The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX

The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 16/2003 59
imprisonment for his political activities and on additional charges that his brother, Ervend, was an NKVD
operative. Hewas the Comintern official in charge of Iran to whom Shoureshian (»Mazloum«) reported on the
occasions of his clandestine trips to Iran. His name was mentioned in the investigation and trial of the »Fifty-
three« Group. His fate after 1936 is not known, but it is not difficult to assume that he was liquidated during the
Stalinist purges.
Aslani, Nasrollah
Nasrollah Aslani, (known as Kamran, alias Abdolsamad Motash [alias at the 7 th Comintern congress?]), born in
1904 in Qazvin 59 , was the son of a peasant. He grew up in Qazvin, received a high-school education, and began
working in the post office of the city. He was recruited by A. Kambakhsh into the Anjaman-e Parvaresh of
Qazvin, a cultural society organized by leftists and communists. 60 As a result of his activities in that society, he
was, in 1926, appointed by his post office superiors to a far-off post out of town. During his service in the post
office in 1925–1926 he came into contact with the Russian consul Kaufamann, first through a consular
employee and later meeting him directly. Kamran made the claim that he helped revolutionaries during the
events in Gilan by passing their mail through the British censure in Qazvin – a claim that is very difficult, if not
impossible, to verify (at the time he was no more than sixteen years of age). In his personal questionnaire filled
out for the Seventh Comintern Congress, he claims to have joined the All-Russian Communist Party in 1928,
but the ICP in 1922, which is in contradiction with his statement that he was recruited by Kambakhsh who
joined the party in 1924.
In 1926 Kamran went to the USSR and studied until 1930 at KUTV as an ICP student, where he was »always first«
in his class and a member of the Partcommissia of the leadership of foreign students at KUTV. In 1930 he was
sent by the Comintern to Iran to carry out party activity. Until 1931, as member of city bureau of the ICP, he did
party work in Isfahan, where he was engaged as an iron-smith (or lock-smith) at the Kazerouni textile factory.
Here he claims to have organized the workers into a union and led the 1931 strike in that factory. 61 He must
have done this in collaboration with party leader Abdol-Hussein Hesabi (Dehzad) who was at this time in
Isfahan on party assignment (see his biography). Arrested, along with other labor leaders, he was banished to
Abadeh, from whence he was recalled to Tehran for further interrogation. He claimed to have managed to
elude his police escort and to have escaped on the way to Tehran. He lived in the capital for a year in secret
and then returned to the USSR in May 1932. There he re-entered the KUTV as an »aspirant« (teaching
candidate) and also studied for a year in the »special course« until 1934. 62 He claimed that he was, in the
59 Based on his autobiography written for the archives of the Comintern cadres, RGASPI, 495/217/199, pp. 59-
61; ibid. 494/1/495, pp. 219ff.; Kambaksh Secret Report to the NKVD and the Comintern, RGASPI, 495/74/194.
60 In his biographical note on Kambakhsh written for the archives of the Comintern cadres, Kamran states that
he had been recruited in Qazvin into the ICP by Kambakhsh in the first place. Kamran (Aslani), »A.
Kambakhsh,« RGASPI, 495/217/4, p. 133.
61 For the ICP accounts of the strike, see Paykar (no. 9, 1931, and Nahzat (no. 1, 1932), repr. in Chaqueri,
Historical Documents XXII and VI, respectively.
62 The NKVD Report to Dimitrov puts his year of finishing the KUTV as 1933.