Khosrow Golsorkhi

When the judge announced death sentences on both Daneshian and Golesorkhi they merely smiled. They then shook hands and embraced. "Comrade!" said Golesorkhi. "My best comrade!" replied Daneshian. Golsorkhi's execution was broadcast on state television. The court became a symbol of the Shah's dictatorship and hypocrisy, due to its content most of the trial proceedings was censored. After the 1979 revolution the entire trial was shown on public television, but again it was censored after the fall of Mehdi Bazargan's government. He was executed, and was acclaimed a hero by socialist Guerrillas because he wished not to be blind-folded.

Golsorkhi was a Marxist activist in Iran during the Cold War. Hooman Majd has described him as a "Che Guevara-like figure for young Iranians in 1974."

At his trial in 1974, just as it looked as if the [military] judges were getting the upper hand he turned the atmosphere of the court: "In the glorious name of the people. I will defend myself in a court which I neither recognise its legality nor its legitimacy. As a Marxist my address is to the people and history. The more you attack me the more I pride myself, the further I am from you the closer I am to the people. The more your hatred for my beliefs, the stronger the kindness and support of the people. Even if you bury me—and you certainly will—people will make flags and songs from my corpse".

The cell in which they spent their last night [February 17, 1974] in Jamshidiyeh prison was covered with slogans. They sang revolutionary songs all night, ate their supper quietly, shouted slogans to the soldiers in the lorry which took them to the Chitgar execution field, refused blindfolds so that they could see the red dawn and sang together in firm voice: "O comrades! Heroes! We will give our life for our country without fear ... They then themselves gave the order to fire!

Golsorkhi wrote this poem in the mid-1970s when several guerrilla movements were formed in Iran to fight against Mohammad Reza Shah. During the last decade before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, different groups such as Mujahedin, Islamist extremists, and Lefties united for their mutual goal: Bringing the Shah down. Several were arrested. Shah showed mercy on most of the ones who asked for pardon, but the ones who did not withdraw their beliefs were executed.

Khosrow Golsorkhi (Persian: خسرو گلسرخی; 23 January 1944 – 18 February 1974) was an Iranian journalist, poet, and communist.