Social Democratic Party of Azerbaijan
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF AZERBAIJAN
Political party in Iranian Azerbaijan.
The Firqa-ye Ijtimaʿiyun-e Ammiyun (Social democratic party), also called Mujahid, was active mainly in Iranian Azerbaijan. It may have been an offshoot of the Adalat (Justice) party, a nominally social democratic, but actually anticolonial, organization formed in 1904/05 by Azerbaijanis in Baku (on the Caspian Sea) who were involved in the social democratic party Hümmet (Endeavor). Adalat was created for workers from Iran employed in the Baku petroleum industry.
In August or September 1906, members of the founding committee of the party established a "secret center" in Tabriz, then cells in Ardebil, Rasht, and Enzeli; these organizations apparently remained under the direction of a central committee in Baku. The party program demanded a constitution in Iran, ministerial responsibility to the Majles (Iran's legislature), establishment of universal suffrage, and civil liberties. It pointed to Qurʾanic precedents and the example of "every civilized state of Europe and Asia."
The party was apparently suppressed around 1909 but served as a model to the later Communist Tudeh Party.
see also adalat party; tudeh party.
Bibliography
Bayat, Mangol. Iran's First Revolution: Shiʿism and Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Swietochowski, Tadeusz, and Collins, Brian C. Historical Dictionary of Azerbaijan. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999.
audrey l. altstadt