ESTUDI BÀSIC DE SEGURETAT I SALUT
6.- MESURES DE PREVENCIÓ I PROTECCIÓ
8. NORMATIVA APLICABLE
In November 1938—soon after the famous Moscow show trials—Iran staged the most sensational of its political trials. Using the ambiguous 1931 law, it indicted a group of fifty- three—many of them young intellectuals from prominent families—with the clear intention of intimidating the country's intelligentsia. In the past, dissidents had been put away quietly. Now they were placed in the limelight to illustrate to all and sundry the dangers of dallying with radical "alien ideas."
Imitating the Russian practice of labeling political trials with the total number in the dock, the Iranian government billed the group as "the Fifty-three." In fact, one of the famous trials preceding the Moscow purges had been known as the Case of the Fifty-three. It was jested that Reza Shah wanted to keep up with his northern neighbor. Not surprisingly, the Iranian Fifty-three soon became a household term in Tehran. In later years, ten of them—in addition to Bozorg Alavi, the author of the best-seller The Fifty-three —published memoirs describing their arrests, trials, and prison experiences.
The case began inadvertently in March 1937 when border guards came across three men smuggling themselves into the country from the Soviet Union. The three escaped, but their abandoned luggage led the police to a theater troupe in Khuzestan. This, in turn, led the police to associates in Tehran, Qazvin, and Isfahan. By early May, the police had compiled a list of more than sixty suspects and had begun to round them up. Most were taken—often by public transport—to Tehran's Central Jail for "routine questioning." This turned into lengthy
interrogations lasting eighteen months. Some were released. One escaped. But fifty-three were brought to trial in November 1938.
The regime claimed these fifty-three constituted a tight-knit ― 49 ―
party under direct Comintern control. In fact, they were formed of two loosely linked groups: intellectuals too young to have had a political past and veteran labor activists from the near- defunct Communist party. The intellectuals, numbering thirty-three, averaged twenty-seven years of age. The labor activists, totaling fourteen, averaged thirty-four. The two groups were joined by a handful of university-educated professionals—some of whom had belonged to the youth section of the Communist party in their teens. (See table 2.)
In terms of profession, they included one judge; five professors, including two at the Medical College; two physicians; one factory manager; one museum director; four lawyers; two headmasters; three teachers; nine office employees, almost all civil servants; and twelve university students. Eighteen came from titled families. Among them were also two
mechanics, two tailors, two printers, one locomotive driver, one cobbler, and one factory worker. No women were brought to trial, although among those initially rounded up was the wife of one of the veteran communists.
In terms of ethnicity, Persians dominated—in sharp contrast to the early communist
movement. Forty came from Persian-speaking homes; the other thirteen, from Turkic (Azeri, Qajar, Afshar, and Turkoman) families. Almost all the intellectuals were from Persian and Persianized households. Of the total, thirteen had been born in Tehran; twenty-two, in the central regions, including Qazvin; and nine, in the Caspian provinces. Two of the six born in Azerbaijan had been raised in Persian-speaking districts outside Azerbaijan. At the time of arrest, forty-one resided in Tehran; the others, in Abadan, Isfahan, Qazvin, Gilan, and
Mazandaran. None resided in Azerbaijan. All but one came from Shi'i backgrounds. The long exception came from a Bahai family.
The main figure in the dock was Dr. Taqi Arani—regarded by some to be his generation's most promising intellectual. Born in Tabriz, he had been raised in Tehran by his mother and her family. He disliked his absent father—a civil servant—for being an incorrigible Casanova.
[82] Graduating from the Dar
― 50 ― Table 2 The Fifty-three * Name Birthdate Place of
Birth Residence Ethnicity Profession
Class Origins
1. Arani, Taqi 1902 Tabriz Tehran Azeri Professor Civil servant
2. Kambakhsh, Abdul-Samad
1902 Qazvin Tehran Qajar Factory
manager
Aristocrat 3. Bahrami,
Mohammad
1898 Tafresh Tehran Persian Physician-
professor
Physician 4. Shureshyan,
Mohammad 1885 Gilan Tehran & Abadan Persian Mechanic & actor Poor
5. Sadeqpour, Ali 1904 Qazvin Tehran Persian Mechanic Poor
6. Boqrati, Mohammad
1904 Gilan Tehran Persian Headmaster Physican
7. Alamutti, Ziya 1913 Qazvin Tehran Persian Civil servant Teacher
8. Pazhuh, Mohammad
1906 Qazvin Tehran Persian Teacher Bookseller
9. Farjami, Mohammad
1905 Gilan Tehran Persian
(Bahai)
10. Azeri, Abbas 1900 Isfahan Tehran Azeri Cobbler & railway worker
Poor
11. Ezazi,
Nasratallah 1901 Tehran Tehran Persian Civil servant
12. Khamehei, Anvar
1917 Tehran Tehran Persian University
student
Clerical 13. Jahanshahlu,
Nasratallah
1914 Tehran Tehran Turkic
(Afshar)
University student
Tribal chief
14. Alamutti, Emad 1911 Qazvin Qazvin Persian Civil servant Teacher
15. Afshar, Akbar
(Fatouli) 1909 Tehran Tehran Turkic (Afshar) Typesetter Poor
16. Makinezhad, Taqi
1915 Arak Tehran Persian University
student
Senior clerical 17. Sajjadi,
Mojtaba
1913 Arak Tehran Persian University
student
Clerical- landed
18. Alavi, Bozorg 1904 Tehran Tehran Persian Writer-
teacher Merchant
(table continued on next page)
― 52 ―
Table 2 (continued )
Name Birthdate
Place of
Birth Residence Ethnicity Profession
Class Origins
19. Rasai, Mehdi 1898 Qazvin Tehran Persian Office
employee
20. Iskandari, Iraj 1908 Tehran Tehran Qajar Lawyer Aristocrat
21. Yazdi, Morteza 1907 Yazd Tehran Persian Surgeon-
professor
Senior clerical 22. Radmanesh,
Reza 1906 Gilan Tehran Persian-Gilaki Professor Landed
23. Maleki, Khalel 1900 Tabriz Tehran Azeri Teacher Merchant-
landed
24. Sajjadi, Morteza 1912 Arak Tehran Persian Physican Clerical-
25. Sajjadi, Hossein 1910 Arak Isfahan Persian Physician Clerical- landed 26. Shandramini,
Ali
1917 Gilan Abadan Azeri-
Persian
Tailor Poor
27. Qodreh, Mohammad
1912 Arak Tehran Persian University
student
Senior clerical
28. Shahin, Taqi 1916 Tabriz Tehran Azeri Civil servant
29. Razavi, Morteza 1915 Qazvin Gurgan Persian Civil servant
30. Sayyah, Seyfollah
1901 Isfahan Isfahan Persian Textile
worker
Poor
31. Hokmi, Alinqali 1915 Tehran Tehran Persian University
student
32. Etiqechi, Ezatollah
1917 Tehran Tehran Persian University
student
Merchant
33. Khajavi, Vali 1893 Qazvin Qazvin Persian Villager Villager
34. Alamutti, Rahim
1899 Qazvin Tehran Persian Tailor Poor
35. Zamani, Shayban
1916 Babul Gurgan Persian Cobbler Poor
36. Ashtari, Abul- Qassem
1915 Tehran Tehran &
Shiraz
Persian Museum
director
37. Tarbiyat,
Hossein 1908 Khuzestan Abadan Persian Headmaster Merchant
38. Garkani, Fazollah
1918 Tehran Tehran Persian University
student
Senior clerical
39. Soqfi, Yousef 1913 Qazvin Tehran Persian Teacher
40. Naini, Jalal 1915 Tehran Qazvin Persian Civil servant Middle
clerical
41. Nasimi, Rajbali 1917 Tabriz Tehran Azeri Civil servant
42. Shomali, Bahman
1913 Khalkhal Qazvin Azeri Mechanic
43. Laleh, Mehdi 1900 Tehran Tehran Persian Professor-
banker
Merchant
(table continued on next page)
― 54 ―
Table 2 (continued )
Name Birthdate
Place of
Birth Residence Ethnicity Profession
Class Origins
Higher Education
Sentenced Separately Sentenced Separately
44. Tabari, Ehsan 1917 Sari Tehran Persian University
student Clerical Tehran University 45. Naraqi,
Abbas
1914 Kashan Tehran Persian Lawyer-
student
Landed Tehran
University 46. Daneshvar,
Mehdi
1915 Khamseh Tehran Persian University
student
Tehran
University 47. Habibi,
Hassan 1916 Kermanshah Tehran Persian University student Middle clerical Tehran University 48. Alamutti,
Nuraldin
1903 Qazvin Tehran Persian Judge Senior
clerical
Seminary
49.
Ibrahimzadeh, Reza
1902 Mazandaran Mazandaran Azeri Railway
worker Oil worker None 50. Enquelab, Khalel
1913 Tabriz Tehran Azeri University
student
None
51. Manou, Fereydun
Tehran Persian Lawyer Tehran
University 52. Turkoman,
Ana (Babayi) 1898 Gurgan Gurgan Turkoman Lawyer
53. Hakim- Allahi, Razi
1917 Tehran Tehran Persian Printer None
* The Fifty-three are listed in the order of those receiving the longest sentences as announced in
Forty-seven were sentenced on that day; the other six were tried separately, and the press never announced their sentences.
Biographical information has been obtained from interviews, memoirs—especially those printed since 1979—and the coverage of the trials published in Ettel'at , 2–17 November 1938.
al-Fanon—the elite high school—at the top of his class in 1920, Arani took a two-year crash course in medicine in Tehran and then went to Germany to study chemistry in the Berlin Technical University. His stay there lasted from 1922 to 1930. While working toward his doctorate, he took courses in philosophy, taught Persian to supplement his meager family stipend, and published pamphlets and articles on Omar Khayyam, Sa'di, Nasser Khosrow, Aristotle, Azerbaijan, and Iranian history. These articles appeared in two nationalistic journals published in Germany, Iranshahr (Land of Iran) and Farangestan (Europe).
During these Berlin years, Arani moved to the left. He had arrived a staunch nationalist, full of praise for ancient Iran and the Persian language. His articles on the Persian language urged
the purging of Arabic words. His articles on history listed Zoroaster, Farabi, Ibn Sina, Omar Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Cyrus
― 55 ―
the Great, Darius the Great, and Anusheravan the Just as the true heroes of Iran. Conspicuously absent was Mazdak, the hero of the left, who had been executed by the Zoroastrian establishment for advocating economic egalitarianism. What is more, Arani's articles on Azerbaijan urged the government to replace Turkish with Persian on the grounds that the Mongol invaders had imposed their "foreign tongue" on northwestern Iran. Praising Azerbaijan as "the cradle of Iranian civilization," he described its people as pure Aryans coerced by the Mongols to give up their indigenous Iranian language.[83]
By the time he returned to Iran, Arani had joined the Revolutionary Republican party—a short-lived leftist organization—and had befriended a number of Iranian Marxists, including Morteza Alavi, the editor of the Communist party paper Peykar .[84] Arani later told the police
that Morteza Alavi had introduced him to Marxism in 1927 and that he had ― 56 ―
returned home in 1930 a convinced communist.[85] It is not clear what this meant as Arani
never admitted to having formally joined the Communist party.
Back in Tehran, Arani lived with his mother and devoted his time to intellectual pursuits, allowing himself only two diversions—long walks and Western music. He taught science at the Dar al-Fanon and Tehran University; chaired the teaching department in the Ministry of Industries; and published booklets on physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and dialectical materialism. The first two works were adopted as high school textbooks. The booklet on psychology linked the workings of the mind to the physical structure of the brain.
He also convened at home a number of separate informal discussion groups—for colleagues from Europe, for students from Tehran University, and for pupils from the Dar al-Fanon and the Ministry of Industries. Meeting on different days, most participants were unaware of the existence of the other groups. They discussed philosophy and modern political theory. They read Victor Hugo's Les miserables and Henri Bergson's Les deux sources de la vie. Some translated—from French and German—Engels's Ludwig Feuerback and the End of Classical
German Philosophy as well as Marx's Capital, Communist Manifesto , and Wage Labor and Capital. Others translated Bukharin's ABC of Communism and Historical Materialism .
These discussions inspired some to spend hours in the Majles library devouring all they could find on political philosophy.[86] They had an insatiable thirst for modern political ideas.
Autobiographies published in later years—particularly in the 1980s—gloss over the importance of these political ideas and instead dwell on individual foibles and personal
animosities. The authors are probably embarrassed by their "youthful follies," and feel readers would find Freud and Kafka, not to mention Marx and Bukharin, off-putting and passé. The removal of political ideals from individuals who were motivated primarily by political ideals makes them appear one-dimensional, lifeless, and even meaningless. This self-selected memory not only distorts the past but also does their authors a gross disservice.
In addition to organizing discussion groups, Arani obtained a government license to publish a journal named Donya (The World). He borrowed the title from Le Monde —the paper edited by Henri Barbusse, the famous French communist.[87] In all, twelve issues of Donya appeared
between February 1934 and June 1935. Its aim was to bring academic Marxism to the Iranian intelligentsia. As its masthead declared: "This journal will examine scientific, technical, social, and cultural issues from the materialistic point of view."
To pass the censors, Donya avoided inflammatory language, used a dry academic style, and published abundant nonpolitical articles on Persian literature and the modern sciences—on radium, cancer, television, nuclear physics, mathematics, car construction, sleep and dreams, aeronautical engineering, and electrical power plants. It also translated works from European languages—an article on blindness by Helen Keller; White Flowers, a short story about a teenage girl in Germany; and I Am Black, an indictment of racism in the American Deep South. Donya was definitely avant-garde.
Its forte, however, was articles on social sciences. Their titles are self-explanatory:
"Dialectical Materialism," "The Materialist Concept of Humanity," "Art and Materialism," "Mysticism and Materialism," "Law and Materialism," "Women and Materialism,"
"Determinism and Free Will in History," "The Material Foundations of Life and the Brain," "Value, Price, and Labor," and "The Evolution of the Species." The last summarized Lamarck and Darwin. Older readers were often troubled that this new framework left little room for God, the metaphysical, and the supernatural.[88] One youngster remembers Shariat Sangalaji,
the chief reforming cleric, throwing him out of his mosque for raising questions about the existence of God.[89] Academic Marxism came to Iran coupled with Darwin and the modern
sciences. Donya was unique for its time. It remains so.
Donya also challenged the notion of Aryan superiority—a notion gaining currency as officials
traveled to Nazi Germany and dabbled in the ideas of Count Gobineau, the nineteenth- ― 58 ―
century European racial theorist. Some suspected the censors tolerated Donya because they deemed it too dry and academic. Others joked that the censors had confused diyalektik (dialectic) with alakdolak (hair sieve).[90] One university student spoke for his age cohorts
when he said Donya captured his attention from the very moment he saw the first issue.[91]
Another wrote that Donya had whetted his generation's appetite, for it had discussed for the very first time in Persian such subjects as historical materialism.[92]
In publishing Donya , Arani was helped mostly by his two closest colleagues: Iraj Iskandari and Bozorg Alavi. The three used pseudonyms—Arani, the pen name Qazi (Judge); Iskandari, Jamshid (an ancient Iranian name); and Bozorg Alavi, Nakhoda, which means shipmaster as well as atheist and freethinker. Arani signed his own name only when writing purely scientific articles.
Iskandari was a French-educated lawyer from a highly respected family. His father—a Qajar prince—was revered as a martyr of the Constitutional Revolution. His uncle was the founder of the Socialist party and the leader of the nonclerical parliamentary opposition to Reza Shah. His own French education had been cut short when he forfeited his state scholarship by participating in student political activities. On his return home, he had met Arani and found employment as a Supreme Court attorney.
Bozorg Alavi—the founder of prison literature—was the younger brother of Morteza Alavi in Berlin. He had already established a literary reputation by publishing a collection of essays entitled Suitcase . His grandfather, a wealthy businessman, had supported the Constitutional Revolution and sat in the first Majles. His father, a businessman, had emigrated to Germany in the late 1910s and had committed suicide there after going bankrupt. His uncle was a well- known professor of Persian literature at Tehran University. Growing up in the Weimar Republic, Bozorg Alavi had been influenced by Freud and Kafka as well as Schiller, Marx, Engels, and Darwin. Returning home in 1928, he befriended other young intellectuals, pub-
― 59 ―
lished short stories, and translated Schiller and Hermann Hesse. He earned his living teaching German at the Ministry of Industries. At the time of his arrest, he was married to a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. In later years, he married the granddaughter of Ayatollah Tabatabai—one of the leading clerics of the Constitutional Revolution.
Many of the other intellectuals among the Fifty-three came from similar backgrounds—from prominent, even titled, but not necessarily wealthy, families. Dr. Mohammad Bahrami, a Berlin-educated professor of medicine, was the son of a titled court physician. Dr. Morteza Yazdi, a Berlin-trained surgeon, was the son of a senior cleric who had participated in the Constitutional Revolution. After his father's death, Yazdi had been raised by Hakim al- Mamalek, a court doctor and frequent cabinet minister as well as member of parliament. Similarly, Dr. Reza Radmanesh, a Sorbonne-educated physicist, and Nuraldin Alamutti, a senior judge, came from prominent families in Gilan and Qazvin, respectively. In their teens, these five had belonged to the youth section of the Communist party.
Khalel Maleki, a science teacher, came from a family highly respected both in Tabriz and in Sultanabad (Arak). Although in central Iran, Sultanabad contained a large Azeri-speaking community. Like Iskandari, Maleki had not been able to complete his European degree because of his student activities. Nasratallah Jahanshahlu, a leader of a recent strike in the Medical College, was the scion of an Afshar tribal leader from Zanjan. Mohammad-Reza Qodreh, another student who had organized a strike at the Teachers' College, came from a clerical family well known in central Iran. His family was related to the future Ayatollah Khomeini. Taqi Makinezhad, yet another strike leader at the Engineering College, came from a similar family in Arak. Both his father and his maternal grandfather had been senior clerics. Drs. Hossein and Morteza Sajjadi, brothers, had close relatives in the Majles and in the higher ranks of the state bureaucacy. Ehsan Tabari, one of the youngest of the group, was a second- year law student and the grandson of a prominent cleric in Mazandaran. A facile writer and
― 60 ―
learner of foreign languages, Tabari in later years became the chief popularizer of Marxism in Iran.
The police dragnet missed three other intellectuals who at the time happened to be out of the country: Sadeq Hedayat, Eprim Eshaq, and Abdul-Hossein Noshin. Hedayat, the towering figure in modern Persian prose, had, together with his friend Bozorg Alavi, introduced Kafka and Freud into Iran. From 1941 until his suicide in 1951, Hedayat worked so closely with the Tudeh that the police were to jump to the wrong conclusion that he was a secret member.[93]
Eshaq, a young Assyrian, was in England studying with Keynes. Considered to be one of Keynes's best students, Eshaq later became a don at Oxford. Noshin, a prominent stage
director, was in France trying to join those going to fight in the Spanish Civil War. After 1941, Noshin, together with some innovative actors, including his famous wife, Loreta, organized the county's first professional theater. Not surprisingly, many felt that Arani had attracted the best and the brightest of the new generation.
The labor organizers were led by Kamran Qazvini (Nasrollah Aslani). A KUTIV graduate, Qazvini had been sent to revive the Communist party. He formed a communal household in Tehran composed of veteran labor organizers. He worked in an Isfahan textile mill where he had organized a successful May Day strike. He collected strike money from such
sympathizers as Arani, Bozorg Alavi, and Iskandari. He also asked Arani to print a May Day manifesto praising the Comintern and demanding the release of all political prisoners.[94]
Qazvini, however, was not in the dock with the Fifty-three; he escaped from the Central Jail before the trial began.
The chief liaison between the labor organizers and the intellectuals was a Russian-trained pilot named Abdul-Samad Kambakhsh. The son of a Qajar prince living in modest