Avetis Sultan-Zade

Avetis Sultanovich Sultan-Zade (born Avetis Mikaelian; Russian: Аветис Султанович Султан-Заде; Persian: آوتيس سلطانزاده; Armenian: Ավետիս Սուլթան Զադե; 1889 – 16 July 1938) was a Persian-born ethnic Armenian communist revolutionary and economist, best remembered as one of the founders of the Communist Party of Iran. Sultan-Zade was a delegate to the Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 and was for a time one of the leading figures of the Marxist revolutionary movement in the so-called "East." Following his demotion from the leadership of the Iranian Communist Party and the Comintern in 1923, Sultan-Zada lived in the Soviet Union where he worked as a government functionary in the banking industry.

During the Great Terror of the late 1930s, Sultan-Zade came under the suspicion of the secret police. He was arrested in January 1938 and jailed for five months before being tried and shot as an alleged spy. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.