The Formation and Structure of the Komalay Shoreshgeri Zahmatkeshani Kurdistani Iran (The Revolutionary Association of the Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan)

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with an analysis of the formation and structure of the Komalay Shoreshgeri Zahmatkeshani Kurdistani Iran (KSZKI; the Revolutionary Organization of Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan). Although officially announced shortly after the triumph of the 1979 revolution, the KSZKI soon became a prominent political force with an active presence in the political and ideological fields in the process of the transformation of power and the subsequent resurgence of the nationalist movement in Rojhelat. The analysis here focuses mainly on the ambiguous identity of the KSZKI: its ideological and political vacillation between ethnic-Kurdish and Marxist class identities, which constituted the focal point of a series of political and ideological conflicts, struggles and splits in the organisation. The political and ideological conflicts and struggles leading to the transformation of the KSZKI from a Maoist-populist organisation to an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party with a strict class identity in 1983, it is argued, signified the persistence of this perennial ambiguity. The metamorphosis of the KSZKI into the Communist Party of Iran, it is further argued, did in no way resolve this ambiguity, as was shown by the subsequent controversies, conflicts and splits over the status of the ethnic-Kurdish identity in the ideological representation and political programme of the organisation in exile in Iraqi Kurdistan.