The CPSU (b) and Stalin were requested by a number of communist parties to resolve political crises and programmatic questions. This journal has looked at the Indian, British and Indian and Indonesian parties in this context.

Regarding Japan the journal unearthed a document from the Cominform journal by Stalin.*  In that article Stalin criticised the views of Nosaka who had suggested that the occupation troops of the US played a progressive role in the country which facilitated a peaceful advance to socialism. Stalin rejected the view of a peaceable, national, parliamentary path to socialism in Japan.

The discussions here reveal the general understanding that People’s Democracy was regarded as the preliminary stage of revolution in the imperialist countries. This was also evident in the discussions between Harry Pollitt and Stalin which argued for the people’s democratic stage for the USA, Britain, Canada and Australia. The programmes which emerged from this framework have been recorded in the archives of Revolutionary Democracy. In the instance of Japan the party opposition supported socialist revolution as the first stage. Both the CPSU (b) and the CPC rejected this viewpoint. Stalin gave his position on this and this became incorporated in the Programme of the party later in the year.*

Vijay Singh