Roundtable Discussion (October 1983)

These solo performances were followed in October with a "roundtable discussion" of seventeen top leaders. This was televised in three ninety-minute segments; and then their transcripts were circulated widely through newspapers, journals, even pamphlets with color illustrations.^[43] Meanwhile, videotapes of the whole event were repeatedly shown in Iranian consulates throughout the world. This was video recantation par excellence, both in production and in distribution.

The event was staged in the Evin lecture hall. Its high walls were decked for the occasion with large banners declaring "Death to the Soviets," "Death to America," Neither East Nor West," "We don't accept as Iranians those who sacrifice their Islamic and national values for the U.S. and the USSR." The seventeen sat cowed under the banners looking repentant and forlorn. But they had in front of them microphones and water cups—as if at an academic meeting or a press conference.

Among the seventeen were seven who had already appeared—Kianuri, Behzadi, Qaempanah, Amoui, Rasadi, Sheltouki, and Ovanessian. The other ten were all members of the central committee. Some were well-known nationally, having run recently for the Majles or the Assembly of Experts. Dr. Hossein Jowdat, the oldest, was the Sorbonne-educated physicist who had escaped from Qasr in 1950. His elder brother, an army officer who had joined the Azerbaijan revolt, had been executed in 1946. He himself had lived in exile since 1955.

Abbas Hejri, another army officer, had spent twenty-five years in prison together with Amoui and Sheltouki. Mohammad Pourhormozan and Mehdi Kayhan, two survivors of the 1945 Khorasan mutiny, had lived in exile from 1946 until 1979. Ali Galavij, originally from the Kurdish Democratic party, had fled to the Soviet Union after the collapse of the 1946 Kurdish revolt. He had joined the Tudeh in 1960 while studying for a doctorate. Similarly, Anushirevan Ibrahimi, who had a doctorate in history, had made his way to the Soviet Union in 1946 after the collapse of the Azerbaijan government. His elder

brother had been the justice minister in that government and had been executed in 1946. Their father had been a founding member of the Communist party and had been killed in the Jangali Revolt.

Farajollah Mizani, another recent returnee from the Soviet Union, had joined the Tudeh in 1945 while studying at Tehran University. He had escaped to the Soviet Union in 1957 where he had obtained a doctorate in Persian literature while helping Noshin reinterpret the Shahnameh as a radical antiroyalist epic. He had also headed the party's clandestine radio station Payk-e Iran (Iran's Messenger), which had been located first in East Germany and then in Bulgaria. He was a regular contributor to Donya under the pen name F. M. Javanshir.

Assef Razmdedeh, a factory worker, had been arrested in the early 1970s for organizing illegal unions and had been kept in Qasr even after completing a seven-year prison sentence. Finally, Mehdi Partovi and Shahroukh Jahangeri, both former Fedayis, had joined the party while in prison, and during the revolution had been instrumental in setting up an underground armed network for the Tudeh. Although modest in size, this network had played a role in the final February 1979 confrontation with the royalist forces. Partovi and Jahangeri were the only members of the seventeen who were under forty years of age.

These seventeen reflect the social composition of the top Tudeh leadership in the 1980s. Their average age was fifty-six. Jowdat was seventy-five; Kianuri, sixty-eight. Seven were former military officers—three of them had each spent twenty-four years in prison. Fourteen had graduated from institutions of higher learning—seven from military academies, six from the Soviet Union, and two from Western Europe. Fifteen came from the salaried middle class. Only two were workers—a typesetter and a factory worker. In terms of ethnicity, the group contained eight Azeris, seven Persians, one Kurd, and one Armenian. Like the early communist movement—but unlike the early Tudeh party—the Azeri component was pronounced. (See table 7.)

Some prominent members of the central committee were conspicuous by their absence from the roundtable. Behazin had disappeared from public view after the May Day program. He spent the next few years in prison translating Roman Rolland's epic novel Jean-Christophe, which he renamed The Free Spirit . Ehsan Tabari—the party's main theorist—had suffered a stroke and was being nursed for a later appearance. Taqi Key-manash, another officer who had spent twenty-four years in prison, had died during his interrogation. So had thirteen others.^[44] Maryam Firuz, the head of the women's branch and Kianuri's spouse, was also absent despite her well-known name—she had recently run for both the Majles and the Assembly of Experts. It is not clear whether her absence was due to clerical sensitivity about women participating in such shows—especially at the same table as men—or due to the fact that her interrogation had left her ear and spine permanently impaired. She had trouble hearing and sitting.^[45]

The roundtable discussion reads like a parody of public recantations. Amoui—respected because of his twenty-four-year imprisonment—chaired. He opened and closed the meetings but otherwise said little. His introduction saluted the Great Leader of the Revolution, the Founder of the Islamic Republic as well as the Heroic and Honorable People of Iran, and the generous volunteers fighting the Baathist invaders from Iraq. He sought forgiveness for all the participants, arguing that these discussions proved beyond doubt that the Tudeh had "links with the Soviets" and that Marxism had "failed to find roots among the Muslim masses." He concluded, "You viewers, like us, must put yourself at the service of the Imam."

The others opened with similar salutations, sketched their own political careers, and insisted that their presence was entirely voluntary. Kianuri ridiculed the rumor that he had been executed and repeated that he had changed his views not because of coercion but because of "confronting the truth in prison." Ovanessian joked that the rumor of this death was much exaggerated. Mizani dismissed reports that he had been subjected to drugs supplied by MOSSAD: "Our discussions with

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our prison guards convinced us that the revolution had made great strides for the masses—especially for the recent migrants into the cities." Sheltouki declared that in prison he had realized that all these years he had been reading the wrong type of books: "The simple fact is that Iran and Marxism-Leninism are diametrically different in all aspects—in ideology, thought, psychology, sociology, and way of life."

Kayhan declared that the guards had psychologically disarmed him with their deep and sincere respect for the toiling masses: "Prison woke us up and made us conscious of the enormity of our crimes. . . . Prison gave us the lash of truth [shalaq-e haqayeq ]." Behzadi declared that he was there to bear witness to the young generation and to show what happens when one wanders from the narrow and straight path. Partovi thanked the wardens for their humanitarian consideration, and argued that history proved torture could never change the convictions of the truly committed. Jowdat described his prison experiences as "highly educational" and thanked the mothers of his guards for having brought into the world such "upright, honest, and considerate human beings." It is not clear how many viewers caught the irony.

In presenting negative propaganda against themselves, they reiterated the litany of historical episodes when the left had supposedly "betrayed" the nation—again beginning with 1905 and ending with the war against Iraq. In doing so, they observed a vague division of labor, with each focusing on his own field of party expertise.

Kianuri repeated more or less his earlier history lesson, stressing that lack of intellectual sophistication had led the Tudeh to persistently "betray the nation." He also "revealed some historical secrets." The Soviets had apparently "created" the Fifty-three. The Tudeh had contemplated supporting Shariat-madari against Khomeini. The central committee had eliminated from Rouzbeh's last testament any reference to his assassination exploits—especially those of Massoud and Lankrani. "We wanted to portray Rouzbeh as a revolutionary martyr

with no blemishes whatsoever." Little of this was either new or proof of treason.

Meanwhile, Jowdat went over the Lankrani murder. Ibrahimi insinuated that Pishevari had hatched the Azerbaijan revolt because of his personal disputes with the Tudeh and because of his failure to get elected to the first party congress. Galavij claimed that imperialists wanted to create a united Kurdestan and that the Tudeh had done its best to woo members away from Kumaleh and the Kurdish Democratic party. Pourhormozan complained that whereas the Tudeh had persistently supported the Soviets, the Soviets had equally persistently failed to help the Tudeh.

Qaempanah claimed that "the KGB began recruiting from the Firqeh and the Tudeh as soon as these parties fled to the Soviet Union." "They wanted information on our internal working and were particularly fearful of Maoism." Partovi acknowledged that after the Islamic Revolution the Tudeh had retained some weapons and refused to disband its underground network. Rasadi stated that the Soviets were eager to obtain information on the political situation in Iran—especially on such politicians as Bani-Sadr. Kayhan admitted working for the Voice of the Iranian People, a Soviet-financed radio station. He added that this station had supported the invasion of Afghanistan, the arming of Saddam Hossein, and the White Revolution—the last would have been news to the Shah. He further added that the Tudeh—presumably unlike the Islamic Republic—had a "cult of personality" and believed in "blind obedience to its leader." Finally, Hejri thanked the authorities for dissolving the party and declared that during his twenty-five-year imprisonment he had never once imagined he would end up in his present predicament.

Although these presentations used such loaded terms as KGB, khiyanat (treason), beganeh (foreigners), jasousi (espionage), fetnah (sedition), touteh (conspiracy), barandakhtan (overthrow), and vabasteh-e khareji (foreign dependency), they contained nothing earthshaking. It was common knowledge

that the Tudeh advocated Marxism; failed to forestall the 1953 coup; communicated with the Soviets; and consistently supported the Soviet Union, which support sometimes put it on a collision course with the nationalists. But it is unlikely that they considered these "proofs of treason"—unless, of course, one drastically stretches the definition of treason. In which case, many others, including Khomeini, would be vulnerable to the charge of treason. After all, he—like most clerics—had failed to support Mosaddeq against the Shah and the CIA.

The only hard evidence presented at the roundtable were acknowledgments by Partovi, Ovanessian, and Qaempanah that they had hand-carried sealed reports from Kianuri to the Soviet Embassy. But it was not clear whether these contained top secret military information—as the government claimed—or merely Kianuri's views on the political situation—as Kianuri himself insisted. Whatever the truth, they formed the linchpin of the forthcoming tribunal against 101 defendants—most of them from the armed forces. In later years, Kianuri explained that two of his many reports had discussed military matters: one had dealt with American F14 planes; another with a Soviet submarine that had sunk in the Persian Gulf before the revolution. But he did not consider this "espionage" because these reports affected the security of the United States—not that of Iran. Kianuri reminded his audience that the Imam himself had described the United States as "the main enemy of Iran."^[46]

These seventeen were to meet different fates. Kianuri, Amoui, and Qaempanah remained incarcerated for over a decade. Kianuri and Amoui survived to publish their memoirs—of course, leaving out their recent prison experiences. Kianuri's memoirs were even published under the auspices of the Islamic Republic. Ovanessian and Sheltouki soon "died" in Evin. Partovi was pardoned and given a publishing house. Jahangeri was executed in 1984. The others—Hejri, Behzadi, Rasadi, Pourhormozan, Kayhan, Ibrahimi, Mizani, Razmdedeh, and the eighty-year-old Jowdat—perished in the 1988 executions.