ABSTRACT
If imperialism was the highest and the last stage of capitalism, then there needed to be somebody in the countries of the capitalist periphery oppressed by imperialism as well as in the imperialist strongholds who could lead the people's triumphal march towards the apotheosis of the development of human society - towards the Soviet, Stalinist-Brezhnevist model of Socialism. Communist parties were founded in Turkey and in Iran in 1920, in Palestine in 1921, in Egypt in 1923, in Syria-Lebanon in 1924 and in Iraq in 1934. In the Maghreb countries they initially appeared as sections of the French Communist party. Socio-political trends in the region after World War I included the extreme rightist forces led by historically doomed traditionalist leaders who advocated the interests of local feudal-landord circles discredited by their collaboration with the West. Another trend, liberal-bourgeois in orientation, borrowed its ideals and ideas from the West.
