The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX

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The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 16/2003 57 Sultanzade (Mikailian), Avetis Avetis Sultanzade (1889–1938), the leading personality in the Iranian Communist party, was not Muslim, nor was he merely a revolutionary practitioner; he was an intellectual and theoretician. Born into a poor family of the Maraqeh region, his mother was Armenian and his father was Muslim. After five years of study in his native town, he went to the Armenian ecclesiastical school, Jamaran, at Ejmeyasin near Yerevan. On graduating, he joined the labor movement in the Caucasus and became a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers party. 55 After the October revolution, he worked for the Soviet government. In 1919, like his rival in the party, Haidar Khan, he was sent to Central Asia to mobilize Iranian workers for the Iranian Communist Party (ICP). There he recruited Iranian emigrants for the Iranian Red Army and organized, in early 1920, the Tashkent Adalat conference and the ICP congress in Anzali in June 1920. His theoretical and political contributions constituted the ICP’s main line of action until his withdrawal in 1922. He led the party’s radical wing and called for immediate land reform in Gilan. He disagreed with those who collaborated with Kuchek Khan, the leader of the Jangali revolutionary movement. 56 Aside from leading positions in the ICP and the Communist International, he worked for the Soviet banking system until 1927. At this time, the radical turn of the Comintern permitted his return to the ICP, which he reorganized and led until it was dismantled by the Soviets in 1932. He was then censured as a «deviationist anti- Leninist» by the Stalinist ideological apparatus. Nevertheless, he continued to battle with the Comintern and the Soviet bureaucracy until 1935, when he denounced those in charge of Iranian affairs in the Comintern. On July 16, 1938, he was shot as a «German agent», but his reputation was rehabilitated during the Khrushchev era. Sultanzade was the author of numerous articles and books on varied subjects, but due to Stalinist repression, he remained fairly unknown until the mid-seventies. His works on Iran and the East were quite novel and remain today a valuable source for the study of Iran’s political and economic situation in the early twentieth century. Orbeliani, Ervend Ohanevich 57 Ervend Ohanevich Orbeliani (alias Ebrahim 58 ) was born on 5 February, 1898, into the family of an Armenian school teacher of Tabriz, Ohanes Norsesevich, whose father had been master gun-maker, and Sophia 55 For details, see C. Chaqueri, »Sultanzade: The Forgotten Revolutionary Theoretician of Iran: A Biographical Sketch,« Iranian Studies, 2-3 (1984); for Sultanzade’s works see Historical Documents: The Workers, Social Democratic, and Communist Movement in Iran, ed. C. Chaqueri (Florence and Tehran, 1969-1994), vols. 4, 8, 20; Le Mouvement Communiste en Iran (Florence, 1979) and Sultanzade, The Forgotten Theoretician (Life and Works), ed. C. Chaqueri (Paris, 1985). 56 For the Jangali revolutionary movement in Iran, see C. Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran. Birth of the Trauma, Pittsburgh University Press, Pittsburgh, 1995. 57 Based on the questionnaire (»Anket«) filled out in 1936 and his »Avtobigrafia« written in the same year for the Comintern in RGASPI (Russian State Archive for Social and Political History, Moscow ), 495/217/387.
The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 16/2003 58 Markarovna Khagikian. Armeno-Iranian, he went to an Armenian school in Tabriz for five years (1906–10) before his parents moved to Mashhad, where his elder brother worked at the customs office. From 1910 to 1914 Orbeliani continued his studies on his own, particularly learning foreign languages, notably Russian, English and French. Thereafter, due to his family’s poverty, he worked, until 1917, as an employee of the local finance office. From 1917 till 1920 he was an employee of the British-owned Imperial Bank of Persia. Between 1921 and 1923 he worked as a translator for the Soviet diplomatic service in Tehran; then for the next five years he was in the employ of the Soviet diplomatic service, notably at the TASS agency, producing a radio bulletin in Persian and Russian. In 1924 he was recruited by the GPU/OGPU (future NKVD). In 1928 he moved to the USSR and worked, until 1935, as an operative agent at the NKVD. Between September 1935 and September 1936 he was in charge of the Iranian section at the KUTV (The Moscow Communist University of Toilers of the East), however, because of its closure, he became unemployed. From the moment of filling out his questionnaire in 1936, he was in charge of the secretariat of the Comintern editorial board while remaining a special reserve agent of the NKVD. Orbeliani’s »revolutionary activity« began in 1917 when he, under the influence of the October revolution and in opposition to British rule in Iran, joined a group of Iranians in the nationalist circles. He took part in the struggle against the British imposed Anglo-Iranian 1919 Agreement (at this time he was working for the British bank in Iran). He read Bolshevik literature and entered into contact with »comrades« coming from the Soviet Union to Mashhad. He was arrested and imprisoned for four months after the British-led 1921 coup. He joined the Armenian Workers’ Party in 1923 and, through contacts with ICP activist Seyfi, also the ICP in 1924. Thereafter he became active among left-wing Armenians who in 1923 created the Armenian Workers’ Party which dissolved itself in 1927 and whose most faithful and resilient members joined the ICP. Then, on the orders of the CC, he created a legal Armenian party, named Nor-Ugi, in order to continue anti-Dashnak activities among Armenians. He was also active in the labor movement and was in charge of publishing secret declarations and night-flyers for the party (presumably printed at the TASS headquarters). He was arrested in 1925 in connection with his activities within the two communist parties but released through the intervention of Soviet envoy Yurenev. In 1928 he was exiled from Iran upon the revelations by several former communists of his publishing activities for the party. Upon his arrival in Moscow, Wagner of the Eastern Section of the Comintern sent him to the CPSU so that his membership could be transferred from the ICP. He became a candidate for membership and passed the two year training period, however his membership was withheld due to the new rules and the purges in 1932. Orbeliani married a Russian (Armeno-Russian) in 1920. His mother, sister and brother remained in Iran. The latter, a government employee, was active among the Armenians. Beginning as a Danshnak, he became a convinced Bolshevik in 1920 and was in contact with the Soviet consul in Mashhad. He made a speech at the mourning ceremonies held for Lenin in 1924. He was arrested in 1932, and condemned to fifteen years 58 The Comintern operative in Iran Shoureshian claims that he had two other pseudonyms, namely, Arabali and Mohammad-Ali. Farzanheh, Parvandeh, p. 160. These two are not mentioned by him in his Comintern files!
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