Beyond Borders: An Entangled History of Communism in the Post-Ottoman Middle East

In 1922, Soviet citizen Mikhail Borisovich Gol'man penned one last report from Ankara. In the last part, he elaborated on how the Communist International could smuggle material and people from Anatolia to Syria and Iraq. After concluding that passing the frontier by carts had proven easier than the seaborne journey, he wryly noted, "The night comes, and all Turkey is fast asleep—including the policemen and the border control. From 11 pm to 4 am, the power in Anatolia belongs to the Communist Party of Turkey and the occasional poor passers-by."¹

Gol'man's attention to the practicalities of crossing the newly formed borders separating Turkey from its southern neighbors was no coincidence. Gol'man, a revolutionary militant since the early 1910s and a Bolshevik since 1917, was seasoned in the intricacies of underground communist activity.² He was coming to the end of his mission as the Comintern envoy for the Ankara-based People's Communist Party of Turkey (THİF), and he had spent the better part of the year composing an apparatus capable of forging ties with Bilad al-Sham and Iraq. Under his leadership, at one point, six out of the thirteen Central Committee members of THİF were charged with missions concerning Iraq and Syria.³ As a part of this all-out commitment to reach Syria, Mehmet Hasib, a candidate member of the THİF's Central Committee, took a trip to Damascus in early 1922.⁴

Figure 1.

Mikhail Borisovich Gol'man. Image courtesy of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), f. 495, op. 65a, d. 5384, ll. 1.

Sites and Agents of Post-Imperial Connections

The choice of Mehmet Hasib for this mission demonstrates the resilience of the radical ties forged in the late Ottoman era and their importance for ensuing communist militancy. As a newly-minted communist, Mehmet Hasib was not well-versed in Marxist theory—he had read some Proudhon, even less Marx—but he was well-connected. His father, born in Dagestan, was exiled to Syria by Abdülhamid II after siding with Ali Suavi's foiled coup attempt in 1878. Mehmet Hasib was born in Damascus during his father's days in exile. Then, as a student in the imperial capital, he took part in the Young Turk movement and moved to Ankara in 1896 to avoid persecution. In the wake of the 1908 revolution, he returned to the capital and joined the journal İştirak, which functioned as the incubator of the Ottoman Socialist Party.⁵ Then, once again, he was Ankara-bound, where he collaborated with the socialist paper İnsaniyet. Following a political hiatus during the Great War, Mehmet Hasib joined the THİF, in his words, "after the Anatolian Revolution began."⁶ His Damascene origins and his stints in pre-Comintern Ottoman socialism made him ideally situated for this mission.

The connections he forged in Istanbul and beyond would come in handy. In a letter about his mission, Mehmet Hasib (who by then used the nom de guerre Şuayib) pointed out that he was originally from Syria and knew many people there. He had family in Damascus, Beirut and As-Salt. Indeed, he did not just have family there, but old comrades too. Some of them were Arab nationalists, and others were his old colleagues from İştirak.⁷ They now lived in different nation-states-in-formation, but the radical ties forged in the imperial capital died hard.

Şuayib left Ankara on March 13, 1922 and arrived in Damascus via Adana.⁸ His tasks were bold. Yet, just a few months after his appointment, the French occupiers in Syria got wind of his mission. His identity was exposed, and the party replaced him with another militant named Bekir. Nonetheless, his networking did pay off, and in August 1922, three Syrian communists, "a merchant from Aleppo, a journalist and a mechanic," reached Mersin with a letter from Şuayib.⁹

Şuayib...