This is the first comprehensive work in any language to examine the development and growth of the communist movement in Syria and Lebanon. Drawing on party documents and literature, as well as interviews with key players conducted over a 25-year period, the authors examine the movement’s evolution, intra-party struggles, and fragmentation over the course of the 20th century. From its foundations as a unified movement in 1924 as the Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon, the party separated into two branches. The authors describe the origins, characteristics, and dynamics of both parties, showing how each reflected the domestic environment in which it operated.

The Ismaels’ study also provides an important chronicle of the ongoing struggle for political power in the Middle East and the reverberations from the collapse of the Soviet Union. With significant insights from a wealth of Arabic language sources inaccessible to most Western scholars, they offer a window onto one of the major political experiments of this century, documenting communism’s great promise for the Middle East and its devastating disappointments.