Khalid Bakdash
| Khalid Bakdash | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 1912 Damascus, Syria |
| Died | 1995 (aged 83) Damascus, Syria |
| Nationality | Syrian |
| Occupation | Secretary-general of the Syrian Communist Party Member of the Parliament of Syria |
| Religion | Sunni Islam |
Khalid Bakdash (1912–1995; occasionally spelled Khalid Bagdash or Khaled Bekdache, Arabic: خالد بكداش) was the leader of the Syrian Communist Party (SCP) from 1936 until his death. In 1954 Bakdash became the first member of a communist party to be elected to an Arab parliament. He has since been called the "dean of Arab communism."
He was first recruited to the communist cause at the age of 18, while a student at Damascus University. He was subsequently active in student agitation against the French occupation of Syria, and came to the attention of the police. In 1933 the party judged it best that he leave the country, and in 1934 he enrolled in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow.
Returning in 1936, Bakdash took control of the Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon as secretary, a post he would retain without interruption for the rest of his life. He led the Syrian underground against Vichy France during that regime's control of Syria. When Syria came under allied control in 1942, the French government promised it independence and legalised the Communist Party, until then banned.
Bakdash took a moderate approach as secretary of the Syrian Communist Party. The party rules and programme which he drew up in 1944 reflected a determination to conform to the political circumstances of the Arab world of the time. They emphasized the party's attachment to the anti-colonial struggle and sought to establish it as a democratic mass movement rather than the restricted Marxist-Leninist vanguard organisation which a close adherence to Leninist principles might have dictated.
Although Bakdash is often referred to as the doyen or elder statesman of Arab communism, his actual influence on other Arab communist parties was not as great as this phrase might suggest. He had, in particular, a stormy relationship with Fahd, leader of the Iraqi Communist Party from 1941 until 1949. In the early to mid-1940s Bakdash supported the Iraqi People's Party led by Aziz Sharif, which followed the example of the Syrian Communist Party in seeking to build a broad party emphasizing the national question, contrary to the more orthodox Leninist approach adopted by Fahd's party. Fahd also appears to have suspected him of suborning Iraqi communists resident in Damascus.
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