Khalid Bakdash (1912-1995) was the leader of the Syrian Communist Party from 1936 to 1995. Bakdash had the distinction of being the first communist to be elected to an Arab government, and he was nicknamed "the Dean of Arab communism".
Biography[]
Khalid Bakdash was born in Damascus, Syria in 1912, and he was recruited to the Syrian-Lebanese Communist Party in 1930. Bakdash took part in agitation against France's rule over Syria, and he enrolled at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow, USSR in 1934. Bakdash became the Secretary of the Syrian Communist Party in 1936, and he led resistance to Vichy France's rule during World War II. In 1941, after Syria and Lebanon were liberated by the United Kingdom and the Free French, the Syrian Communist Party was legalized. In 1954, Bakdash became the first communist to be elected to an Arab government, and he led communist opposition to Gamal Abdel Nasser's plans to create the United Arab Republic in 1958. Bakdash wanted for the UAR to be a loose federation with multiple parties, but the authoritarian Nasser decided to clamp down on the communist parties of the UAR in response to Bakdash's opposition to the federation. Bakdash stayed in Moscow until 1966, and he returned after the Syrian Ba'ath Party legalized other political parties. Bakdash decided to become an ally of the Ba'athists in politics due to their nationalist and socialist beliefs, although he entered the opposition after the Syrian government decided to aid the conservative Lebanese Forces against the socialist Arabs and Druze during the Lebanese Civil War in 1976. In 1986, he split from the main communist party due to disagreements about Perestroika, leading the anti-Perestroika Syrian Communist Party - Bakdash in opposition to the Syrian Communist Party - Unified. Bakdash died in 1995 at the age of 83.