On Vartan İhmalyan’s political autobiography, Bir Yaşam Öyküsü (A Life Story) (9)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: İsmail Bilen (3)

In our article titled Stalin’s massacre of foreign communists, published on 28 February 2025, we noted that a significant number of foreign communists were also among the victims of Stalinist terror in the Soviet Union -particularly during the years of the Great Terror (1936-1939):

During those years, nearly half of the regimes in Europe were fascist or semi-fascist totalitarian states. Many communists, socialists, and individuals with democratic leanings fled these oppressive regimes and sought refuge in the Soviet Union. Additionally, there were numerous internasyonalistı who had served in the Red Army and the War Commissariat and chose to remain in the Soviet Union after the civil war instead of returning to their home countries.

Therefore, in the 1930s leading up to the Great Terror, tens of thousands of foreign communists and communist sympathizers were living in the Soviet Union. However, many of them faced severe repression and lost their lives during the purges of 1936-39 and the subsequent waves of Stalinist terror, both large and small.

"Enemies of the people" writhing in the clutches of Yezhov

Moreover, as the historian Roy Medvedev pointed out, the survival rate of communists imprisoned under the repressive regimes of capitalist European countries was considerably higher than that of those in the Soviet Union:

Many Italian, Finnish, Austrian, Spanish, Czechoslovakian, French, Rumanian, Dutch, and even American and Brazilian Communists were arrested and died. It is a terrible paradox that the West European Communist leaders and activists who lived in the USSR perished, while most of those who were in prison in their native lands in 1937-38 survived. [*]

Those leaders of various communist parties who, for one reason or another, managed to survive the Stalinist terror without falling victim to it were, in fact, inextricably bound to the clique in the Kremlin. Not only did they enjoy bureaucratic and material privileges, but they also bore considerable responsibility for the deaths, torture and suffering of their comrades, having acted as accomplices to this very clique.

Of course, among the Turkish communists residing in the Soviet Union, there were also those who paid a heavy price in this way. In his political autobiography Bir Yaşam Öyküsü (A Life Story), Vartan İhmalyan recounts various examples of the grave injustices suffered by some Turkish communists living in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries during and after Stalin’s era, and highlights İsmail Bilen’s role in these events.

The testimony of Sabiha Sümbül

Salih Hacıoğlu

Regarding the sinister role played by Bilen in this context, İhmalyan’s book includes the text of a speech delivered by Sabiha Sümbül -the widow of Baytar Salih Hacıoğlu (1880-1954), one of the Turkish victims of Stalinist terror- at a meeting of the TKP Moscow Group on 31 May 1965:

Marat (İ. Bilen), an accomplice of Stalin and Beria and the ruthless strongman of the Communist Party of Turkey, had honourable Turkish communists living in the Soviet Union exiled to Siberia. He drank a toast to Stalin while supporting him. In order to appear as a friend of the Soviets, he falsely portrayed his comrades as enemies of the Soviet Union.

Comrades, as you all know well, my husband, Salih Hacıoğlu, was one of the founders of the TKP. When we were arrested in 1949, Marat was in Moscow. Did they not ask Marat, the leader of our party, anything about Salih Hacıoğlu? Who else would they have asked about Turkish communists if not the party’s representatives? He was the representative at that time. Of course they asked. And Marat knew perfectly well that we were going to be arrested, because a few days earlier he had said to Ali Sait: “Don’t go to Salih’s place any more. They’re going to arrest them.” [**] Marat played a part in the destruction of Turkish communists. (pp. 268–269)

Süleyman Nuri’s descent into paranoia

From İhmalyan’s writings, we learn that Bilen also reported Süleyman Nuri (1895-1966) -one of the founders of the TKP- to the Central Committee of the CPSU, labelling him a “Turkish spy.”

Süleyman Nuri

İhmalyan notes that Süleyman Nuri was “a person suspicious by nature, who distrusted everyone and believed everyone was plotting against him”, but adds that this acute suspiciousness was “not without reason” (p. 229). He goes on to write:

When Süleyman Nuri’s wife, Madam Zinaida, told İ. Bilen what had happened [he had been caught while secretly entering Turkey in late 1936 – k.ü.], guess what İ. Bilen (Laz İsmail) said? “For goodness’ sake, don’t even think about digging into this matter. Süleyman Nuri is a Turkish spy, and you’ll get yourself into trouble as well!” Of course, the poor woman didn’t believe what İ. Bilen told her. She left without saying a word, and a few days later she appealed to Anastas Mikoyan, a statesman and comrade-in-arms of Süleyman Nuri. Mikoyan then intervened through official channels, secured Süleyman Nuri’s release, and he returned to the Soviet Union. Both Madam Zinaida and Süleyman Nuri himself told me this story. There’s more: after Süleyman Nuri returned, he was summoned by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and shown a report. The report alleged that he was a Turkish spy and contained many other accusations, but the Central Committee official reassured him, saying that they did not believe what was written and that they knew him to be an upright person. They reassured him, but Süleyman Nuri was deeply unsettled: “What if they really think I’m a Turkish spy and something happens to me?” This anxiety stayed with him, and it was precisely this that made him suspicious and distrustful of everyone. (p. 230)

İhmalyan further suggests that Nuri’s life was shortened by the acute paranoia that gripped him after this shock, which he experienced during those terrible years of terror led to a paranoid personality disorder:

As I mentioned earlier, Süleyman Nuri’s inner world was shattered after he read the report by İ. Bilen (Laz İsmail, Marat) -which had been shown to him upon his return from imprisonment in Turkey through the mediation of his comrade-in-arms, the statesman Anastas Mikoyan- denouncing him as a Turkish spy. Despite the Soviet Party Central Committee’s assurances that they did not believe this slander, and despite their granting him a pension and a two-room flat, he lived in constant fear that something might happen to him under the accusation of being a Turkish spy. This state of mind ruined both his nerves and his heart. He had very few contacts, and only with people he trusted. Among these were the late Sabiha Sümbül, Mehmet Remzi (Şükrü Baba), my late brother and myself, as well as some of his wife’s relatives. (p. 255)

Of course, in a system where everyone could potentially denounce everyone else, people inevitably found it impossible to trust one another. In such an environment, fear, distrust, and suspicion became tools of defence -a means of survival. Yet even if this thick shield of suspicion did not turn everyone paranoid -though, as in the case of Süleyman Nuri, it drove some into paranoia- it spread like a virus, became ingrained in society, and poisoned human relationships.

In his book, İhmalyan -who is careful not to cast any shadow on the Soviet regime- makes no mention of the fact that, even after it became clear the accusation was baseless, the CPSU Central Committee took no steps to hold anyone accountable for this slander. Far from criticising this stance, he does not even remark on how odd it was. Had he done so, he would have had to undertake something he never attempted anywhere in his book: to question the Stalinist regime.

[*] Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism, trans. Colleen Taylor, New York, Vintage Books, 1973, pp. 222-223

[**] In the same speech, Sabiha Sümbül states that Ali Sait was also one of the TKP members sent to a labour camp in Siberia.

To be continued

Also see:

Who was Vartan İhmalyan?

The period in which İhmalyan wrote his political autobiography

Vartan İhmalyan’s superficial impressionism

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)