Tudeh Party of Iran

The Tudeh Party of Iran (Ḥezb-e Tūde-ye Īrān) is an Iranian communist party. Formed in 1941, with Soleiman Mirza Eskandari as its head, it had considerable influence in its early years and played an important role during Mohammad Mosaddegh's campaign to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and his term as prime minister. The crackdown that followed the 1953 coup against Mosaddegh is said to have "destroyed" the party, although a remnant persisted. The party still exists but has remained much weaker as a result of its banning in Iran and mass arrests by the Islamic Republic in 1982, as well as the executions of political prisoners in 1988. Tudeh identified itself as the historical offshoot of the Communist Party of Persia. The party has generally been described as "communist" by historians (for example: "The Tudeh Party was a classical pro-Soviet Union communist party, but wrapped itself at the time in nationalism to be more attractive to Iranians"), but is sometimes described simply as "leftist" or even "left-leaning" by more sympathetic sources. Various academic sources have described the party as "Stalinist". The history of the communist movement in Iran dates back to the late 19th century, when Marxism first became introduced to the nation's intellectual and working classes as a result of the rapid growth of industry and the subsequent transformation of the country's economy from a feudalistic system into a capitalistic one. Being close to the Soviet Union and the Caucasus, northern Iran became the primary center of underground Marxist and social democrat political activity, and many such groups came into being over the years. The Communist Party of Iran was founded in June 1920 in Bandar-e Anzali, in the province of Gilan, as a result of the first congress of Iranian social democrats. Haydar Khan Amo-oghli, who was one of the leaders of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, became the national secretary of the new party.