The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX

The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 16/2003 60
beginning also a member of the Paykar editorial board – a claim that does not correspond to the facts, as this
journal’s life in Berlin came to an end in October 1931, and the new series published in handwritten
composition in Vienna between mid-August 1932 and February 1933 were ostensibly published without the
consent of the Comintern on which Kamran depended. In spring 1934 Kamran was also made »Director« of
Section XV of KUTV, overseeing the education of its students.
In October 1934 (on the eve of the publication of Donya) Kamran was dispatched on a mission by the EKKI to
Iran, through the mountains of Khorasan bordering Soviet Turkestan. The aim of the mission was the
»constitution of party organization« in Tehran, Tabriz, Qazvin, Mazandaran, Isfahan, and Khuzistan. He
remained in Iran until May 1935. In Tehran he met with Dr. Arani. He formed »support points« (noqtehha-ye
etteka’i) in these localities. He adds in his reports that he and his colleague (presumably Soviet official
Hakimov) also »won« the review Donya, the student union, and the youth union over to the newly communist
organization that was to replace the ICP. (The Soviet encyclopedias assert that Donya was the organ of the
ICP!)
Upon his return to Moscow in 1935 he attended a superior course at KUTV, joined the »editorial staff« of the
German Communist leader Wilhelm Pieck, and took part in the Seventh Congress of the Comintern as a
delegate of the ICP.
According to his own account, Kamran was married to a Russian, a salesperson, who was not a party-member,
whose father was a tailor. (It is thus incorrect to assert, as some have, that he was married to an Iranian female
communist named Mahin or Maliheh).
Kamran was excluded from the Comintern apparatus on the 15 th of June, 1937, and arrested by the NKVD. 63 He
was still alive November 1941 after the Soviet occupation of northern Iran and the formation of the Tudeh
party. Though he disappeared some point in 1942, along with a number of other Iranian Communists who had
survived earlier purges. According to the Secret Report to Dimitrov, there was even a suggestion that, after an
urgent »reexamination« of his case by the NKVD, he should have been sent to Iran to help the Tudeh party,
since in his personal records there were »many positive reports« of his work in the Iranian underground. 64
Kamran was said to have been »greatly interested in the questions of the All-Russian Communist Party, the
Comintern, and the [Iranian Communist] Party.« He was characterized as a »disciplined, very active, and
experienced« cadre who participated in social organizations and of possessing a »good attitude toward
studying«. He had good relations with his comrades, he was also capable of »independent work«. However, Dr.
Arani expressed his dislike for him during his defense speech in Reza Shah’s tribunal, referring to him as
»hammal« (literally porter, meaning a person lacking any culture whatsoever). 65
63 Report to Dimitrov by I. Kozlov, RGASPI, 495/74/192.
64 RGASPI, 495/74/192.
65 Kambaksh Secret Report to the NKVD and the Comintern, RGASPI, 495/74/194, p. 34.