In Memory of Iranians Who Were Reduced to Ashes in the Hell of October 1917

On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the October 1917 event in Russia, Radio Farda invited writers and experts to share their thoughts with Radio Farda users regarding this anniversary. One important discussion is the impact this event had on the political, social, cultural, and economic life of Iran. User participation naturally enriches the discussion. More to read: Iran: "Indebted" to the October Revolution and "Caught" in the Cold War. The earthquake of October 1917 in Russia. The event of October 25, 1917, later named by its victors as the "Great Socialist October Revolution," established a regime that, during its seventy-four years of existence, and mainly in its first three decades, left one of the highest numbers of victims among political systems in contemporary world history. The astonishing tragedy. French historian Stéphane Courtois estimates the number of executed individuals and those who perished in Soviet forced labor camps or suffered from organized famines orchestrated by the security apparatus of the communist regime (especially in Ukraine) at around twenty million (The Black Book of Communism, Robert Laffont Publishing, 1997, p. 14 - French edition). At the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party held in Moscow in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, in a secret report, placed the blame for these crimes on Joseph Stalin, mainly to ensure that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the founder and principal theorist of the October "Revolution," remained free from any accusations regarding participation in this great atrocity. In fact, Khrushchev, who was himself one of the main executors of the crime, attempted to save the entire Soviet system from being tainted by this massacre by sacrificing Stalin's memory, and for at least a few years, he succeeded in this endeavor. However, for those who were well-acquainted with the history of Soviet communism at that time, Khrushchev's tactic was clearer than the sun. For others, over the years, the halo of sanctity surrounding Lenin's figure eventually fell away. In fact, Stalin was Lenin's loyal disciple, the powerful leader of the Bolshevik Party who, in close collaboration with Trotsky, organized the first massacres and death camps in Russia. Babak Amir Khosravi, a former cadre of the Tudeh Party of Iran, summarizes the relationship between Stalin and Lenin in the best possible way: "Stalin was the Genghis Khan of the contemporary era, whose Yassa was Lenin's doctrine" (Babak Amir Khosravi and Mohsen Heydarian, Socialist Migration and the Fate of Iranians, Payam Emruz Publishing, First Edition 2002, p. 32). Among the astonishing multitude of victims of the Leninist-Stalinist regime, a significant number of Iranians are also present, whose suffering and slaughter in the Soviet Union remained hidden for a very long time and became an unknown tragedy. The gradual discovery of this tragedy and its dimensions is owed to researchers who, through valuable efforts, ended the conspiracy of silence of ideologues and dogmatists and provided us the opportunity to observe a moment of silence today, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the October 1917 event, in honor of these forgotten sufferers. A large portion of the Iranians who fell victim to the totalitarianism arising from the "October Revolution" were leaders and members of the Communist Party of Iran who, due to their inability to operate in Iran during the reign of Reza Shah, sought refuge in the Soviet Union, which was their promised paradise. However, after that, their names disappeared from the radar screen, and no one knew what had happened to them. The Tudeh Party of Iran, which was established in 1941 as the successor and continuator of the Communist Party, preferred to consign these lost individuals to oblivion. Recent research indicates that some leaders of the Tudeh Party occasionally inquired with Soviet officials about the fate of some leaders of the Communist Party of Iran, but they were warned to forget this case entirely and not to "pursue the matter" (Touraj Atabaki, The Disappeared, Andisheh Pouya, Issue 11, September and October 2013, pp. 68 to 70). From "a few individuals" to "a few thousand". Following the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and the exposure of Stalin's crimes by Khrushchev, a few details about the executed Iranian communists were made available to the leadership of the Tudeh Party, and some of their names were occasionally mentioned in the party's publications, including Avetis Mikayelian, known as Soltanzadeh (one of the high-ranking officials of the Comintern), Karim Nikbin, Abolqasem Zarre, Ladban Esfandiari (brother of Nima Yushij), and so on... The way of speaking about these "missing individuals" in party publications was usually as follows: Unfortunately, during the period of emigration, a few Iranian communists were wrongly accused and became victims of "personality cult" and perished, and now they must be exonerated. Soon it became clear that the number of Iranian communists destroyed in the Soviet Union was much greater than the "few individuals" mentioned in the Tudeh Party publications. According to Babak Amir Khosravi, after the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and the rehabilitation of millions of victims of terror, Moscow authorities provided a list consisting of 150 leaders, cadres, and members of the destroyed Communist Party of Iran to the Tudeh Party of Iran. According to Mr. Atabaki: "In Moscow, Iranians, along with other communists of various nationalities, were taken by a black car to a garden called Komunaraka in the outskirts of Moscow, which had previously been a summer house of Yagoda, the then head of the NKVD, and after being executed, they were buried in mass graves. The remains of these mass graves still exist." Here we go from "a few victims" to "150 individuals." Today, following recent research, it seems that the extent of the Soviet terror apparatus's crimes against Iranian communists who sought refuge in this country is much broader than this. Touraj Atabaki, a researcher of social history in Iran, writes that between 1935 and 1939, thousands of Iranians were sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment in Baku, Tashkent, Moscow, and other cities of the Soviet Union. According to Mr. Atabaki: "In Moscow, Iranians, along with other communists of various nationalities, were taken by a black car to a garden called Komunaraka in the outskirts of Moscow, which had previously been a summer house of Yagoda, the then head of the NKVD, and after being executed, they were buried in mass graves. The remains of these mass graves still exist." Why were all these Iranians, many of whom remained loyal to the ideals of communism until the end, destroyed? In the writings of Touraj Atabaki and other researchers, their accusations are enumerated as follows: espionage for Iran, Germany, and England, Trotskyism, a hidden intention to contaminate the bread and water of cities, and other such accusations. For readers of this note, accepting the figure of "a few thousand" for the victims of Iranian terror in the Soviet Union of the 1930s may be difficult. Why were all these Iranians, many of whom remained loyal to the ideals of communism until the end, destroyed? In the writings of Touraj Atabaki and other researchers, their accusations are enumerated as follows: espionage for Iran, Germany, and England, Trotskyism, a hidden intention to contaminate the bread and water of cities, and other such accusations. This doubt is understandable, as the dimensions of the massacre in Stalin's Russia are still not fully recognized. It is enough to note that when government decrees regarding the massacre of foreigners residing in the Soviet Union and minorities were issued, hundreds of thousands of people became victims. When the operational decree of August 11, 1937, for the destruction of "Polish spies and terrorists" was issued, 144,000 people were arrested, of which 110,000 were executed. The operational decree of September 20 regarding the arrest of Chinese people sent 25,000 individuals to their demise. And in January 1938, the operations of the Stalinist security apparatus expanded to Latvians, Estonians, Greeks, Iranians, and several other nationalities residing in Soviet territory. In these operations, 350,000 people were arrested, of whom more than 247,000 faced execution. A merciless ogress. If the tragic fate of the first generation of Iranian communists became known to the people of Iran, would later generations, with all their enthusiasm for communism and the Soviet Union, have believed in it and, with such firm conviction, sacrificed their existence for it? How was it that the heart-wrenching cries of thousands of Iranians in Stalin's hell, which could have been so warning, went unheard? In any case, in the 1940s, a new generation of communist immigrants, after the collapse of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, followed the path of "Uncle Yusuf's House," just as in the 1950s after the defeat of the Tudeh Party and in the early 1980s after the deadly blows dealt by the Islamic Republic to Soviet-aligned Iranian communists (Tudeh members and the majority of Fedayeen). The last generation did not suffer the fatal fate of the first generation. When the Tudeh and Fedayeen members of the years following the Islamic Revolution arrived in the Soviet Union, the regime arising from the "October Revolution" was nearing its last years of survival and had lost the capacity for slaughter. Yes, the last generation did not fall into the "Gulag" and did not face the firing squads of Soviet executioners. But this generation, too, was psychologically traumatized by what they witnessed in the "paradise of communism" and, in another way, was brought to its knees. To understand what happened to the last generation of communists, the simple and honest book "Uncle Yusuf's House" by Atabak Fathollazadeh (First Edition Sweden 2001) is very readable. This former member of the Fedayeen Khalq Organization, upon entering Soviet Azerbaijan, faced a world that was shabby and filthy instead of the ideal society he had anticipated. Hundreds of other young Iranians, like him, saw this very bitter reality before them, and some of them lost their balance due to the realization that they had wasted their lives in pursuit of such a catastrophe and even resorted to suicide. Mohsen Heydarian, another Iranian communist of the last generation who sought refuge in the Soviet Union during those years, expresses his feelings at the end of his joint book with Babak Amir Khosravi (Socialist Migration and the Fate of Iranians) as follows: "Soviet communism and its ideological allure were like a beautiful girl to whom you had given your heart in youth... Years of pain, regret, experience, and travel were needed to realize that behind that beloved, there was a merciless ogress hidden who was never worth all that love, sacrifice, pain, and suffering."