On Vartan İhmalyan’s political autobiography, Bir Yaşam Öyküsü (A Life Story) (3)

Vartan İhmalyan’s superficial impressionism

In his political autobiography, A Life Story (Bir Yaşam Öyküsü), which he completed over the course of some eleven years and which covers the 66-year span from his birth in 1913 to 1979, Vartan İhmalyan avoids engaging with many aspects of the complex geopolitical and ideological fault lines of those decades. There are numerous significant subjects and developments from that period which he either touches on only in passing or omits altogether. This omission, inevitably, considerably weakens the substance of the work. [*]

I believe there are several reasons for this. Yet, in my view, the main one is that the central focus of İhmalyan’s book is a reckoning with the leadership of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) – namely the triumvirate of Zeki Baştımar, İsmail Bilen and Aram Pehlivanyan, who made up the TKP Central Committee. The author’s overriding aim is to tear away their masks and, from his own perspective, to lay bare their true faces in all their starkness and ugliness.

İsmail Bilen and Zeki Baştımar

In his reckoning with the triumvirate, İhmalyan brands them as "bad people" and frames the issue through an entirely anti-Marxist, impressionistic lens. For instance, in the brief preface to A Life Story -barely three paragraphs long- he writes:

So long as the individuals who make up human societies exist, in the most rudimentary sense, as "good" and "bad"; and so long as the "bad" who remain from one society continue their urge to extract the greatest benefit for themselves from the fresh shoots of the new one; then, despite all the efforts of society, although at times the good and at times the bad will prevail in this struggle, neither will the bad vanish when the good prevail, nor will the good disappear when the bad prevail. (p. 13)

Towards the end of his book, İhmalyan draws up a list of the "good" and the "bad" within the TKP:

Since becoming a member of the TKP in 1933, I have known many honourable and decent Turkish communists. To name just a few: my late friend from Göztepe American College, Rasih Güran; the late Faris Erkman; the late cobbler Selâhattin; the late lathe worker Hakkı Usta; Müntekim; the late Sabiha Sertel; Doctor Hayk Açıkgöz; my late brother Jak İhmalyan; Bilal Şen; Osman Alper; the late Doctor Şefik Hüsnü; Gün; Atilla; Veli Gündüz; Orhan; and others besides. These were communists who came to communism not to take from it, but to give to it.

He then names two figures from the opposite camp, whom he lambasts repeatedly and in the harshest of terms throughout the book:

Alas, I cannot say the same of İ. Bilen (Laz İsmail, Marat, Erdem, Üstüngel) -responsible for the death of Yakup Demir (Zeki Baştımar) and now at the head of the party- and of Aram Pehlivanyan (A. Saydan). I can say that no one who has led the TKP until now has been as driven, as selfish, or as blinded by lust for power as these two. (pp. 300–301)

A few pages later, the author once again sets out the fundamental reason for writing his political autobiography in the following words:

My duty, as a Communist, is to tell the truth, to warn the young, and to counsel against idealising every Communist simply for being one. (…) Yes, I repeat: one must not idealise every Communist merely because he is a Communist. (p. 309)

As is evident, İhmalyan acknowledges Baştımar, Bilen and Pehlivanyan -the triumvirate- as communists; yet in his eyes they are bad people and, by extension, bad communists.

Aram Pehlivanyan and İsmail Bilen

According to İhmalyan, this is the heart of the matter. The young communists in the party’s rank and file must learn what the bad communists did in the past, remain aware that not every communist is necessarily a good one, and ensure that in future only good communists hold the reins of party leadership. A Life Story was written by Vartan İhmalyan -who, from 1965 onwards, had been entirely excluded from party activity and in effect expelled by the TKP Central Committee- chiefly with this purpose in mind.

But İhmalyan does not stop there. A page later, he seeks to explain how "bad communists" could come to occupy positions of responsibility -particularly in the countries he describes as socialist- by attributing it to “human nature, the animal side of man, and man’s insatiable craving” (pp. 310-11). He has no qualms about grounding his argument openly in philosophical idealism, suggesting that at the root of the problem may lie an ahistorical "human nature" -an innate universality binding individuals together. Yet one of the most widespread and potent demagogic arguments deployed by the opponents of socialism is precisely the claim that “socialism runs counter to human nature and can therefore never yield the desired results in practice.”

Although his political perspective is deeply marred by impressionism, we must acknowledge the book’s merit in one respect. In reckoning with the triumvirate that led the TKP and expelled him -particularly Bilen and Pehlivanyan- İhmalyan makes a major contribution by illuminating a shadowed period in the party’s history.

What made this possible can be found in the introductory essay, “While Reading” (Okurken), by the historian Mete Tunçay, who prepared A Life Story for publication. Tunçay comments:

(…) Vartan’s left-wing convictions, which he pursued with unwavering persistence until the end, resemble the spirit of a good scout. He lived for seventy-four years, yet had scarcely ever grown up, always viewing the world through the eyes of a schoolboy. (p. 7)

However, rightly judging this to be insufficient, Tunçay writes: “Despite all his goodwill and honesty, Vartan İhmalyan’s memoirs cannot rise above a subjective perspective,” and adds:

The events of the past still await objective establishment, analysis, debate, criticism, judgement, and evaluation. (p. 11)

Unlike Tunçay, I believe that İhmalyan’s problem goes far beyond simply being "trapped in a subjective perspective, however well-intentioned and honest". His moralistic approach -embracing an unscientific and superficial impressionism in its purest and most extreme form- has nothing in common with Marxism; on the contrary, it manifests an overtly anti-Marxist stance.

[*] Some of these points will be taken up later.

To be continued

See also:

Who was Vartan İhmalyan?

The period in which İhmalyan wrote his political autobiography

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: Aram Pehlivanyan (1)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: Aram Pehlivanyan (2)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: Aram Pehlivanyan (3)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: İsmail Bilen (1)