Stalinist Threat to Iranian Revolution

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underground its member- nationalisation of capitalists Angry crowds haul down statue of Reza Shah.

Stalin and his new imper- led to massive strides forialist allies occupied Persia ward in . organisation and and deposed Reza Shah, militancy of the working who had sided with Hitier. class • now appearing as the Though the 193l anti- leading force. in Persian communist law was never politics. proved extremely favour- oped an immense popular able for the development of following.

Since the 1940s Iranian Stalinism has taken the form of the Tudeh In its very formation and title is embodied. Stalinist policy of class collaboration and betrayal of the independence of the working class.

Tudeh means 'mass or 'peoples party -a name selected by the Stalinists to avoid any specific identification with the working class or with communism and to attract non proletarian liberal bourgeois membership and support.

The Tudeh in practice, therefore, was not even a degenerated workers' party: it was established from the beginning on the principles of a popular front embracing forces alien to the working class.

The more classic kind of popular front-an alliance of the CP with bourgeois parties was not feasible in Iran because at the height of Stalin's popular front period, the CP did not exist.

founded Or rather it had been destroyed. A Communist Party was first formed in Iran in 1920.

This was only one year before Reza Khan, a tsarist Cossack-trained military officer (the father of the recently. deposed Shah) seized power with the help of the British imperialists and then in 1925 founded the Pahlavi dynasty.

Reza Khan's seizure of power brought to an end a period of. huge social upheavals whose height was the revolutionary soviet republic of Gilan in northern Persia.

• This republic lasted weeks under the leadership of Communists and the radical Panjabi party.

In 1920 the soviet state was brutally crushed by a military column from Tehran headed: by Reza Khan..

Compromise

Within a year the government in the USSR. inreatenea py civu war anu 11_ 171 61 g0 and severe economic problems and anxious to protect its borders, had made a compromise with the Persian government, signing friendship treaty and withdrawing a section of the Red Army from the north of the country:

Reza Khan's power meant increasing repression for the young Communist In 1921 when it went ship was 4,500. This had fallen to 1000 by 1922 and only 600 by 1924. • In the mid-1920s the Persian CP, like other Comintern parties under the growing destructive influence of Stalin, took an increasingly ambiguous position towards its own oppressor, Reza Shah.

But in | 1927, the Party's Second Congress saw a shift to vocal opposition to Reza Shah in line with the Comintern's left turn with which it initiated the Third Period' The CP's new policy was one of "united front for a toilers' government"

'Left' rhetoric

It called for the end of the monarchy, free elections and other democratic demands, a minimum wage, Mossadea and confiscation and tribution of the land But despite this 'left' rhetoric it was still the declared aim of the CP to build an alliance with bourgeois nationalists against Reza Shah and his British allies.

The new programme slightly increased the strength of the CP again, but not enough for it to be able to breakthrough the barrier imposed on it by Reza Shah's repression. : • In 1931 this repression was stepped up very sharply and it became illegal even to profess "collectivist" opinions.

Under this extreme repression the CP was virtually eliminated from the political scene.

Leaders not persecuted by Tehran were persecuted by Moscow and Stalin had a number of them murdered during the Moscow Trials.

But before it disappeared the Persian CP had another opportunity to demonstrate its political degeneration aş part of the Stalinist Comintern.

Journal

In 1932 it came out strongly in support of the butcher of the masses and the CP's own oppressor by supporting his revoking of an oil concession to the The last phase of this period in the history of Iranian Stalinism began in 1935 when a group of Stalinist intellectuals began to - publish a theoretical journal:

This was suppressed and in 1937 52 of its leading supporters were jailed.

The new epoch opened 1941 when, after the Nazi invasion of the USSK,' lifted, the new occupation a new mass, Stalinist party. Tn The initial nucleus of the nartv was the intellectuals whom Reza Shah had imprisoned.

But it soon grew into a mass workers' party, alongside an equally, fast-growing trade union movement.

By 1944 the Tudeh had 25 000 members and two years later the Tudeh-dom. inated United Council, of Persian Trade Unions had 400 000 members.

The Russian occupation The Tudeh party devel. One-fifth In the elections to the Majlis (parliament) which took place in 1944 the Tudeh candidates received one fifth of the votes (200,000 out of 1 million) in the whole country and three-quarters of those cast in the northern province of Isfahan.

But the Tudeh did not use its strength to develop the political independence

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SOCIALISI PRESS. ieiresies Di Februars 19-y The Iranian Minister of Rural Affairs signing a trade pact in Sofia with Bulgarian Stalinist minister Yobov.

Demonstrators from tear gas and bullets run the working class.

Quite the opposite. Its strategic line was to form a "Freedom Front" with the parties of the national bourgeoisie.

This front was never formed in the shape that the Tudeh wanted but, nevertheless, from 1945 it began to give its parliamentary support to bourgeois governments.

: The first of these was that of Bayat in early 1945.

Mouthpiece

The Tudeh's support was in accordance with directions from Moscow-since Bayat was prepared to concede to Stalin's demand for an oil concession.

•The Tudeh in fact now began to operate increasingly as nothing more than Stalin's diplomatic mouth. piece.

It was a stance that began to lose them support, especially to the more radical wing of bourgeois nationalism under Mossadeq who was opposed to all concessions to foreign powers.

Bayat's government fell in April 1945 and was replaced by an openly anti Soviet one. • The Stalinists respot led by indulging in a sudden left turn and started to advocate armed struggle and autonomy in Azibijan and later in Persian Kurdistan.

In the autumn of 1945 the Azibijan autonomous republic and a few months later the Kurdistan republic were established.

Ended strike

They were led respective ly by the Azibijan Democratic: Party and the Kumeleh Party-each dominated by the Stalinists of the Tudeh.

The Persian bourgeoisie responded to the sudden turn by putting in power another pro-Soviet government under Ghavam which the Tudeh supported.

From August to October of 1946 Ghavam brought three Tudeh ministers into his cabinet.

The purpose of this was to try. to head off the radicalising effect which the new national republics were having on the masses in the rest of Persia.

The Tudeh did their duty and sent their leaders to Abadan on the Gulf in August 1946 to end a major oil workers strike against the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

In government the Tudeh also helped to introduce nationwide system of joint union management "participation" committees.

By now the days of the autonomous republics were . numbered.

Ghavam had persuaded the USSR to withdraw its troops in exchange for an oil concession (which was summarily withdrawn by a later government).

With this accomplished Ghavam felt strong enough to drop the Tudeh (which he did in October. 1946) and then (in December) to march on Azibijan.

The Tudeh and the Azibijan Democratic Party decided to concede defeat and the republics virtually fell without a fight.

This betrayal was bold detayah Treaha retreat' in accordance with "revolutionary logic".

A tide had now turned for the mass movement and for the Tudeh, which in helping to crush thé mass movement once again helped to crush itself.

New anti-communist repression was unleashed and party • membership fell rapidly.

The leadership kept calling for elections which the imperialist-backed bourgeoisie had cleverly staved off as long as there was any danger i of the Tudeh winning.

And they still coveted a front with the bourgeois parties-especially that.of Ghavam, the man who had so successfully outmanoeuvred the Tudeh.

As part of the new pro-imperialist government's offensive it declared a liberalisation of the labour code and set up a new official trade union known as ESKI which in 1949 was affiliated to the anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

cut the ground from under the feet of the Tudeh.

In 1949 an assassination attempt on the Shah was used as a pretext to declare the Tudeh illegal.

The party as ad.result called for a boycott of the proposed 1949 parliamentary elections.

The party's opportunism and weakness had produced many internal splits and St

Troops join

demonstrators thousands of defections.

But the new rise in the tide of mass struggle from 1951 to 1953 still allowed the party to become quite sizeable again.

It probably rose to a peak of about 20.000 roma uuuuu members.

But it remained overshadowed by the "left" nationalists of the National Front under Mossadeq.

Last 'left' turn The Front beat the Tudeh in every constituency in the 1952 elections.

Adapting to the new mass upsurge, the Tudeh Party suddenly made what was to be its last "left"

It now denounced the constitution (including the monarch) it had previously supported.

The turn, however, was all hot air. The party refused to do anything to prepare the mass movement even for the defence of existing gains let alone for the seizure of power.

It ended up in the 1953 crisis, in which the Shah was installed as dictator by US imperialism, doing no more than weakly tail-ending the Mossadeq nationalists.

These events were the end of the Tudeh Party as a mass movement.

Its leaders went into exile and the Shah's repression took increasing toll of the party's organisation and membership.

Many former members, however, became functionaries in the Shah's «White Revolution", a few of them ending up as Cabinet Ministers.

The leaders took stock and made a self-criticism accusing themselves not of opportunism but of sectarianism!

Their mistake was, they argued, not to have allied enough with "progressive" sections of the bourgeoisie!

So for the Tudeh Party the last 25 years has been an unending search for alliances with bourgeois forces-with the National Front (the political block which nurtured Mossacea Bakhtiar. Bazargan Sanjabi), with the hierarchy of the Shiite Moslems and even with such characters as General Bahktiar-an 'exhead of the SAVAK (secret police) who was dismissed by the Shah in the early 1960s.

The definitive statement of the party's programme issued in 1960 has become typical of all its class collaborationist statements since then:

"The main task of, the revolution in the présent stage must be the transference of political power from landlords and capitalists to a regime of national democracy representing the united, independence-seeking, patriotic and freedomloving forces, ie. workers, peasants, the petty bourgeoisie (tradesmen, shopkeepers) intellectuals, civil servants and the national capitalists whether merchants or owners of industries."

Later versions of this have looked also to the clergy and to the army in the search for allies of freedom and patriotism.

Feted in Moscow

After its proposed "United Front" of the 1930s. the "Freedom Front" of the 1940s and other similar class-collaborationist fronts since then, the Tudeh now puts out a new call (see the extracts from its statement) for a "United National Liberation Front of Iran" with the forces that comprise the new central During this whole history of denial of the political independence of the working class, the Shah himself is one of the very few Iranian bourgeois leaders who has not been included in the ranks of the "patriotic" and "freedomloving"

Sometimes, however-to the. embarrassment of the Tudeh Party in relation to the Iranian opposition-the Soviet bureaucracy decided that the Shah should be included as well.

In 1956, only three years after his bloody coup, the Shah and his Empress were being feted as honoured guests in Moscow.

In 1961 Moscow supported his "reforms" and the fake referendum which backed them up.

The Tudeh also declared the reforms «a' retreat of world imperialism in the face of the advancing socialist camp". . But they tactfully didn't repeat Moscow's personal support the Shar In 1967 the USSR began its arms supplies to the tyrant, whom they continued • to support politically until only a few months ago.

The Kremlin evidently decided that after 1953 the Tudeh Party had been effectively destroyed and its remnants could therefore, be sacrificed completely to Soviet diplomacy.

In 1976, the Tudeh's opposition radio station in Bulgaria was closed down because the Bulgarian bureaucracy wanted to make a trade agreement with the Shah.

The Tudeh, however, realised that unless it identified with opposition to the Shah's dictatorship it could never hope to grow again with the upsurge of the mass movement.

Its' connections with known supporters of the Shah have already made this difficult.

Despite the Tudeh's unbelievable bragging in recent days that it is in ,complete control of the oil workers and, therefore, was ¡the major force which brought down the Shah, the Tudeh has not grown very fast during the events leading to last week's revolution.

Its lack of strength in the mass movement is almost certainly reflected in the especially unctuous tone of its present position (outlined in the extracts elsewhere on page 8) of uncritical support for the Ayatollah K'homeini and the anti-socialist "Islamic Republic".

In the absence of an independent revolutionary leadership however, the danger is that the Tudeh Party may be able to grow once again in the new situation.

Khomeini and the national bourgeoisie may well help them since in stabilising capitalist rule they will need more reliable agents in the workers' movement than they have at present.

The Shah The Tudeh Party has played such a counterrevolutionary role before. and now. clearly stands ready to use its experience to do so again.

Counter-revolutionary So in the immediate aftermath of the armed rising of the masses to overthrow the imperialist dictatorship in Iran, we stress the importance of a historical understanding of the Tudeh Party and some extracts from its present programme will serve as a reminder of its consistently counterrevolutionary role and a warning of its potentially counter - revolutionary future.

Long live the Iranian Down the the Bazargan Free elections to a Constituent Assembly!

' For socialism in Iran.

Form workers, peasants. and soldiers' committees and militias!

For a workers' and peasants' government!

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IRAN

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