The documents here represent a section of the Molotov Holding of the former central party archives of the CPSU which deals with the exchanges between the CPI and the CPSU (B) in 1952 after the discussions between the two parties in Moscow the previous year.

The materials cover a series of historical questions of the CPI about which historical questions of the CPI which have been extremely opaque in terms of the Soviet understanding and which arise in discussions which are provoked by the right wing politics of the Congress, the communal forces and rightist sections of the socialist movement. They shed great light on the Soviet view on the policies of the CPI during the wartime and the postwar period. This forms only a part of the extensive exchanges: thus the earlier letter by Ajoy Ghosh and the response of Stalin are not available to us. It is likely that other exchanges may come to light in the future and help us to understand the different positions better.

The documentation also indicates the method by which the Soviet party formed its policies on various issues. Here we find as elsewhere the reply drafted by the central committee, the comments of the Soviet leadership, and the final draft prepared by the central committee on a particular range of questions.

Of enormous value are the Soviet views of the approach of the CPI to the Congress Party and Subhash Chandra Bose in the period of the anti-fascist war. The Soviet party did not accept the CPI policies regarding the British. As is known, the CPI supported the British on the grounds that they were allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The Soviet leadership was of the opinion that the British in fact avoided opening a second front against Fascist Germany and desired the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to engage in mutually destructive combat. At the same time the Congress Party promoted the disruptive ‘Quit India’ movement which weakened the anti-fascist war despite its limited action against the British. In the view of the CPSU (B) the CPI should have conducted an independent struggle against British imperialism paving the way for seizure of power by the CPI.

Regarding Subash Chandra Bose the CPSU b considered that he had openly supported fascist Germany during the war and the ‘Indian National Army’ which was created with help of Japanese imperialism was directed against the coalition of democratic powers.

According to the Soviet leadership, the CPI should have demarcated itself from both the Congress and Bose and initiated a mass movement against the British using all forms of struggle, including non-payment of taxes and rents, conducting partisan warfare in the rural areas and organising general strikes and uprisings in the cities. Such tactics would have assisted the Soviet Union in the anti-fascist war. Victory over the British would have assisted the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist war. The possible occupation by Japan should have led to a struggle on the lines of events in South-East Asia in Vietnam and Malaya. Had British rule continued in power the mass struggles of the war would have permitted the working class to come to the fore thereby preventing the betrayal of the national emancipation by the Congress Party.

The CPSU b distinguished between the leadership of the Congress Party in the ‘Quit India’ movement which hindered the anti-fascist war and the rank-and-file Congress supporters. In a similar way it demarcated between the ‘pro-fascist’ leadership of Bose and his supporters in the Forward Bloc.  

This criticism by the CPSU b helps us comprehend the rightist views which prevailed after the 20th Congress with regard to Nehru, Gandhi and Bose in the Indian communist movement and the ‘progressive intelligentsia’.

The second question raised by Ajoy Ghosh shows the inability of the party to comprehend the semi-colonial reality of the country. The CPI programme of 1951 understood that the country was the largest dependent semi-colonial country in Asia. Yet Ajoy Ghosh’s letter shows an inability to relate this question to the presence and domination of British capital along the line of the Leninist notion of imperialism and refute the Congress- nationalist views that the British had left the country and that the Indians were independent and ruled through their own government. This presaged the rightist views which became prevalent in the second half of the 1950s.

The Kashmir question represented the third major question under discussion. An earlier published exchange of the two parties had given the views of different leaders of the CPI, the CPSU b and Stalin himself. See: Indo Pakistan Relations https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv14n1/indopak.htm. Both parties understood that though both India and Pakistan were collaborationist states the latter was willing to allow the US and Britain to establish military bases on its soil. As a result the communists had to distinguish between the two countries.

Ajoy Ghosh details the role of the party on the Kashmir question in relation to the National Conference and the Congress Party such as to abolish the monarchy, carry out the agrarian revolution and prevent the reduction of the Kashmir state to an Indian province. The CPI evidently played an important positive role in these matters and combated the reactionary role of the Nehru leadership of Congress. The Soviet view that the tactical line of the Communist Party of Pakistan should be separate is a valuable piece of information with multiple implications: it should call for the Kashmiri people to have the right to determine their future without the intervention of the United Nations and US and British imperialism.

The comments relating to the parliamentary question are instructive. In this period as the history of the CPSU b, the CPC and other parties reveals that the policy of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’ prevailed.  The CPI had intervened in the colonial elections which had a limited franchise. The party, when it withdrew the Telengana movement, stashed away its arms and participated in the general elections. Today ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’ as a policy is barely accepted in the communist movement in India across the board. Ajoy Ghosh enumerated the positive results of the parliamentary participation for peasants and workers despite the problems arising from lack of experience in this sphere. In some quarters the parliamentary participation has been interpreted as the beginnings of a parliamentary path; hence it is interesting to note that the CPSU b in its revolutionary period saw nothing untoward in the CPI’s electoral participation.

Three successive deviations dominated the CPI from the 1940s. The first rightist deviation was represented by P.C. Joshi and was so characterized for its illusions regarding the Nehru wing of the Congress Party as well as the British Labour Party.

This was replaced by the left deviation represented by B.T. Ranadive before the Second Congress of the CPI in 1948. It was criticized for its support for the ‘Trotskyite-Titoist’ notion of socialist revolution which had prompted Stalin to persuade the Cominform to write its famous editorial which supported the first stage of People’s Democracy as the appropriate stage of the Indian revolution. Moreover, the Ranadive group was subjected to criticism for its ’left’ strikes which had been beyond the capacity of the working class. This deviation was also noted by the communist parties of China and Ceylon. These considerations may have led the CPSU to support the temporary expulsion of the Ranadive group from the CPI.

The third deviation in the CPI was headed by the Andhra Committee. After the publication of the Comintern editorial, the Andhra Committee which conducted the Telengana armed struggle had supported the idea of the establishment of people’s democracy in the country as the stage of revolution. As was clear from the Moscow discussions the Andhra Committee, despite leading an inspiring struggle of partisan warfare, had serious misunderstandings on the Chinese revolution. It failed to recognize the central role played by the Soviet Army in defeating Japanese imperialism as a result of which the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was able to take shelter in liberated Manchuria and preserve it from the onslaughts of the Kuomintang and so laid the basis for it to begin the liberation of southern China.  The CPSU b pointed out that India had none of the advantages of the Chinese revolution like having a friendly rear. Hence it was imperative for the CPI to combine partisan warfare with strikes and urban uprisings of the working class.

The Andhra Committee deviation was corrected in the Moscow discussions and the new outlook became crystallised in the CPI Programme and Tactical Line (1951).

After the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union the errors of the P C Joshi group and the Andhra Committee again came to the forefront to vitiate the communist movement. The result of this was the negation of the CPI Programme and Tactical Line by almost all sections of the communist movement. Notable exceptions to this were some communist revolutionaries such as Parimal Das Gupta and P. Sundarayya in the CPI M.

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