Avetis Sultan-Zade

Avetis Sultanovich Sultan-Zade (born Avetis Mikaelian; ; ; ; 1889 – 16 July 1938) was an Iranian-born ethnic Armenian communist revolutionary and economist, best remembered as one of the founders of the Communist Party of Iran. Sultan-Zade was a delegate to the Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 and was for a time one of the leading figures of the Marxist revolutionary movement in the so-called "East." Following his demotion from the leadership of the Iranian Communist Party and the Comintern in 1923, Sultan-Zada lived in the Soviet Union where he worked as a government functionary in the banking industry.

During the Great Terror of the late 1930s, Sultan-Zade came under the suspicion of the secret police. He was arrested in January 1938 and jailed for five months before being tried and shot as an alleged spy. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.

Biography

Early years

Avetis Sultan-Zade was born Avetis Mikaelian in 1889 in the Iranian town of Maragheh, located in East Azerbaijan, a province in the northwestern part of the current Iran. The Mikaelians were a poor family of Armenian extraction and were not Muslim.

Mikaelian was first educated in his hometown in Persia before leaving for the Russian Empire in 1907. Mikaelian was enrolled in a seminary near the city Erevan, Armenia (then part of the Russian Empire), where he first became involved in radical politics through participation in Marxist study circles established amongst the students. He subsequently worked in various capacities as a party functionary in the Caucasus. Sultan-Zade traveled organizing local affiliates of the Adalat Party as well as the group's first political conference, held in Tashkent. He does not seem to have played a leading role at this gathering, perhaps owing to factional differences within the Iranian delegation. He did serve in the capacity of translator, however, rendering Russian into Turkish.

Sultan-Zade published his first book in 1920, called by one historian "the only book published by the Comintern about the League of Nations." In this work, Ekonomicheskaia politika finansogo kapitala (The Political Economy of Finance-Capital), Sultan-Zade outlined the struggle of national bourgeoisies to compete for foreign markets, tying international political institutions with the struggle for resources and markets. This orientation brought him into conflict with elements in the Comintern who sought to work closely with such popular nationalist leaders.

Sultan-Zade was again a delegate to the 1921 3rd World Congress of the Comintern, at which he was returned to his seat on the governing Executive Committee of the Comintern. after 1922 Sultan-Zade no longer was the decisive figure in determining the political line of the Communist Party of Iran. In addition a synopsis of this book was published in article form in the pages of the multi-lingual magazine Communist International.

Sultan-Zade wrote a series of articles in 1922 relating to various issues relating to the political and economic situation in Iran, India, and China, including pieces on the peasantry, the battle of the capitalist powers to obtain oil in the region, and the matter of industrialization of these largely undeveloped nations.

While Sultan-Zade was again a delegate to the 3rd Enlarged Plenum of ECCI in June 1923, this marked the end of his participation in the top leadership of the Persian Communist Party and the Comintern apparatus.

Sultan-Zade continued to work in the Soviet banking apparatus until 1927, taking time in 1926 to edit a financial reference book prepared in conjunction with a number of Soviet economists.

Return to Persian politics

A radical turn of the Communist International away from temporizing with non-communist nationalist movements paved the way for Sultan-Zade's return to the political leadership of the Iranian Communist Party in 1927.

Arrest and execution

Sultan-Zade was arrested in Moscow by the secret police on January 17, 1938, on charges of "espionage". After five months of imprisonment and interrogation he was found guilty of being a "spy for Nazi Germany" on June 18, 1938 and sentenced to be shot.

Footnotes

Works

Экономичeская политика финансового капитала (The political economy of finance-capital). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1920. Экономика и проблемы национальных революций в странах ближнего и дальнего Востока (Economics and the problems of national revolution in the countries of the Near and Far East). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1921. Кризис мирового хозяйства и новая военная гроза (The crisis of the world economy and the new threat of war). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1921. Современная Персия (Contemporary Persia). Moscow: n.p., 1922. Аграрный вопрос в современная Персии (The agrarian question in contemporary Persia). Moscow: n.p., 1922. Колониальный восток: Социально-экономические очерки (The Colonial East: Socio-Economic Studies). (Editor). Moscow: Novaia Moskva, 1924. Железо, уголь и нефть и мировая борьба за них (Iron, coal, and oil and the global struggle for them). Leningrad: n.p., 1924. Персия (Persia). Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1925. Колониальный страны и мировая хозяйства (The colonial nations and world economy). Moscow: 1928.