Hikmet Kıvılcımlı

He studied medicine at the military medical college in Istanbul. He was a member of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) in the early 1920s and became first President of Young Communists Union at 1925.

Between 1925 and 1950 he was arrested frequently and served several jail terms.[1] He criticized the TKP because of its policy towards the administration of the Democrat Party (DP) in the 1950s. He was founder of the Vatan Partisi (VP) in 1954. The party was closed down in 1957, and Kıvılcımli imprisoned with other party leaders.[1] In 1960 he has already spent more than 20 years in prison.[1] He was an. Later he was founder and director of the Tarihsel Maddecilik Yayınları publishing house in 1965, which published many of his works. He also was a co-founder of the İşsizlik ve Pahalılıkla Savaş Derneği ( Society for Struggle against Unemployment and Cost of Living, İPSD) on 19 May 1968.[2]

Among his publications are Türkiye İşçi Sınıfının Sosyal Varlığı (The Social Existence of the Turkish Working Class), 1935; Tarih, Devrim, Sosyalizm (History, Revolution, Socialism), 1965; his masterpiece, Tarih Tezi (The Thesis of History), 1974; and Yol: TKP'nin Eleştirel Tarihi (The Way: Critical History of the Communist Party of Turkey), consisting of a series of texts, written for the Central Committee of the TKP in 1932, published in 1979–1982. He contributed many articles in Aydınlık, Sosyalist, Türk Solu, and Ant between 1965 and 1971. After his death Fuat Fegan became custodian of Kıvılcımlı's papers and political inheritance. He is buried at the Topkapi cemetery in Istanbul.[3]

• Archive of Hikmet Kıvılcımlı Papers at the International Institute of Social History