped destabilized the government by staging demonstrations to pressure Mosaddeq to declare Iran a democratic republic. As this would have overturned Iran's constitutional monarchy, Mosaddeq reacted by calling out troops to suppress the demonstrators. The party then demobilized late the next day making it unavailable to fight the coup the day after.[36] By 1957 the TPMO was crushed and thousands of party members had been arrested.[citation needed]
Following World War II, Iranian public support was growing for the nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)[37] whose profits had greatly exceeded its royalty payments to the Iranian government.
In 1951,Mohammad Mosaddegh, head of thenationalist movement known as theNational Front of Iran, led parliament in the nationalization of AIOC, and shortly after was appointedprime minister by the Shah. Mosaddegh oversaw the takeover of British oil facilities and rising economic difficulty and polarization in Iran as the AIOC withdrew its employees and retaliated with a boycott of Iranian oil.[38]
In early April 1951, the Tudeh revealed its "true strength" by launching strikes and riots protesting low wages and poor housing and delays in the nationalization of the oil industry.[35] There were "street demonstrations and sympathy strikes inTehran,Isfahan, and the northern cities." Police opened fire on demonstrators. A result was "panic" in Iran's parliament at the power of Marxist forces in Iran.[39] With this, it became apparent that Mossaddegh was not a communist and that the Tudeh did not control the government, nor did the party want to overthrow him even as it was establishing a broad public base.[citation needed]
During this period the Tudeh followed a "leftist" rather than "popular front" strategy, refusing to ally with Mosaddegh. Despite the fact that Mosaddegh had introduced a new policy of tolerance toward the party,[40] that both the Tudeh and Mosaddegh had worked for nationalization of the AIOC,[41] and that expropriation ofcapitalist Western-owned resource extracting corporations bypoor countries was central toMarxist–Leninist doctrine, the party vigorously and relentlessly opposed Mosaddegh and his program. In a June 1950 article in its dailyMardom it described the effects of Mosaddegh's policy thusly:
Already we can be sure that revisions in the southern oil contract will not be in favor of our people and will only result in the consolidation of England's position in our country. ... The solution to the oil question is related to the victory of our party, that is, the people of Iran.[42]
On 16 July 1952, Mosaddegh resigned after the shah refused to accept his nomination for War Minister. Mosaddegh appealed to the general public for support, but Tudeh press continued to attack him, describing his differences with the shah "as merely one between different factions of a reactionary ruling elite."[43] It was only after the explosion of popular support for Mosaddegh in the street that "many rank-and-file" Tudeh party members "could see first hand Mosaddegh's popularity",[43] and came to his aid.
According to one observer:
although diverse elements participated in the July uprising, the impartial observer must confess that the Tudeh played an important part—perhaps even the most important part. ... If in the rallies before March 1952 one-third of the demonstrators had been Tudeh and two-thirds had been National Front, after March 1952, the proportions were reversed.[44]
AyatollahAbol-Ghasem Kashani, who later switched sides and supported the Shah, "sent a public letter to the pro-Tudeh organizations thanking them for their invaluable contribution" during the uprising toward Mosaddegh's victory.[45]
Mosaddegh capitalized on the uprising to establish an emergency rule, which allowed him to bypass the Majles, and also to institute socialist reforms.[46] With the Soviets not wanting to back or "shore up" Tudeh, andHarry Trumanrefusing demands to overthrow Mosaddegh fromClement Attlee andWinston Churchill,[47] it would take the inauguration ofDwight Eisenhower to change the tune, greenlighting the coup operation.
During this time the US government became more and more frustrated with Mosaddeq and the stalemate over negotiations with the UK government on control and compensation, with the American ambassador even questioning Mosaddeq's "mental stability".[48] At the same time theCold War struggle continued to dominate foreign policy thinking in the west. Soviet tanks crushed an anti-communistuprising of strikes and protests in East Germany in June 1953.[49][50]
As Americans gave up hope on Mosaddeq, their propaganda and covert action campaign against the Tudeh, called TPBEDAMN, expanded to include him.[51] In 1953, American CIA and British intelligence agents, began plotting to overthrow Mosaddeq in acoup d'état, in large part because of their fear that "rising internal tensions and continued deterioration ... might lead to a breakdown of government authority and open the way for at least a gradual assumption of control by Tudeh," just as a local communist party had led acoup in Czechoslovakia in 1948, replacing a democratic regime and constitution with a pro-Soviet, one-party Communist government.[52]
The Tudeh also sensed a coup might be coming, and created "vanguard cells" that along with the TPMO, "identified key military installation, army depots, and command and control centers in the capital" Tehran "to react violently to any coup attempt."[53] Recently released photographs byWilliam Arthur Cram show that Tudeh organized huge demonstrations in August before the coup occurred.[54]
The plotters' first attempt involved persuading the shah to issue an edict dismissing Mosaddegh and replacing him with retired GeneralFazlollah Zahedi, while arresting Mosaddegh and taking over other possible centers of opposition. On 15 August the plot was uncovered by Tudeh supporters in the military, and a contingent sent to arrest Mosaddegh was intercepted and arrested themselves. Colonel Mohammad Ali Mobasherri, was a member of the TPMO's (secret) three-man secretariat, but also an active member of Tehran Military Governor, the center of the coup operation. Major Hehdi Homaouni served in the shah's Imperial Guard and discovered and reported the August plot to the party.[55] In a recent set of documents released by theNational Security Archive, which noted pro-Shah demonstrators sacked pro-Tudeh and pro-Mossadegh establishments, it was noted that British and American intelligence agents infiltrated Tudeh so it could blunt Mossadegh. These documents also noted that Eisenhower and Truman differed in their assessments of Mossadegh, with Eisenhower feeling he could not as effectively counter Tudeh as Truman and the CIA in August 1953 downplaying "the likelihood of a Tudeh overthrow attempt" but fears the Tudeh taking power in a more long-term fashion.[56]
The coup attempt created a backlash against its perpetrators, including the shah. The already anti-monarchical Tudeh supporters were radicalized and on the morning of 17 August "an angry crowd began to attack symbols of the monarchy" and demanded its abolition. Mosaddegh, who was aware of Western fears of the Tudeh and who had worked to limit the power of the shah but had "never suggested he was in favor of abolishing the constitutional monarchy," saw these attacks as a challenge, as removing the shah would violate the constitution.[57] The next day his regime ordered the military into the streets, and "up to 600 mid and low-level Tudeh activists were arrested in Tehran alone."[58] With its network "severely damaging" the party reversed course once again, and "ordered a demobilization" of its preparations to fight a coup.[59]
Taking advantage of the quiet, the CIA and its Iranian allies struck again, and on 19 August thecoup d'état replaced Mosaddegh with Zahedi. The coup was a major event in Third World and 20th Century history and there is debate as to how much of the blame for the overthrow can be traced to bribes paid by the CIA and how much to domestic dissatisfaction with Mossadegh.[60][61][62] Whatever the motivations,Mohammad Reza Pahlavi thereafter assumed dictatorial powers and banned most political groups, including Mosaddegh's National Front, which along with the Tudeh Party, continued to function underground.
The mass arrests, destruction of its organization and execution of some 40–50 leaders following the coup has been said to have "destroyed" the Tudeh.[10] Between 1953 and 1957, Iranian security forces using "brute force, together with the breaking of the cryptographic code – probably with CIA know-how – … tracked down 4,121 party members." This constituted the whole Tudeh underground and "more than half the party membership". Tudeh infiltration of the military by the TPMO[63] totaled 477 members in the armed forces, "22 colonels, 69 majors, 100 captains, 193 lieutenants, 19 noncommissioned officers, and 63 military cadets." Ervand Abrahamian notes that none of these was in the "crucial tank divisions around Tehran" that could have been used for a coup d'état and which the Shah had screened carefully. "Ironically, a Tudeh colonel had been in charge of the Shah's personal security – as well as that of Vice President Richard Nixon when he visited Iran. The Tudeh had the opportunity to assassinate the Shah and the U.S. vice president but not to launch a coup."[64]Maziar Behrooz is more optimistic about the party's chances of stopping the coup, saying that while "most of the Tudeh officers were in non-combat posts," they "were in a position to access and distribute weapons. In their memoirs, TPMO high- and middle-ranking members have confirmed their ability to distribute weapons and even assassinate key Iranian leaders of the coup. Hence, with a disciplined party membership, backed by military officers with access to weapons, the Tudeh had a strong hand."[65]
With the TPMO decimated, the Tudeh network was compromised as the TPMO had "acted as a shield for the party" and helped preserve it immediately after Mosaddeq's overthrow. "Many high- and middle-ranking Tudeh leaders were arrested or forced to flee the country. The arrest and execution ofKhosro Roozbeh in 1957-8 signaled the end of this process."[66]
After the fact, the party engaged in self-criticism of its policies toward Mosaddeq at its Fourth Plenum held in Moscow in July 1957. They found them "sectarian and leftist" and did not to recognizing "the progressive nature" of the oil nationalization movement.[clarification needed][67]
TheSino–Soviet split caused some splintering of the party in the early 1960s, with at least one Maoist group breaking away.[68] In the mid-1960s, theU.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 1500.[69]
In 1965, the party faced a second division between the mainstream of the organization and the splinter faction, which advocated a violent struggle against the government by arming the tribes ofsouthern Iran. This faction caused a great deal of damage and three years passed before the unity of the party was restored. The remnants of this faction are known as theLabour Party of Iran.
In 1966, several party members, includingAli Khavari and Parviz Hekmatjoo of the Central Committee, andAsef Razmdideh andSaber Mohammadzadeh, were arrested and sentenced to death. This sparked an international outcry and hunger strikes in Europe which forced the government to reduce the sentences to life imprisonment. These events created much international sympathy for the worker's struggle in Iran and helped unify the party after the split. The Tudeh Party from this point on becomes established as one of the strongest underground movements and helps to pave the way for the forthcomingIranian Revolution of 1979.
Members of the Tudeh Party additionally maintained contact withAfghan Commando Forces personnel during the late 1960s and early 1970s, who were in thePeople's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, helping them distribute leftist and “progressive” magazines among the commando battalions.[70]
In the early 1970s, the Iranianguerrilla movement began in northern Iran in the province ofMazandaran. The 1970s also witnessed the birth of widespread worker strikes and demonstrations, and university campuses became a hotbed of revolutionary activity.
The Tudeh Party dramatically increased its activities in the 1970s. In 1973, Tudeh released a brochure titled "Oil from Iran and imperialist oil monopolies," likely advocating for oil nationalization.[71] In November 1978, they recruited youths and held demonstrations at the University of Tehran for the first time in 15 years, in support of Shia clergymen against the Shah.[32] Tudeh also organized regional committees, and by 1980, they supported theIslamic Revolution when others on theleft opposed it.[72]
During the revolution, many political prisoners were freed and the Tudeh Party and other leftist groups were able to participate in the presidential and parliamentary elections for the first time in many years. However, the majority of seats in the Majlis were won by theIslamic Republican Party ofAyatollah Beheshti and leftist and nationalist organizations were forced out of the loop. The newly elected president,Abolhassan Banisadr, who had originally been close withAyatollah Khomeini, also became increasingly frustrated with the developments that had been taking place and opposed the domination of the clergy and the religious factions in Iranian politics. In addition, the party denounced Amnesty International's call to end thesummary executions and called it "blatant interference in Iranian affairs".[73]
In 1981, the Majlis, dominated by the Islamic Republican Party, forced Banisadr out of office, which initiated a wave of protests and demonstrations from all segments of the populace. Banisadr later fled the country. Armed revolutionary committees loyal to Khomeini (which came to be known as thePasdaran) arrested many thousands of youth and activists from both nationalist and leftist groups, many of whom were later tried byLajevardi, known as theHanging Judge, and executed.
At this point in the history of the Tudeh Party, theChristian andAzeris within the population were prominent.[74]
While other leftist parties opposed the Islamist forces at this time and were suppressed as a result, Tudeh Party leadership as well as theFadaian Aksariat decided to support the new clerical theocratic regime. This may have been to try to follow the pro-Tehran line of the Soviet Union.[citation needed]
In 1982, however, the Tudeh broke ranks. The Islamist government of Iran had closed down the Tudeh newspaper andpurged Tudeh members from government ministries. According to theMitrokhin Archive,Vladimir Kuzichkin, aKGB officer stationed in Tehran, had defected to the British in 1982.MI6 used this information and shared the information with theCIA. Their information was then shared with the Iranian government by the CIA, which was secretly courting Iran, as part of theIran–Contra affair.[75]
Quite quickly the government arrested and imprisoned its leadership and later more than 10,000 members of the party. In February 1983, the leaders of the Tudeh Party were arrested and the Party disbanded, leaving Iran effectively a one-party state.[76] The Tudeh arrests revealed that once again the party had managed to find supporters among the armed forces, as a number of officers, prominent among themAdmiralBahram Afzali, commander of theIranian navy, were arrested.[77] These arrests ended the alliance between the Tudeh Party and the ruling clergy of Iran and it collapsed, even as the Soviets worked with the Iranians to build up their nuclear capabilities.[citation needed] Even with this agreement, the Iranian government saw the Soviets as "atheistic devils" and the Soviets did not like the government because it had suppressed the Tudeh.[citation needed]
International media, such asUPI, reported that along with the banning of the Tudeh party, 18 Soviet diplomats were expelled from the country for "blatant interference."[78] At the same time, Tudeh was accused of working on behalf of "foreign powers," with the suppression praised by Khomeini.
From 1 May 1983 to 1 May 1984 almost all of the Tudeh leadership appeared in videos, first individually and then jointly in an October 1983 "roundtable discussion," confessing to "treason", "subversion", "horrendous crimes", praising Islam and proclaiming Islamic government's superiority over atheistic Marxism–Leninism.[79] British officials supported Iran's crackdown and joked about the state torture techniques used to extract the confessions. British officials were pleased by the repression not primarily because they were concerned about Soviet influence in the country since they knew that Iran was quite independent of that, but because they wanted to curry favor with the Iranian regime.[80]
In 1 May 1984Ehsan Tabari, appeared on television. A man with "50 years of leftist experiences" told viewers he had read "great Islamic thinkers" such asAyatollah Motahhari in prison following the 1982 crackdown and had now come
to repudiate the works he had written over the past 40 years. He now realized that his entire life's work was 'defective', 'damaging', and 'totally spurious' because it had all been based on unreliable thinkers –Freemasons nourished by thePahlavis;secularists such asAhmad Kasravi; Westernliberals andMarxists linked to 'imperialism' and 'Zionism' …[81]
In his recantation, Tabari made frequent references to religion, theTwelve Imams and Islamic thinkers and "praised Islam for its `great spiritual strength.`"[82]
The suspicions of outside observers that the confession was not given freely were reinforced by the absence of Taqi Keymanash and "13 other members" of the Tudeh central committee, who died during prison interrogation.[83] The rapid disintegration of the Tudeh at the hands of the state, and the confessions of its leaders led the opposition and remaining party members to seek answers. Explanations ranged from ideological capitulation to the use of inhuman methods of trial. The remnant of the party outside the country resorted to strange explanations that special drugs created by theCIA andMI-6 were used. The simplest explanation came several years after the television recantations, from a prison visit by aUnited Nations' human rights representative (Galindo Pohl) to Iran. The Tudeh Party General SecretaryNoureddin Kianouri was reported to have told the representative that he and his wife had been tortured to give false confessions. As evidence, he held up his badly set broken arm. Pohl added that Maryam Firuz had difficulty hearing, swallowing food, and sitting down because of beatings suffered eight years earlier at the hands of the Shah's secret police.[77][84] Kianouri later wrote an open letter to the Ayatollah detailing his mistreatment.[85]
As a result of these purges, a great number of party members left the country into exile. As the party represented the "Soviet view of a preferred leftist movement" that holds a pro-Soviet ideological line and responds to Soviet foreign policy in a supportive manner, theSoviet Union was likely disappointed at the development.[86] It is likely many hundreds Tudeh prisoners were killed during the1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners when thousands ofMojahedin and leftist prisoners were killed.[87] One report lists 90 Tudeh killed in just some blocks ofEvin andGohar Dasht prisons.[citation needed]
| Year | Election | Seats won | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1943 | Parliament | 8 / 136(6%) | |||
| 1947 | Parliament | 2 / 136(1%) | |||
| Banned in 1949 election | |||||
| 1952 | Parliament | 0 / 79(0%) | |||
| Did not contest between 1953 and 1978 due to being banned | |||||
| 1979 | Constitutional Assembly | 0 / 73(0%) | |||
| 1980 | Parliament | 0 / 270(0%) | |||
| Banned since 1983 | |||||
| Year | Members | Ref |
|---|---|---|
| 1942 | 2,087(towards September) | [88] |
| 6,000 | [89]: 284 | |
| 1944 | 25,800 | [89]: 293 |
| 1945 | 69,000 | [90] |
| 1946 | 50,000core members + 100,000affiliates | [91] |
| 80,000 | [92] | |
| 1947 | 50,000–200,000 | [93] |
| 275,000including affiliated labor unions' membership | [93] | |
| 1949 | 25,000 | [90][94] |
| 1952 | 20,000 | [89]: 320 |
| 50,000including sympathizers and affiliated membership | [95] | |
| 1953 | 15,000–20,000 | [96] |
| 25,000 + 300,000sympathizers | [89]: 321 | |
| 1965 | 3,000 | [97] |
| 1967 | ≤ 1,000 | [98] |
| 1977 | 5,000 | [89]: 457 |
| 1979 | 1,500 + 400exiled inEast Germany | [72] |
| 7,000armed inTehran | [99] | |
| 1980 | 5,000 | [72] |
| 1983 | ≤ 5,000 | [100] |
Despitethe repression, the party has managed to survive. Though since theIranian Revolution the party is officially banned in Iran and individuals found to be affiliated with communist orsocialist groups risk imprisonment, active members have remained and it continues to operate as an underground political organization there. This was mentioned in anAmnesty International report onpolitical prisoners in Iran.[citation needed]
Today, the party leadership is mainly based in exile, as is the new Central Committee, elected in 1992. The party has taken positions againstprivatization, criticizes the electoral system in the country, and "anti-labor" legislation.[101][102][103][104] In 2017, the party supportedJean-Luc Mélenchon as a leftist force in France, commemorated theRussian Revolution, pledged solidarity with theVenezuelan Communist Party, and criticizedIranian reformists for betraying their ideals.[105][106][107][108] Additionally, the party condemnedthe missile attacks on Syria in April 2017 byDonald Trump, the only element of theIranian opposition to do so, and has many wide-ranging party anthems on their website.[109][110] In 2020, the party condemned theTrump Administration's airstrike which killedQasem Soleimani, while simultaneously criticizing the Iranian government for intervening in bothIraq andLebanon.[111] During the2025–2026 Iranian protests the party called for continued struggle against the Islamic Republic government, which, like other dissident political movements, they called "despotism" and the "ruling authoritarian regime" but cautioned against U.S. Interventionism and attempts to restoremonarchy in Iran, citing requests byReza Pahlavi for foreign intervention.[112]
| # | Name | Tenure | Title | Ref | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| From | To | ||||
| 1 | Soleiman Eskandari | 1941 | 1944 | Chairman | [113] |
| 2 | Iraj Eskandari | 1944 | 1948 | General-Secretaries (Shared) | [114] |
| Mohammad Bahrami | |||||
| Noureddin Alamouti | |||||
| 3 | Reza Radmanesh | 1948 | 1969 | First-Secretary | [115] |
| – | Mohammad Bahrami | 1949 | 1953 | Acting First-Secretary | [116] |
| 4 | Iraj Eskandari | 1969 | 1979 | First-Secretary | [117] |
| 5 | Noureddin Kianouri | 1979 | 1984 | First-Secretary | [117] |
| – | Ali Khavari | 1983 | 1984 | Acting First-Secretary | [118] |
| 6 | 1984 | 2004 | First-Secretary | [119] | |
Thus the Tudeh Party introduced the Stalinist version of Marxism into Iran. As was discussed before, in the late 1950s the Third Worldist ideology and its socialist variant appeared in Iran, basically through the impact of the Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese Revolutions
Yet, when the Soviet Union demanded its oil concession the following year the Tudeh Party extended full support on ideological grounds. The Tudeh Party evolved towards a Stalinist pro-Moscow Party, ultimately losing much public support. International political pressures transformed the Tudeh Party into the local evangelical force of the Stalinist faith by 1949.
At the end of 1984 the party returned to a rigid Stalinist interpretation of post-Second World War developments in Soviet-Iranian relations...
U.S. President Harry Truman encouraged British Prime Ministers Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill to compromise with Mosaddeq...
In 1983, the U.S. helped bring to the attention of Tehran the threat inherent in the extensive infiltration of the government by the communist Tudeh Party and Soviet or pro-Soviet cadres in the country. Using this information, the Khomeini government took measures, including mass executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran.Available onlinehere.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)(in Persian, English, and German)| Order | |
|---|---|
| Perpetrators | |
| Influential sponsors | |
| Opponents | |
| Related parties and organizations | |
| Buried | |
| Related | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
