Effective Illegalities: The Communist Public Sphere, 1941–49, and the League for Combating Zionism

This paper examines the cultural activities of the illegal Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) during the 1940s in order to challenge a historiographical narrative which tended to emphasize the profascist and ultranationalist nature of the Iraqi public sphere during this period. I argue that the communists shaped Iraq’s culture after 1941 because of their skillful manipulation of organs within the public sphere.

The ICP’s leadership made it a priority to produce Arabic publications on Marxist theory and current politics to be sent to the colleges and party members nationwide. Printed materials thus helped inform members in the north and in the south about party activities elsewhere in the country. The ICP leaders also attempted to make the party’s publications available in Kurdish and Armenian. The party’s publishing house produced translations of the communist classics and printed the party’s illegal newspapers al-Sharara and al-Qa‘ida. As many communists were high-school and university students they were well prepared to contribute articles to the party’s journals and help with the distribution of printed materials. The party used coffee-shops as sites for its cells’ meeting, schools as recruiting arenas, and literary salons as platforms to promote its agenda. Despite the illegal nature of these activities, they enabled the ICP to create networks amongst the middle classes and to sway public opinion in its favor. To illustrate this point, I study the communist League for Combating Zionism (1945-1947), which called communists to struggle against Zionism and British imperialism. I explore the production of the League’s journal, al-‘Usba and analyze the prefomrative aspects of its activities as manifested in demonstrations and in public meetings in which Jews, Muslims and Christians participated. Although its members, mostly Jewish communists, were marginal players in politics, their cultural strategies enabled them to promote the League’s nonsectarian agenda in effective ways.