Communist Prisoners

The first political prisoners in Qasr were from the Communist party. They were to set the pattern for prison life for forthcoming generations of political inmates. Some two hundred communists were arrested in 1929–30 soon after organizing a series of strikes—in an Isfahan textile mill, in the Mazandaran railways, in the Mashed carpet workshops, and, most sensational of all, in the British-owned oil industry. Some were soon released. Others were sent into "internal exile"—northerners to the intolerable heat of Bushire, southerners to Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan. But thirty-eight were incarcerated in Qasr. Seven died there—all from natural causes. The other thirty-one remained there until 1941 when the Anglo-Soviet in-

vasion forced the government to grant a general amnesty to all political prisoners.

The thirty-one remaining communist prisoners spent much of these eleven years in block 7. There they set up their own komun (commune) with a three-man steering committee to coordinate their activities, pool their meager resources, organize their daily routines, and help those in need of financial and medical assistance.^[22] In fact, after the 1930 arrests in Iran and the Stalinist purges in Russia—which took a heavy toll from Iranian exiles—the Communist party of Iran ceased to exist for all practical purposes outside the walls of Qasr.^[23]

The regime intentionally created the impression that these communists had been convicted for espionage. In fact, they were not brought to court until 1938–39, and then they were tried retroactively under a 1931 law banning all forms of maram-e ishteraki (collectivist ideology).^[24] This 1931 law threatened anyone advocating "collectivism" or joining an organization—defined as more than two persons—that advocated "collectivism" with three to ten years in "solitary confinement." It also threatened those opposing the "constitutional monarchy" with prolonged incarceration and those taking up arms against the same monarchy with the death penalty. Reza Shah decreed this law without parliamentary discussion, knowing well that its sweeping language would be highly controversial, even for his handpicked deputies. Although these communists were not tried for espionage, some historians remain under the false impression that they had been convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.

The one major espionage trial of the reign did not implicate these thirty-eight. In 1930, Georges Agabekov, the head of the Soviet secret service in the Middle East, defected to France and presumably revealed what he knew of his agency. Soon the Iranian police rounded up thirty-two Soviet agents—many of them functionaries in the Ministry of Post and Telegraph. Two were executed, three were sentenced to life, and the others were given terms varying from five months to fifteen years.^[25] Only

one was to participate in the subsequent communist movement. In his memoirs, Agabekov mentions in passing that his superiors were so fearful of double agents that they strictly forbade the recruitment of local communists.^[26] Agabekov himself seems to have been remarkably ignorant of the Iranian Communist party—of both its internal workings and its recent history.^[27] The Soviets probably compartmentalized their espionage and revolutionary activities.

In Qasr, the communists distanced themselves from these spies. They looked down on them as weaklings who had ratted on each other, as simpletons who had been fooled into making self-incriminating confessions, and as "moral degenerates" indulging in opium and card gambling.^[28] What is more, they felt that anyone who had spied for money would again do the same for the prison authorities. According to one communist, such "highly dubious" characters were to be "avoided" at all costs.^[29] Another revealed in his interrogation that the party expelled anyone suspected of being a Soviet spy on the grounds that they were too untrustworthy.^[30] The lone spy who participated in the later communist movement—Sayyed Baqer Emami, the son of Tehran's Imam Jom'eh (Friday Prayer Leader)—continued to be handicapped by the reputation of being a dangerous ultraleftist—perhaps even an "agent provocateur."^[31]

Prison memoirs—most of them published after the 1979 revolution—reveal much about the social composition of the thirty-eight communist prisoners and thus of the early communist movement in Iran. (See table 1.) The thirty-eight were predominantly ethnic minorities. Two were Jews, another two were Armenians, and twenty-four were Azeris (Turkish-speakers originally from Iranian Azerbaijan). Persians numbered no more than four, and two of them had Turkic-speaking mothers. Ethnicity, however, does not appear to have been of great importance to them and hardly figures in their writings. At one time, the steering committee of their komun was composed of one Azeri and two Armenians.^[32]

The group was relatively young. At the time of arrest, most were in their late twenties or early thirties. This meant that they

had been in their impressionable teens at the time of the Russian Revolution. Few had higher degrees. Only two had completed college—both at the Medical College in Baku. Two had no formal education whatsoever. Eleven had been to primary school. Twenty had finished secondary school. Many had briefly attended the Communist University of the Toilers of the East located in Moscow. This was known in Iran by its Russian acronym, KUTIV. The Iranian regime considered KUTIV a school for espionage. In fact, it was an ideological institute designed to give party organizers a smattering of Marxism-Leninism. One alumnus estimates that some one hundred Iranians attended KUTIV at one time or another during the 1920s and 1930s.^[33]

Among the thirty-eight were thirteen teachers, three office employees, two doctors, one pharmacist, and one bookseller. There were also thirteen workers—many of them printers, carpenters, and skilled artisans. The early labor movement in Iran, as in many other countries, was located not so much in modern factories—which were few—as in the skilled crafts and trades.^[34] Only one among the thirty-eight had been born into the wealthy upper class.

Three of the thirty-eight—Jafar Pishevari, Yousef Eftekhari, and Ardashir Ovanessian—played particularly important roles both inside prison and, later, in national politics. They—as well as some of the others—were to publish prison memoirs in later years. Pishevari, the eldest of the three, was a founding member of the Communist party. Born in Iranian Azerbaijan as Jafar Javadzadeh, he and his family had emigrated to Baku when raiding tribesmen destroyed their home and livelihood. His father—an educated sayyed (presumed descendant of the Prophet)—earned a living running a small grocery store. After completing his schooling in Baku, Pishevari taught Turkish language and Persian literature at the local municipal high school. In his words, "The drama of the Russian Revolution had swept me into radical politics."^[35] He joined the Adalat (Justice) party formed by pro-Bolshevik Iranians in Baku. He participated in the famous Jangali Revolt in Gilan and served as

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interior commissar of the short-lived Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran. When the Adalat party reconstituted itself as the Communist party, he was elected to its central committee. After the demise of the Jangali Revolt, he went first to KUTIV and then to Tehran where he opened a bookstore and helped edit the trade union paper Haqiqat (Truth). He was arrested in 1930 when funds destined for striking oil workers in Abadan were traced back to him in Tehran. The police, however, failed to link him to the Jangali Revolt, probably because he had changed his name to Pishevari (Artisan).

Eftekhari had a similar background. His father, also a shopkeeper in Azerbaijan, had died young, forcing the family of four brothers to emigrate to Baku. There the eldest brother started a small business while the younger ones taught at local schools and joined the Iranian Communist party. Eftekhari and one other brother also studied at KUTIV, where they attended lectures given by Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. After returning to Iran in the mid-1920s, Eftekhari first set up a teachers' union in Tehran. He then moved to Abadan with three fellow Azeris determined, as he boasts, to organize the oil workers against the British.^[36]

By May Day 1929, Eftekhari had organized Iran's first oil strike, bringing the whole industry, including the refinery—which at that time was the largest in the world—to a total standstill. He mobilized the workers through literacy classes and public theaters; through protests against racial discrimination (the oil company discriminated in favor of British and Indian employees); and through demands over such bread-and-butter issues as the minimum wage, paid Fridays, job security, and the eight-hour day. The strike was not broken until the military arrested more than forty-five labor organizers. The British "thanked" and "congratulated" Reza Shah for his decisive intervention.^[37] Eftekhari, however, won fame as the man who had shaken the British Empire as well as the Pahlavi state.

Ovanessian had been born into an Armenian family living in Rasht. His father—originally from Tabriz—was a salesman-turned-pharmacist who apprenticed his sons to Alexander Ata-

begyan, a local Armenian pharmacist who later succeeded Prince Kropotkin as one of Russia's foremost intellectual anarchists. On completing his apprenticeship, Ovanessian forsook pharmacy for revolutionary politics. In his memoirs, he writes that one of his first recollections was that of the Jangalis holding enthusiastic rallies in Rasht.^[38]

Ovanessian soon joined the Cultural Society—the hotbed of radicalism in Rasht. There Armenian and Muslim intellectuals, including women, organized literacy classes, book readings, chamber concerts, soccer games, and theatrical shows, including Molière's anticlerical play, Tartuffe.^[39] Conservatives denounced the society as a den of iniquity—even of Babis. The British Consul kept close tabs on the society, suspecting it of being a den of Soviet spies.^[40] After all, did it not proudly display Lenin's portrait every May Day?^[41] Similar cultural societies existed in nearby Qazvin and Enzeli (Pahlavi).^[42]

Ovanessian joined the Communist party in 1923 and was sent to KUTIV in 1925. On his return in 1926, he organized a pharmacists' union in Tehran and served as the party's trouble-shooter in the provinces, traveling frequently to Rasht, Qazvin, Mashed, and Tabriz. On one such visit to Tabriz, he was arrested and transferred to Tehran. He spent the next eleven years in Qasr. The British Embassy later described Ovanessian as one of the premier "brains" and "dominating personalities" of the Iranian communist movement.^[43]

The prison memoirs of these three—and others—document many hardships but few actual incidents of physical brutality. They were kept in limbo for years without being formally charged.^[44] The long wait drove one to attempt suicide. Some were never brought to trial.^[45] Others were sentenced to ten years—the maximum permitted by the 1931 law. Of course, the time spent awaiting trial was not taken into account. Those completing their sentences were invariably banished to the provinces. The police chief later testified that the Shah had instructed him to send these prisoners into "indefinite exile"—preferably to the deep south.^[46]

Moreover, prisoners were occasionally forced to watch

executions. When a group of bandits tried to break out of Qasr, their leader was hanged in the main courtyard in full view of all inmates.^[47] In addition, prisoners were often deprived of books, newspapers, visitors, food packages, and proper medical care. Of the seven communists who did not survive prison, most died from lack of medicine: one succumbed to appendicitis, two to heart attacks, and at least two to typhus epidemics. What is more, any blatant infringement of prison regulations was punished with solitary confinement. Pishevari described this as the very worst punishment in Qasr.^[48] He added that this was real "torture" because humans are by nature social beings in dire need of companionship, conversation, and the sharing of such everyday pleasures as tea, cigarettes, and laughter.

The absence of physical violence turned interrogations into battles of wit. Eftekhari writes that when he was arrested his interrogator threatened him with torture, but he mockingly dismissed this as a bad joke, knowing well that physical violence was not permitted.^[49] It took the interrogator months to discover even his name and identity.

Ovanessian reminisces that his initial interrogation in Tabriz lasted two days, beginning early in the morning and ending late at night. He describes his two interrogators as persistent and experienced but correct and cordial. They shared meals with him and flattered him and other educated prisoners by praising their learning and insisting that they respected their social ideals. They tried to trick them into thinking their accomplices had already implicated them. The prisoners, in turn, tried to put the interrogators on false trails. Ovanessian's Tabriz contact pretended he did not know Ovanessian's identity but claimed that his forehead bore the calluses of someone who diligently performed his daily Muslim prayers. Ovanessian writes that his interrogator had pointed out to the Shah in 1930 that advocating socialism was not in itself a crime. After his 1941 release, Ovanessian remained on cordial terms with some of his interrogators. One even phoned in 1944 to congratulate him on his election to parliament.^[50]

The interrogators used similar tactics with Pishevari. They

claimed that his accomplices had already testified that he had been sent by the Comintern with a false identity to participate in the Jangali Revolt, launch a communist newspaper, and foment unrest among oil workers. Demanding a "face-to-face" confrontation with these "liars," Pishevari offered a number of plausible explanations for his past life. He had been a mere observer of the Jangali Revolt. His Persian had not been good enough to enable him to write newspaper articles. He had come to Tehran because his in-laws resided there. His knew some of the oil strikers by sight because they occasionally visited his bookstore. He had adopted a new name only because the government had recently ordered all citizens to obtain identity cards. He added that it was true he had been an ardent revolutionary in his youth but age had mellowed him. When asked to name fellow students at KUTIV, he listed those who had either died or remained outside Iran. He repeated these explanations ten years later when brought to trial. He added caustically that the passage of time had faded his memory and that the 1931 law could not possibly apply to him because he had been in prison since 1930.^[51] He commented that the main strategy of the police was to to break down prisoners by offering them bribes and threatening them with solitary confinement.^[52]

This conspicuous absence of torture can be explained in a number of ways. First, the law explicitly banned the use of physical force to extract information. In 1941, at his own trial, the police chief successfully pleaded that he had respected the law banning such "abhorrent" investigatory methods.^[53] Ovanessian writes that the prison authorities—with the notable exception of the notorious "doctor" in the Central Jail—were on the whole "decent," "reasonable," "sympathetic," and even "European-trained products of the Constitutional Revolution."^[54] The police chief was himself an accomplished classical violinist.

Second, the Comintern kept close tabs. Eftekhari and his two colleagues were convinced that they were not tortured because the regime shunned bad foreign publicity, especially from the Comintern.^[55] Leo Karakhan, the Soviet deputy foreign minis-

ter, visited Qasr on his 1933 tour of Iran—just before falling victim to the Stalinist purges.

Third, the communist prisoners were willing to organize hunger strikes to protest outrageous behavior. Such strikes erupted in Tabriz, in the Central Jail, and in Qasr. In 1929–30, prisoners in Tabriz and the Central Jail protested the mass detentions without formal charges. Likewise, prisoners in Qasr went on a hunger strike to demand the right to earn pocket money in the prison workshop. Ovanessian writes that destitute prisoners needed this income to ward off bribes offered by the prison authorities. These three strikes were partially successful. Less important detainees were released. Political prisoners gained access to the workshop on condition they did not use it during the same hours as the Lurs and Kurds—these tribesmen were segregated in their own cell blocks. The wardens feared fraternization between communists and such "dangerous" inmates. After the Qasr strike, the warden exclaimed that Ovanessian could no longer deny being a communist because "only communists organize hunger strikes." Ovanessian retorted that Gladstone—the Conservative prime minister of Britain—had himself once organized such a strike. He later commented that this was pure fabrication, but he figured the warden had not read enough European history to know better.^[56]

Fourth, the regime did not have a pressing need to use torture. It was not seeking vital security information as the Communist party had rejected the notion of armed struggle. And it was not in the business of extracting ideological recantations and winning over hearts and minds. A few minor figures were released once they pledged in writing to stay out of politics. These pledges were never published. Ovanessian explains that the government was reluctant to acknowledge even the existence of politically committed citizens.^[57] He adds that those who signed such pledges terminated their political careers because they were stigmatized as "sellouts" and "corrupt collaborators."^[58] For its part, the regime rarely sought such pledges. In a revealing passage, Pishevari writes that one worn-out pris-

oner offered to write His Imperial Highness a letter pledging full support and recanting his ideological past. The warden laughed, retorting that the "regime wanted not active citizens but obedient and apolitical subjects."^[59] The regime was more interested in keeping subjects passive and outwardly obedient than in mobilizing them and boring holes into their minds. Reza Shah had created a military monarchy—not an ideologically charged autocracy.

Physical force, however, continued to be used on common criminals, on suspected spies, and on those accused of plotting regicide. Criminals, especially burglars, were subjected to the bastinado and the strappado to reveal their hidden loot. Suspected spies and assassins were beaten, deprived of sleep, and subjected to the dreaded qapani —the binding of arms tightly behind the back. Sometimes this caused the joints to crack. It was rumored that this excruciating torture had been imported from Western Europe. Ovanessian writes that the qapani prompted some spies to seal their own fates.^[60] Although political prisoners were often threatened with the qapani, they were rarely subjected to it.

On the whole, political prisoners were treated reasonably well. Block 7 was clean and well ventilated—unlike block 5, reserved for common criminals. They were allowed to bring in their own clothes, blankets, bedding, and sometimes books. They received home meals and pocket money—friends and relatives entrusted money to the warden, and the warden, in turn, issued prisoners weekly jetons (coupons). They were permitted visitors; by the mid-1930s, Tuesdays, Fridays, and national holidays were designated visiting days. Forty years later, Ovanessian reminisced that on their release in 1941 he and his fellow prisoners had been hailed as heroes for having survived the "Iranian Bastille." But, he adds, Qasr did not really deserve this sinister reputation.^[61] Of course, Ovanessian, like many, had an exaggerated notion of the original Bastille.

The main concern of the political prisoners was not torture but boredom and lack of privacy. One inmate writes that everyone, including the jailers, was deadened by the monotony of

waking up every morning at the same hour, eating the same tasteless breakfast, walking in the same courtyard, listening to the same complaints, and hearing the same trampling of boots, the locking and unlocking of the same iron gates.^[62] Prison, he adds, was like a small village where everyone poked their noses into other people's business:

The one thing you must keep in mind is that the occupants of these villages inhabit a tiny world. They tend to squabble over small things and obsess over their neighbors' sex lives. They gossip when an older inmate goes around with a younger one. What is more, the overcrowding leads to petty squabbling over such issues as whose bedding should make room for walking space, who should go to the courtyard when, and how much should the window be left open. What a relief it is to get away from one's own cell even if for a short spell.^[63]

To break the monotony, the prisoners organized a wide variety of activities. They spent as much time as possible in the courtyard walking, exercising, and playing soccer and volleyball. Some grew plants and vegetables in the prison garden. Others—especially from the Cultural Society in Rasht—put on skits and shows. They played chess and recited poetry—especially Hafez, Sa'di, and Lahuti (their contemporary revolutionary poet who had fled to the Soviet Union). Ferdowsi was shunned as a royalist. They read both smuggled-in newspapers and permitted books—the favorite titles were Dumas's Mount Cristo and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front . Some translated Chekhov's plays, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina , and Petrushevky's Islam in Iran . They organized literacy and language classes. Ovanessian added French to his working knowledge of Turkish, Persian, Armenian, Russian, and English. Pishevari mastered colloquial Persian—which he had not been able to speak fluently in the 1920s.^[64]

They also socialized with inmates from other blocks during their periodic visits to the prison clinic. They invited guests to their komun dinner parties to celebrate May Day and the Oc-

tober Revolution. They told each other stories. Eftekhari comments that a story, however interesting, becomes boring when heard for the umpteenth time. For example, the Bakhtiyari tribesmen drove him up the wall by telling and retelling how one of their heroines had saved the Constitutional Revolution.^[65] The poorer communists earned pocket money making toys in the prison workshop. Those with craft skills trained others to make goods that were then sold to the outside market through the prison guards, who, of course, took their commissions. The money thus earned bought the inmates cigarettes and citrus fruits considered essential to survive disease, especially the typhus epidemics that periodically hit the prisons.^[66]

The communist prisoners also spent considerable time discussing the hot issues of the day—especially the debate over "World Revolution" versus "Socialism in One Country." Ovanessian, Eftekhari, and Pishevari took different positions. Ovanessian, who later used the pen name Ahan (Iron), supported the official party line, arguing that industrialization and collectivization would inevitably lay the groundwork for democracy and socialism in the Soviet Union. Eftekhari, who lost a brother in the purges, denounced Stalin for "betraying" Lenin, failing to export the revolution, and using brutal methods to crush the opposition. Meanwhile, Pishevari, while still loyal to the Comintern, argued that ultra-revolutionary slogans about class struggles were counterproductive in such backward semicolonial countries as Iran.^[67] He insisted that radicals in these countries should think more in terms of creating a cross-class progressive organization—such as the Democratic party that had played a crucial role in Iran from 1906 to 1921.^[68] One communist prisoner repeated the old Persian saying: "If you put two Iranians in one place you will get at least three different political views."^[69]