who died during prison interrogation. The rapid disintegration of the Tudeh at the hands of the state, and the confessions of its leaders led the opposition and remaining party members to seek answers. Explanations ranged from ideological capitulation to the use of Stalinist methods of trial. The remnant of the party outside the country resorted to strange explanations that special drugs created by the CIA and MI-6 were used. The simplest explanation came several years after the television recantations, from a prison visit by a United Nations' human rights representative (Galindo Pohl) to Iran. The Tudeh Party General Secretary Noureddin Kianouri was reported to have told the representative that he and his wife had been tortured to give false confessions. As evidence, he held up his badly set broken arm. Pohl added that Maryam Firuz had difficulty hearing, swallowing food, and sitting down because of beatings suffered eight years earlier at the hands of the Shah's secret police. Kianouri later wrote an open letter to the Ayatollah detailing his mistreatment. As a result of these purges, a great number of party members left the country into exile. As the party represented the "Soviet view of a preferred leftist movement" that holds a pro-Soviet ideological line and responds to Soviet foreign policy in a supportive manner, the Soviet Union was likely disappointed at the development. It is likely many hundreds Tudeh prisoners were killed during the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners when thousands of Mojahedin and leftist prisoners were killed. One report lists 90 Tudeh killed in just some blocks of Evin and Gohar Dasht prisons. Electoral history Estimated membership Current status Despite the repression, the party has managed to survive. Though since the Iranian Revolution the party is officially banned in Iran and individuals found to be affiliated with communist or socialist groups risk imprisonment, active members have remained and it continues to operate as an underground political organization there. This was mentioned in an Amnesty International report on political prisoners in Iran. Today, the party leadership is mainly based in exile, as is the new Central Committee, elected in 1992. The party has taken positions against privatization, criticizes the electoral system in the country, and "anti-labor" legislation. In 2017, the party supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon as a leftist force in France, commemorated the Russian Revolution, pledged solidarity with the Venezuelan Communist Party, and criticized Iranian reformists for betraying their