Communism allowed Moroccan Jews to participate in the national liberation struggle and express their patriotism in an idealistically internationalist, cosmopolitan framework. Studying Jewish radical political and social organization in Morocco reveals the porous, transnational and vexed colonial relationships of Maghrebi Jews to nationalist independence movements and the purportedly internationalist Comintern while shedding light on larger questions of Jewish visions of radical citizenship and national identity. The life of Moroccan author and former Communist activist Edmond Amran El Maleh (1917-2010) and his works of both fiction and non-fiction reflect a radical “road not taken” in Morocco’s political history of the 1940s -1960s. This paper focuses on the life and works of El Maleh in order to discuss the motivations for Jewish participation in the Moroccan Communist Party as well the party’s trajectory mapped against Jewish migration of the 1940s-1960s. To do this, I use El Maleh’s published works and interviews in addition to contextual archival and newspaper sources. Vichy rule in North Africa (1940-1942) brought anti-Semitic legislation, inspiring many Jews to reject France’s vision of republican assimilation. Betrayed by French republicanism and unconvinced by Zionism, many Maghrebi Jews expressed their patriotism through Communism. With the conclusion of the WWII, the Moroccan Communist Party (PCM), though chafing under pseudo-colonial yoke of the French Communist Party (PCF), accelerated its activism for national independence from France, achieved in 1956. Jews, including El Maleh, frequently led Communist newspapers and propaganda distribution, in addition to organizing meetings. The 1950s and 1960s represented the height of Moroccan Jewish Communist engagement during which a leftist social universe was constructed, focused on radical activism. El Maleh represents this social universe, and the ultimate betrayal of the Communist vision for Morocco, in a minor, jaded key in his 1980 novel "Parcours immobile." El Maleh’s life and works, contextualized by archival work, expose a previously unexplored Jewish engagement in Morocco’s nationalist politics.

Communist endeavors existed in Iran since the early twentieth century, but it was only after the deposition on Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1941, that a communist party could act openly and freely in the new political environment that followed Pahlavi’s ascending to throne. Coincidently, this was a time when the threat that united most of Iran’s left leaning public was the Fascist wave that started to take root in the country during the last years of Reza Shah. The groups that joined to spearhead the leftist movements were, naturally, those who feared the most of the fascist tendencies in Iran – the religious minorities. Groups of prominent Armenian and Jewish leaders aligned together with a group of Muslim thinkers to establish the Tudeh party. The Tudeh party was not a “regular” communist party. While it shared deep sentiment to the Soviet Union, it also viewed the Iranian sphere as significantly more important for their activity. They went as far as disregarding the universal aspects of their communist obligation by leaving the famous slogan “Workers of the World- Unite” out of their party’s bylaws. Since 1941, the Tudeh party participated in all of Iran’s national struggles (with varied levels of success) and raised the flag of national sovereignty. For the minorities involved in the party this was an unprecedented chance to label themselves first and foremost as Iranian nationalists and not by their hybrid identities or mixed allegiances. Before the 1979 Revolution, minorities amplified their activity within the religious communities in order to make sure their place in the post-revolution Iran would be even more central than during the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s “Golden Age.” This paper will examine the inception of the Tudeh party as a venue for the minorities to reclaim their place in the Iranian society.

In the historiography on Iraqi Jews, the 1940’s are often considered as a period of polarization towards new allegiances. Some joined the Iraqi Communist Party, while others joined the newly founded Zionist movement. By exploring the impact of the 1936 and 1941 coups d’état on intellectual activities of the Jews in Baghdad, I claim, however, that an alternative way was also possible. Baghdadi Jews who were well established in intellectual and public milieus did not wish to risk this favourable position by going underground, and strove to maintain their old allegiances. From the beginning of the 1930’s, many Iraqi Jewish journalists and writers became acquainted with progressive (taqaddumiyyun) and leftist (yasariyyun) Iraqi democrats (dimuqratiyyun) such as young activists from the Ahali group. After the 1936 coup d’état, the Ahali group – under the aegis of one of its member and leader of the coup, Hikmat Sulayman – has known a first period of political glory that was soon voiced in the press. In many aspects, Jewish journalists and writers followed their editorial policies. Again, in 1946, three leftist parties – whose founders were all once involved in the Ahali group – were officially recognized by the Suwaydi government (the National Democratic Party, the People’s Party and the National Unity Party). Their press quickly re-flourished, and Jews took an active part in their activities. In this paper I will present the carrier of Baghdadi Jews who were active in these leftist circles. By examining their writing activities and the nature of their social and professional networks with other intellectuals, I will show that ties between various elements of the Iraqi leftist intellectual clique were strong enough to allow its Jewish members to maintain their position within these circles. Leaders of the leftist parties and chief editors of the press, employed many of their Jewish colleagues. They, in turn, took advantage of this entrenched position within the public sphere to express their views on Iraqi domestic and foreign policies, and to reaffirm their will to belong.

The events of July 1952 render problematic any attempt to classify the case of Nasser’s “revolution” in Egypt in terms of a clear social-scientific typology. The cadre of military officers who seized power with a display of force on 23 July 1952 initially handed the reins over to the remnants of the liberal-constitutional regime and waited in the wings while dissension spread across the country and within their own ranks. It was 8 September when the officers asserted their political will; purging all political parties, forming their own centralized organization for governmental administration, and announcing their plans for Land Reform. This latter policy became the keystone in an emergent political ideology that allowed for the seizure of power by Nasser and the “Free Officers” to be coded as a “revolution.” Scholars of the political economy of modern Egypt in the West have largely imported this characterization wholesale. In the political vacuum left by revolution, why would the Free Officers seize on Agrarian Reform as the ideological foundation upon which to build a unified political society in Egypt? How could claims to assist and uplift the peasantry also be read as claims to represent the Egyptian nation? This paper attempts to grapple with these questions via the theoretical contributions of Raymond Williams, who provides a framework for understanding the relationship between literature, ideology, and social history in The Country and the City (1973) and Marxism and Literature (1978). After briefly reviewing the history of the "rural imaginary" in Egyptian literature, this study will examine the “social realist” school of Egyptian literature prominent at the time of the revolution. A close reading of three texts--Al-’Ard (1954) by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sharqawi, Al-Jabal (1959) by Fathi Ghanim, and Al-Haram (1959) by Yusuf Idris--will elucidate the semiotic logic that associated the new regime with reform of the peasantry and the Egyptian people vis-à-vis the elided forces of the ancièn regime and the specter of colonialism. This study aims to fill the historiographic lacuna on the relationship between state and society during the initial formation of Nasser’s regime (1952-1956 in particular), and to refine methods for using literature and affectively-charged cultural artifacts as sources for the social history of Egypt.