The Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG; fa, سازمان چريک‌های فدايی خلق ايران, Sāzmān-e čerikhā-ye Fadāʾi-e ḵalq-e Irān), simply known as Fadaiyan-e-Khalq ( fa, فداییان خلق, Fadāʾiān-e ḵalq, lit=Popular Selfsacrificers) was an underground

Marxist–Leninist Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialect ...

guerrilla organization in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

Ideology

Ideologically, the group pursued an

Anti-imperialist Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...

agenda and embraced '' armed propaganda'' to justify its revolutionary

armed struggle War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

against Iran's monarchy system, and believed in

Materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...

. They rejected

reformism Reformism is a political doctrine advocating the reform of an existing system or institution instead of its abolition and replacement. Within the socialist movement, reformism is the view that gradual changes through existing institutions can eve ...

, and were inspired by thoughts of

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

Che Guevara Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted ...

, and

Régis Debray Jules Régis Debray (; born 2 September 1940) is a French philosopher, journalist, former government official and academic. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in hum ...

. They criticized the National Front and the

Liberation Movement A liberation movement is an organization or political movement leading a rebellion, or a non-violent social movement, against a colonial power or national government, often seeking independence based on a nationalist identity and an anti-imperi ...

as "''

Petite bourgeoisie ''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small bourgeoisie'; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological st ...

'' paper organizations still preaching the false hope of peaceful change". Fedai Guerrillas initially criticized the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and the

Tudeh Party The Tudeh Party of Iran ( fa-at, حزب تودۀ ایران, Ḥezb-e Tūde-ye Īrān, lit=Party of the Masses of Iran) is an Iranian communist party. Formed in 1941, with Soleiman Mirza Eskandari as its head, it had considerable influence in i ...

as well, however they later abandoned the stance as a result of cooperation with the socialist camp.

Bijan Jazani Bijan Jazani ( fa, بیژن جزنی; 9 January 1938, Tehran – April 19, 1975) was an Iranian political activist and a major figure among modern Iranian Socialist intellectuals, a Marxist theorist as well as one of the founders of the Organiz ...

, known as the "intellectual father" of the organization, contributed to its ideology by writing a series of

pamphlet A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...

s such as "''Struggle against the Shah's Dictatorship''", "''What a Revolutionary Must Know''" and "''How the Armed Struggle Will Be Transformed into a Mass Struggle?''". The pamphlets were followed by Masoud Ahmadzadeh's treatise "''Armed Struggle: Both a Strategy and a Tactic''" and "''The Necessity of Armed Struggle and the Rejection of the Theory of Survival''" by Amir Parviz Pouyan.

Electoral history

Leadership

The group was governed by

collective leadership A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

. Before the

Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...

, its six-members leadership did not use the term '

central committee Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of Communist party, communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party org ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas Defunct communist militant groups Defunct communist parties in Iran Guerrilla organizations Political parties of the Iranian Revolution Militant opposition to the Pahlavi dynasty Banned communist parties Banned political parties in Iran Militant opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran Far-left political parties Marxist organizations Left-wing militant groups in Iran Paramilitary organisations based in Iran

Ideology

Electoral history

Leadership

See also

References