In this interview Stalin gave his views on the questions raised by the leadership of the CPI. The Soviet leader adverted to the essential differences between China and India in terms of the development of the economy and the railway network which affected the necessity of differing tactical lines in these countries. In the suggestions given by Stalin to the Indian communists he drew extensively on the experiences of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. The latter observations are of particular value as they give his appraisal of the great Chinese revolution shortly after its spectacular victories.⁽¹⁾ Stalin’s evaluations of the course of the Chinese revolution, the specifics of the Chinese path which he held up as an exemplar to the CPI leaders differ enormously from the interpretations placed on that path by those who aspire to that route in contemporary India with regards to the role of the working class and the peasantry. Stalin stressed the necessity of the role of both of these classes in the Indian revolution and particularly in the armed revolution. He noted the inclination to individual terrorism in the Indian communist movement. Regarding the Telengana movement Stalin observed that it was necessary to support what were the first sprouts of civil war. At the same time he added that Telengana represented ‘the beginning of the opening of the struggle’ but it was not ‘the main form of struggle from which India is still distant.’ Stalin did not consider that partisan warfare was the principal form of struggle in India at that time.

Stalin’s understanding of the problems before the CPI exerted a profound effect on the course of the history of the party as it led to the recasting of the party approach to the understanding of the character of the Indian state, the stage of revolution, the path of revolution, and the nature of armed revolution and armed struggle, the role of the working class and the peasantry in the revolutionary process in India. This found its expression in the formulation of the new party documents which were drafted in 1951 shortly after the Moscow meetings between the representatives of the CPI and the CPSU (B).⁽²⁾

The resolution of the questions of the Indian revolution worked out in 1951, however, proved to be short-lived. With the changes in the Soviet Union after 1953 and the 20th Congress of the CPSU three years later there occurred a corresponding change in the programmatic and tactical perspectives of the CPI: the stage of people’s democratic revolution was dropped in favour of a national democratic revolution which would have an enhanced role for the national bourgeoisie, and revolutionary strategies were replaced by peaceful and parliamentary ones.⁽³⁾ The CPI has remained within the frame of the theses of the 20th Congress of the CPSU for a half century. The CPI (M), in its opposition to the CPI on its right flank, asserted its support of the people’s democratic revolution and defended the revolutionary positions of 1951. It continued, furthermore, at least ostensibly, a defence of the 1951 positions in confrontation with its left flank, namely the CPI (ML), which also upheld the people’s democratic revolution but did not necessarily support the positions advocated by Stalin in 1951 with regard to the path of the Indian revolution.

But within a decade of the foundation of the CPI (M) it became clear to its General Secretary that the party had left behind the perspectives of 1951. He baldly stated that the CPI (M) did not look at matters from the point of view of a revolutionary party:

‘our practice is based on deep-rooted parliamentary, legalistic illusions and on possibilities of peaceful development of our party and movement for a long period to come. We are unable to shake off the revisionist habits, thinking, the mode of functioning in all mass fronts and in party building’.

P. Sundarayya alluded to the abandonment of the 1951 tactical line of the necessity of combining the workers’ uprisings with the partisan warfare of the peasantry, of the need to establish a powerful working class movement with underground factory and workshop committees which represented the line of the party.

This is how he underlined the retreat from the 1951 Statement of Policy by the party:

‘…We are all agreed that our path is not exactly of Russia or China but will be our independent path, based on the working class peasant alliance, if possible simultaneously synchronising of peasant armed revolts (leading to establishment of guerrilla bases and then to liberation bases) and general strikes and armed insurrections in the industrial and administrative centres. To make our revolution successful, the necessity of combining these two main forces on All-India scale becomes essential. But from this we slip unconsciously in the name of preparing for working class and peasant movements on all-India scale to plan all-India mass actions, which taking our party’s present organisational weakness, and the weakness of general democratic movements leads us more or less to constitutional and – parliamentary forms of activity, neglecting other basic tasks of the party. (Emphases in the original).

Realising the anomalous position of his heading a party which was engulfed by what he termed ‘revisionist habits’ Sundarayya took the only honourable course open to him by resigning from the General Secretaryship and Politbureau of the CPI (M) during the emergency in 1975.⁽⁴⁾

The revolutionary forces which seceded from the CPI (M) in the late 1960s largely by-passed the understanding of the 1951 programme and path of revolution. The dominant tendencies in the CPI (ML) traced their origins to the criticism of the P.C. Joshi and B.T. Ranadive lines, to the Andhra Letter, to the Telengana movement and favoured perspectives based directly on their understanding of the Chinese revolution. The newly formed party lent its support to the withdrawal of party work from the trade unions, the strategic boycott of parliament, the surrounding of the towns by the countryside and the policy of individual terrorism as its military line –all of which was considered to be consistent with the experience of the Chinese revolution. Stalin’s observations on the need to incorporate the working class in the armed revolution and the need to overcome individual terrorism with regard to the CPI in the 1940s retained its validity in the new circumstances. The exertions to overcome the sectarian limitations of the early party line continued for many years.

The inter-action between J.V. Stalin and the CPI delegation in 1951 and the documents which flowed from it constitute a reference point in understanding the different programmes and tactical lines which have preoccupied the Indian communist movement.⁽⁵⁾

1. We do not found these elsewhere in recently released documents which cover the relations between the Soviet and Chinese communist leaderships. See, for example, A.M. Ledovskii, ‘SSSR i Stalin v syd"bakh Kitaia. Dokumenty i svidetel"stva uchastnika sobytii: 1937-1952’, Moscow, 1999 and the translations made of documents dealing with Soviet-Chinese relations by the Cold War International History Project.

2. Notably the Programme of the Communist Party of India, the Tactical Line, the Statement of Policy of the Communist Party of India. See, ‘Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India’ Volume VIII 1951-1956, edited by Mohit Sen, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, 1977. Parallel to these developments the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR held a wide-ranging discussion on the correlation of class forces in India in March and April 1951 which led to the correction of the right-opportunist evaluations of contemporary Indian developments in the Soviet Union. See: The Correlation of Class Forces in India’, ‘Revolutionary Democracy’, Vol. VI, No.2, September 2000.

3. The switch in the understanding from people’s democratic revolution to national democracy may be traced inter alia in the following documents of A. Sobelov: ‘Peoples’ Democracy as a Form of Political Organisation of Society’, Communist Review, London, June 1951, 3-21, ‘Some Forms of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism’, Communist Party Publication, New Delhi, October 1956 (The parliamentary way to socialism is spelt out here).

4. P. Sundarayya, ‘My Resignation’ India Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 21-33. Sundarayya was particularly dismayed by the policy advocated and practiced by Jyoti Basu, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, B.T. Ranadive, and P. Ramamurti of collaborating with the Hindu communal Jana Sangh during the emergency. (pp. 4-20).

5. The Provisional Central Committee of the CPI (ML), it may be said in this connection, has drawn lessons from the 1951 programme and tactical line without feeling constrained by it.

Click here to return to the September 2006 index.