Theoretician, writer and publisher (B. 1902,
Pristina / Yugoslavia (Kosovo)- D. 11th October 1971, Belgrade / Yugoslavia (Serbia)). When his
father, who was a government officer, was assigned to
Kıvılcımlı participated in the secret Second
Congress of the Türkiye Komünist Party (TKP) realized on 1st January
1925 as a delegate and was selected as a member of the Central Committee. He
finished the faculty of medicine the same year. He was sentenced to ten years
of penal servitude by the Independence Tribunal, according to the law on the
maintenance of order (Takrir-i Sükûn) established because of the Şeyh Sait
Insurgency against the revolutions of Ataturk. He was released by benefiting
from an amnesty granted one year later. He was included in the
He received a new punishment of four and a half
years because of his provocative attitude in the Izmir Court Case of İsmail
Bilen (Laz İsmail). The court case that was executed in 1938 and that was named
“the Court Case of the Navy” was combined with the “Court Case of the
The Vatan Party (VP) was founded in the year of
1954 and he was selected as the general president of this party. However, his
party was closed due to his speeches in the elections of 1957. He was arrested
together with the founders and administrative board members of the party. At
the end of the investigation during two years, the court case ended with
exculpation. In the year of 1965, he founded and directed the Tarihsel
Maddecilik Publications. There, he translated and published his most important
works, the book Tarih Tezi and the
translations of Marx’s, Engels’s and Lenin’s works. Meanwhile, he translated
one part of “Kapital” to Turkish. In
1967, he founded the İşsizlik ve Pahalılıkla Savaş Institution (İPSD). A very
numbered original work of him were published, concerning topics from economy to
anthropology, from the explanation of the historical and theoretical development
of the Marxist thought to the strategic and tactical problems of the revolution
of the working class in Turkey. His articles were published in magazines such
as “Aydınlık” and “Türk Solu”, and also the magazines “Sosyalist” and “Ant”, founded by him.
Kıvılcımlı got cancer disease when the military
coup of 12 March 1971 was approaching. He was obliged to go into hiding after
the military coup, however, the Commandership of the State of
Kıvılcımlı, who also produced works in the
fields on social sciences and literature, was known as a Marxist theoretician,
a man of act and a translator. According to him, the Ottoman history wasn’t
learned correctly by many people because of various reasons and wasn’t analyzed
healthfully. When this was the case, the researches and investigations made
resulted mostly in breakages and variations because history was not considered
as a whole with the other elements needed for the entities. Kıvılcımlı explained
why the famous Marxist theoreticians didn’t focus on this subject as: “The article of the Ottoman History is a
subject that neither Marx, nor Engels, nor Lenin found the time to deal with. This
is because they lived in the environment of relations and contradictions of a
developed and suffocated capitalist community beyond the Ottoman Article”. Kıvılcımlı
tried to investigate the Ottoman history with an understandable language, with
a dialectic approach and as a whole, without separating it from its geography,
its nature and its traditions, by saying: “The
Article of the Ottoman History is generally its land economy, especially its
state-owned land economy policy. Neither the Ottoman history, nor its place on
the history chain can be understood unless this article is understood”. He
verbalized the principle of this investigation with the following words: “The Ottoman history is always given with its
most scholastic form. Even though it is Ottoman that is the most known passage
from prehistoric to historic, this passage that brought interesting
enlightenments for the world is never mentioned. But the structure of the
segments (namely the degeneration of pawn broker-merchant) in the period of the
Hikmet Kıvılcımlı put the Edebiyat-ı Cedide,
which was a movement of literature that literature critics haven’t temped to
interfere so far, to an autopsy table with his survey “Edebiyat-ı Cedide’nin
Felsefesi” that was formed from two parts, analytic and synthetic.
Kıvılcımlı, who indicated that the philosophy of Edebiyat-ı Cedide was: “… the properties that attract the attention
in the best opinions; nicknamed day dreams, the personal love ideal, pessimism,
Islamic mysticism, the skepticism that is called incredulity, trust in god,
fear of the reality”, later on considered this movement of literature from
the point of view of the reflection of the truth and the usage of notions of
natural understanding, human, absolute human, youth-old and the notion man. He
tried to prove his claims with various examples that he took from the poets and
writers of this movement. Kıvılcımlı had hundreds of scientific and artistic
works written in old Turkish and new Turkish.
WORKS:
SURVEY-RESEARCH: Sosyete ve Teknik 1 - Tarih
Öncesi Din - Devlet (1935, 2nd ed. 2000), Türkiye İşçi Sınıfının Sosyal
Varlığı, Emperyalizm: Geberen Kapitalizm, Marks-Engels: Hayatları, Kuvayi
Milliyeciliğimiz (1965), Tarih - Devrim - Sosyalizm Işığında Kapitalizme
İlk Geçiş - İngiltere (1965), Türkiye’de Kapitalizmin Gelişimi
(1965), İlkel Sosyalizmden Kapitalizme (1965), Tarih - Devlet -
Sosyalizm (1965), Karl Marx (1966), Oportünizm Nedir?, Halk
Savaşının Planları, Devrim Zorlaması, Türkçenin Üreme Yolları ve ‘Dil
Devrimciliğimiz’ (1966), Finans Kapital ve Türkiye (1978),
Türkiye Köyü ve Sosyalizm (1980), Toplum Biçimlerinin Gelişimi
(1988), Osmanlı Tarihinin Maddesi 1 (1989), Genel Olarak Sosyal
Sınıflar ve Partiler 2 (1989), Sosyalist Kütüphanesi (brochure, undated),
Finans Kapital ve Türkiye 3 (brochure, 1989), Kısaca Marksizmin
Düşünüşü 5 (brochure, 1989), Üretim Nedir? 1 (brochure, 1989), Marks
- Engels: Hayatları 4 (brochure, 1989), Metafizik Sosyolojiler
(1989), Edebiyat-ı Cedide’nin Felsefesi (prep. A. Emin Karaca, 1989), Yol
2 / Strateji Planı / Düşman: Burjuvazi / Müttefik: Köylü / - Türkiye’de Ulusal
Sorun / - Legaliteyi İstismar (1992), Dinin Türk Toplumuna Etkileri /
İslamda Toprak Sorunu / Cennet Sözcüğü Nereden Gelir? / Eyüp Sultan Konuşması (1994),
Nasıl Müslüman Olduk? (with Erdoğan Aydın, 1994), Devrimci Hareketin
Otokritiği (1994), Türkiye Ekonomi Politikası (1996), Tarih Tezi
Işığında İlkel Sosyalizmden Kapitalizme Son Geçiş Japonya (prep. Süleyman
Şaşmaz, 2000), Komün Gücü - Siklus (prep. Süleyman Şaşmaz, 2000).
TRANSLATION (From Karl Marks - F. Engels): Ücret
Fiyat Kâr, Gündelikçi İş ile Sermaye, Enternasyonal İşçiler Cemiyeti’ni Açış
Hitabesi, Kapital’in bazı fasikülleri, Marksizm’in Prensipleri, Ludwig
Feuerbach, Maymunun İnsanlaşma Prosesinde Emeğin Rolü. (From V. İ. Lenin): Karl
Marks’ın Hayatı – Felsefesi – Sosyolojisi, Marks’ın Ekonomi Politiği - Sosyalizmi
- Taktiği. (Other): Marksizmin
Temel Meseleleri (from Plehanov), Tarihi Materyalizm Nazariyesi (from
Buharin), Kısaca Ekonomi Politik (from Lapidus-Ostrovityanof), Dünyayı
Sarsan On Gün (from John Reed).