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On this day in 1949, Iraqi-Assyrian Yusuf Salman Yusuf, secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party, was publicly executed by the Hashemite Monarchy. In this thread I'll discuss the life of one of Iraq's greatest leftist leaders.
Yusuf was born in 1901 in Ottoman-controlled Baghdad to a family from Bartella. He attended a Christian school in Basra, before moving to Nasiriyah to help his brother run a mill. He had also breifly worked as a translator for the British army.
In 1927 Fahd was introduced to Communism by Pitor Vasili, an Assyrian-Georgian who would later be in the first Iraqi Communist meeting in Nasiriyah. Yusuf would then travel the middle east, going to Khuzestan, Palestine, and other regions.
After the founding of the Iraqi Communist Party, Fahd would take a leading role, also writing a pamphlet titled "Marxism, not Democratic Socialism!". He would also struggle with other members of the Iraqi Communist party such as Thunun Aiyyub and Yaqub Cohen.
In the case of Thunan Aiyyub he claimed Yusuf was not fit to rule as he had family origins in Turkey and was a Christian, he was also angry at Fahd supposedly flirting with his wife when drunk.
In the 40s a large amount of splinter groups began to form, eventually Fahd declared a meeting and said that splits in the ICP was the wish of the imperialists. His unification has more or less worked and by the end of the second world war the ICP had achieved a new height.
Unfortunately, in 1947 the police captured Yusuf and threw him in prison, sentencing him to death. However, outrage forced the government to reduce the sentence to a life in prison. When they learned Fahd was directing the ICP from prison, they brought back the death sentence.
Yusuf was executed in Baghdad publicly in a square, and his death would have severe consequences for the party. Without his leadership the party splintered into 5 factions, and reuniting them would require one of Iraq's other great leftist leaders, Hussain ar-Radi.
Oh I also forgot to mention, he married a soviet women and his granddaughters live in Russia, here are his two granddaughters and his daughter in front of a portrait of him
here's yusuf's daughter with her mother
