She received a
liberal education for the
Iranian women of her time, and attended university later in life while living in exile. She was a linguist, fluent in
Kurdish,
Persian,
Arabic,
French,
Russian,
German, and
English. An independent thinker, she appreciated
communist theory. Later in life she said that the reason she chose to become a member of the
Tudeh party was that when she decided to actively engage in the women's rights movement, the only party who was willing to accept her [as a woman] and give her a chance to do something at that time was the Tudeh Party. Maryam chose to use the surname Firouz in her political struggles; her grandfather's name. She became known as Maryam Firouz in the political arena. She retained her legal name as Maryam Farman Farmaian with pride. She first married General army Abbassgholi Esfandiary [son of Mohtashem Saltaneh] in a marriage arranged by her father. They had two daughters, Afsaneh and Afsar. They divorced on the death of her father. In 1949 Maryam married
Noureddin Kianouri, a member and later general secretary of the Tudeh Party of Iran. In cooperation with Noureddin Kianouri, Farman Farmaian established a women's division of the Tudeh Party. Following the attempted assassination of
Mohammad Reza Shah on 4 February 1949, the
Tudeh party was blamed and her husband was imputed to have been one of the masterminds of the operation. She and her husband were forced into exile in 1956. She started her life in exile in the
USSR and then lived in
East Berlin, in the former
German Democratic Republic. During her years of exile she completed her university studies and later taught French in the
universities of Leipzig and
Berlin. , 1979 The couple returned to Iran following the
1979 Islamic Revolution and the
deposition of the Shah. The Tudeh party was reinstituted with Noureddin Kianouri as General Secretary. In 1983, the Tudeh Party was again banned following accusations of espionage for the Soviet Union. Noureddin Kianouri and Farman Farmaian were imprisoned. Maryam Firouz spent all of her imprisonment in solitary confinement. She was the only member of the Tudeh Party's imprisoned leadership who did not make a forced confession on TV at the time. She was released from prison in 1994 and placed under house arrest for a couple more years before being released to the custody of her eldest daughter in Tehran. After his release in the mid 1990s, Kianouri wrote an open letter detailing the torture of himself and his wife while in prison. Dr. Noureddin Kianouri died on 5 November 1999. Maryam Farman Farmaian, a.k.a. Maryam Firouz, died in Tehran on 23 March 2008 and was buried at
Behesht-e Zahra. She was survived by her biological grandchildren (Afsaneh's) Ali, Nilou and Firooz, and (Afsar's) Faranak and Roshanak. ==Further reading==