maoism in india

Preface

THERE ARE several nuances to the fragmented Indian Maoist movement. In the absence of any term that describes them adequately, Indian Maoists have come to be called “Naxalites” after the 1967 peasant uprising in Naxalbari, a 270- square mile enclave in West Bengal. But Naxalbari is neither the beginning nor the end of Indian Maoism and Maoist armed struggle in India. The terms “Naxalite” and “Naxalism” is now debased political coinage, used indiscriminately by the detractors and opponents of Maoism.

Indian Maoism predates the final victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949. In its first appearance, it was a short-lived phenomenon of the late 1940s and was suppressed by international intervention. After nearly two decades, it has returned in a changed context.

The last three years have witnessed the extensive growth of the Maoist movement in India, despite the set-backs and the fragmentation it has suffered. ‘To a whole generation of idealist youth, the Maoist movement represents the quest for something meaningful and relevant, outside the parliamentary system whose legitimacy is becoming increasingly doubtful.

This study is a follow-up on my earlier book, Indian Communism—Split Within a Split,* which had attempted an analysis of the Indian communist developments culminating in the return of Maoism to India. The response was _ overwhelming though the book itself was imperfect and inadequate in many respects. The need for a comprehensive study of the Indian Maoist movement remained. Here is a little attempt to meet it.

India has a central place in the Maoist strategy of people’s war commended to the Third World. The Indian commu-

* Vikas Publications, Delhi, 1969.

Vi PREFACE nist movement has been the battleground of the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute on issues like peaceful transition to socialism and the concept of national democracy which are patently Soviet innovations, considered revisionist by the Chinese leadership.

This book tries to place India in the Maoist strategy and trace the evolution of the Chinese line for India leading to the call for a Maoist revolution in mid-1967, as part of the general strategy of people’s war for the ‘Third World. Naxalbari provided the occasion for vigorous reassertion of the Maoist model.

But the present phase of the Maoist movement had a faltering start, with a Maoist party formed from above without regard to the problem of evolving a tactical line. ‘The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), formed in 1969, began without either a programme or a constitution and has been groping for a tactical line. ‘The Communist Party of China has recognized this as India’s only legitimate communist party but significantly has neither denounced nor recognized the other Maoist formations in the country.

The Chinese leadership has to contend with two shades of Maoism in India, represented by the divergent tactical lines of CPi(M) and the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee. ‘The tactical line blessed by the Chinese leadership has lapsed into group terrorism with no relation to any mass movement because the line is based on a patently non-Maoist philosophy of armed struggle, rejecting both mass participation and the role of mass organizations. No wonder the CPI(M-L)’s leadership of the Srikakulam movement in Andhra Pradesh (which predates Naxalbari by almost a decade) has resulted in its virtual liquidation.

The alternative focus is provided by the Andhra Maoists who have the benefit of the lessons of Telengana peasant struggle of 1946-51. The tactical line worked by the Andhra

PREFACE Vil

Maoists appears to be a creative application of Maoism to India while the CPI(M-L) has been very mechanical in_ its approach to the problems of “people’s war.”

The book attempts an examination of all these issues and assesses the potential of a Maoist revolution in India.

‘The author has no pretension to scholarship and no claims to authority. At best, the book has a story to tell by a journalist who has reported it as it developed.

The author's debt in this effort is to many. But most of is to the friendly staff of the School of International Studies library where much of the research was done, to several friends who helped with advice and rare material but would not like te be identified, and. of course. to Mr. S. Swaminathan who had to grapple with a near-impossible manuscript.

Mouan RAM

CHAPTER FIVE GHARTERSSIX The Potential

BrsLioGRAPHY

CHAPTER ONE i

THE Communist Party of China’s call in June-July 1967 for armed revolutions in India, Burma, and Indonesia marked a new stage in the Sino-Soviet ideological struggle. It was a collision of two different attitudes to the role of national liberation movement when the Vietnam war had become the focal point of all the contradictions of the epoch. To the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the contradiction between the socialist camp and imperialism was almost the only global contradiction while the Communist Party of China identified the one between the oppressed nations and imperialism as the foremost. By transferring the struggle against imperialism to the Third World, the Chinese were trying to challenge anew, on a higher plane. the Soviet ideological positions on peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, and peaceful transition, and rejecting the suggestion for “unity in action” in Vietnam. ‘Three countries where the Soviet Union saw the most chance of peaceful transition to socialism and whose regimes the Soviet Union and the United States were underwriting with economic aid and diplomatic support were chosen by the CPC for implementation of its new strategy for the Third World.

The strategy of people’s war based on guerilla tactics proposed by Lin Piao on 2 September 1965 in his famous article

“Long Live the Victory of People’s War” was a vigorous reassertion of the Maoist model of revolution for the Third World. Along with this article, to mark the twentieth anniversary. of China’s war-against Japan, two other articles on the same day, one by-Lo Jui-ching (in People’s Daily) and the other, a People’s Daily editorial, stressed the importance of people’s war. The three articles were part of the foreign policy debate that had begun early in 1965 in the Communist Party of China. It was not until after Mao Tse-tung had supported Lin Piao’s thesis that it could win decisively at the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Central Committee’ in August 1966.

Lin’s ‘strategy commended Mao’s theory of people’s war as the “common asset of the revolutionary people of the whole world” because it had “characteristics of our epoch.” Whether one wanted a tit-for-tat struggle against imperialist armed aggression or suppression or a fight against it was tantamount to whether one dared embark on a revolution. This was the best touchstone to tell the genuine revolutionaries from the fake ones. _Mao’s theory of people’s war solved not only the problems of people’s war but also those of waging it. His theory of rural revolutionary bases was “outstanding and universal and of practical importance” to Asia, Africa, and Latin America which constituted the rural areas of the world while the North American and West European capitalist countries constituted the cities. ‘The Chinese revolution had solved the problem of linking up the national democratic with socialist revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Mao’s was a “complete

1 For a detailed account of the internal conflict on global policy in the Communist Party of China which culminated in the victory for the Mao Tse-tung-Lin Piao line, see Uri Ra’anan, “Peking’s Foreign Policy Debate,’ in Tang Tsou (Ed.), China in Crisis, Volume II, University of Chicago, 1968.

theory of new democratic revolution” against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism waged “by the broad masses of people under the leadership of the proletariat.” Lin’s strategy aimed at linking all the people’s wars in the Third World into a global front.against United States, réinforcing each other and merging into a “torrential. worldwide tide.”?

Besides, United States imperialism itself was divisible and could be destroyed bit by bit through people’s wars in the Third World. When United States imperialism was dreading people’s war most, the “Khrushchev revisionists” came to its rescue by debunking it and “scheming to undermine” it, Lin said. The revisionists had no faith in the masses, had succumbed to the United States nuclear blackmail, and were afraid that people’s war for the fight of the socialist countries against U.S. agression would involve them in a conflict that would smash the dreams of the Soviet-United States cooperation to dominate the world. Lin challenged the Soviet theory that a nation without nuclear weapons cannot defeat an enemy with nuclear weapons and ridiculed the belief that a single spark anywhere would touch off a world nuclear confrontation. People’s war was the answer to all the issues in the changed strategic environment.

Lin’s thesis was thus also a frontal attack on the Soviet ideological positions and the general line of the “three peacefuls’’—peaceful coexistence, peaceful competition, and peaceful transition. The strategy aimed at a combined onslaught on US. imperialism and Soviet revisionism in the Third World through an escalation of the national liberation movement.

2 Lin Piao, “Long Live The Victory of People’s War,” People’s Daily, 2-September 1965; Peking Review, 3 September 1965. 3 [bid,

Though the people’s war strategy for the Third World had won acceptance at the Central Committee plenum in August 1966 (that is, two months before the Cultural Revolution reached its climax), it took the CPC another year to call for its implementation, almost simultaneously, in India, Burma, and Indonesia, in that order. Preoccupation with the Cultural Revolution might not have been the sole reason for the significant lag of about a year.

By mid-1967, India had gone through its fourth general elections and new governments had taken office at the federal level and in the States. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), formed in 1964 following the split in the pro-Moscow Communist Party of India, persisted in its equivocation on peaceful transition and the parliamentary path. When the CPI(M) found itself participating in non-ideological coalition ministries in Kerala and West Bengal, the CPC was far from pleased with the behaviour of the only communist party it recognized in India. China’s state-level relations with Burma had deteriorated to a new low by mid-1967 and the Ne Win government had moved closer to the Soviet Union. In Indonesia, Suharto had come to stay. ‘The coup in October 1965 had underlined the failure of the Indonesian Communist Party’s line of reliance on peaceful transition and on Sukarno. ‘Though the party, decimated as a result of the post-coup massacre, had analyzed its mistakes as early as August 1966, the CPC published it only in July 1967 to synchronize with its call for armed revolution in Indonesia. It is possible that the CPC had hoped that Sukarno could still pull it off but when he was formally deposed in May 1967, a new strategy was called for. ‘This might be the reason for the delayed publication of the Indonesian party documents. Publication of these documents in Peking meant the CPC’s approval of them.

The developments in India, Burma, and Indonesia in the aggregate warranted, in the CPC’s view, a new, coordinated strategy to secure the defeat of the peaceful transition line and to shift the struggle against the United States and the ideological struggle against Soviet Union to the Third World.

New Strategic Environment

Before it went about implementing the new Third World strategy by calling for Maoist revolutions in India, Burma, and Indonesia in June-July 1967, the Chinese: leadership appeared to have made a fresh assessment of the world revolutionary potential. As late as July 1966, the emphasis was on the Third World support to the Vietnamese struggle for defeating U.S. imperialism. ‘The Afro-Asian Writers’ Emergency Meeting in Peking on 9 July 1966 reflected the Chinese thinking adequately. It adopted 37 resolutions supporting armed struggles in Asia and Africa. The principal task of the Afro-Asian peoples was identified as the elimination of al: forces and influences of imperialism and colonialism in the political, economic, and cultural domains and the carrying through to the end of the national liberation struggle. U.S. imperialism was described as the most ferocious enemy of the people of the Third World, and of the world as a whole,* and the Soviet Union its accomplice because it was striving to “undermine the solidarity and the revolutionary cause of the Afro-Asian people” and had “placed itself in antagonism with the Afro-Asian people and

4 Communique of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Emergency Meeting, Peking, 9 July; Peking Review, 15 July 1966.

the people of the world.’”®

Early in 1967, the CPC saw a qualitative change in the world revolutionary situation alongside an attempt by the United States, with Soviet help, for an anti-China cordon sanitaire. A review of 1966 began with a Mao thought: “We are now in a great new era of world revolution. The revolutionary upheaval in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is sure to deal the whole of the old world a decisive and crushing blow.”

The review said that U.S. imperialism helped by Soviet revisionists had increasingly shifted the emphasis of its counter-revolutionary global strategy from Europe to Asia and was attempting to stamp out the flames of Asian peoples’ struggle, particularly in Vietnam. Alongside, the peoples of Asia, “influenced and inspired by Mao Tse-tung’s Thought” were waging a united struggle. Besides the armed struggle in Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, “the people have carried on mass political struggle, including armed struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys” in a number of countries. Armed struggle was “unabated” in Philippines. In India, “the mass movement against the reactionary Congress Government swept the entire country. ...This movement has broken out of the bonds of economic struggle and once dominant doctrine of ‘non-violence’ is becoming increasingly discredited.” In-Indonesia, it was a “sustained struggle” against the rightist military regime despite the 1965 bloodbath. In Japan, it was “tit-for-tat struggle” against the followers of Soviet revisionists.°

It was, on the whole,.a “gloomy new year’ for imperialism because the “revolutionary storm of the world’s people” was

5 “The Militant Banner of Afro-Asian Solidarity is Flying High,” Editorial, People’s Daily, 10 July; Peking Review, 15 July 1966.

6 “Great New Era of World Revolution,” Peking Review, 13 January 1967.

sweeping forward quickening the disintegration of the imperialist camp headed by the United States. “The day of their burial is not far off.”* But the United States-Soviet collusion against China was broadening.

By mid-1967, the revolutionary situation had turned “excellent” amidst sharper international class struggle, with more revolutionary wars and counter-revolutionary wars than eight years ago. “The world is full of the smell of gunpowder,” wrote the People’s Daily and the commentary, “To Hell with the Theory of ‘Dying out’ of Wars!” reflected Chinese optimism and confidence. Alexei Kosygin’s call for “an end to the war” at that juncture, the commentary said, was aimed at greater United States-Soviet collusion against peop.e’s revolutionary struggle.°

India, Burma, and Indonesia

This was the new strategic environment in which the CPC called for armed revolutions in India, Burma and Indonesia, and it was the new strategy in action. A peasant revolt led by the extremists of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Naxalbari, in Darjeeling district of West Bengal, where the party shared power at the State level, provided the occasion for spelling out the Maoist strategy for India. A People’s Daily article credited to a “Red Guard,” broadcast by Radio Peking on 10 June, called for “relentless armed struggle” to MISO: the Indian eae Mee a and “forcibly seize power.”

The Chinese saw in the Naxalbari revolt the first spark of

7 “Imperialist Camp Enters Gloomy New Year,” Peking Review, 20 January 1967.

8 Peking Review, 10 February 1967.

9 Radio. Peking, 1 July 1967.

revolutionary armed struggle that could start a prairie fire in India. Naxalbari represented “the general orientation of the Indian revolution at the present time. The people of India, China, and the rest of the world hail the emergence of this revolutionary armed struggle.”

In Burma, open support to armed struggle and a call to overthrow the Ne Win Government followed deterioration in the state-level relations. The shift came on 30 June 1967, after China, following anti-Chinese riots, had decided that its ambassador would not return to Rangoon. People’s Daily | denounced the Ne Win regime which it said had seized power through a military coup and had discarded “the fig leaf of bourgeois democracy” and “clamped down a military fascist rule.” Revolutionary armed struggle led by the Communist Party of Burma was developing successfully and in the past year in particular, it had grown much stronger taking the national democratic revolution an important step further.11 Significantly, no reference had been made to armed struggle in Burma in the review of the revolutionary situation in 1966, but People’s Daily was now referring to the growth of the armed struggle during the past year in particular.

From now on, attacks on the Burmese regime from Peking were more frequent. On 5 July, Thakin Ba Thein Tin, First Vice-chairman of the Communist Party of Burma, told a memoria! rally in Peking for the Chinese technical expert Liu Yi killed in Rangoon, that this incident was part of the anti-China drive in Indonesia, India, Hong Kong, and in other countries and was carried out in collusion with

10 NCNA, Peking, 27 June 1967.

11 “The Burmese Government Must Stop All anti-Chinese Atrocities,” People’s Daily, 30 June 1967, NCNA translation,

12 See fn. 7 supra.

United States imperialism, Soviet revisionism, world t1eaction, and Kuomintang bandit gangs.’*

This was followed by a commentary which explained the Ne Win regime's anti-China stance as the invitable result of class struggle and the growing strength of the revolutionary armed forces. The path of Burma’s revolution was no longer in doubt:

The armed struggle led by the Communist Party of Burma...represents the direction of the historical development of Burma. The people of all nationalities throughout Burma...are now, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Burma, closing their ranks more tightly in rebellion against the Ne Win Government and this is taking the form of a revolutionary people’s war."

About the same time, the CPC called for the overthrow of the regime in Indonesia. Radio Peking devoted its bulletins on 2 and 8 July to an analysis or the Communist Party of Indonesia’s mistakes since 1945, its Politbureau’s statement of 17 August 1966 and the Politbureau’s self-criticism of September 1966. The statement had said that the party’s task was to build itself as a Marxist-Leninist party opposed to modern revisionism to be able to lead a protracted armed struggle integrated with agrarian revolution, and to form a united front of all forces opposed to the military regime. The self-criticism said that during the last 15 years, the party had got bogged down in parliamentary and_ other

’ forms of legal struggle. In sum, it lost its independence in the united front with the national bourgeoisie.

- 13 NCNA, Peking, 5 July 1967. 14 “By Frenziedly Opposing China, the Ne Win Reactionary Government is Inviting its Own Doom,” People’s Daily editorial,

Io MAOISM IN INDIA

The authoritative Red Flag said that the Indonesian party faced a difficult task because it had to switch from cities to the countryside, from peaceful struggle to armed struggle and from legal to illegal and from open to secret activity. But the objective realities of the revolutionary struggle would compel people to make the change, compel them to master armed struggle because there was no alternative to it. The CPC pledged support to the Indonesian revolution in unmistakable terms:

We stand unflinchingly on the side of the PKI, on the side of the Indonesian revolutionary people, and firmly support the struggle waged by the PKI in leading the Indonesian people to overthrow the Suharto-Nasutian fascist TeeMMer ae *

Thus in June-July 1967, the CPC had prescribed people’s war as the answer to the problems of national democratic revolution in India, Burma, and Indonesia. The order in which these countries received the CPC’s attention was significant. In India it synchronized with Naxalbari uprising. In Burma, it coincided with China’s belligerence abroad leading to strained relations even with friendly countries like Nepal and Ceylon and the Vijay-Raghunath incident in Peking with India. The strain in relations with Burma and Indonesia was over the people of Chinese origin. -

Peaceful Transition, the Issue

This was roughly the time when the Cultural Revolution extended to foreign relations. To what extent the change

INDIA IN MAOIST STRATEGY II in attitude to the Indian, Burmese, and Indonesian regimes was a function of the struggle against Liu Shao-chi is hard to tell. But there are several references to “China’s Khrushchev” in the attacks on the peaceful transition line.

There was also an attempt to fix the responsibility on Liu Shao-chi for China’s mistaken prettification of the Ne Win regime. An authoritative article said in the past, thanks to the “assiduous glorification” of the regime by the Soviet revisionists and China’s Khrushchev, “not a few people had an impression that this regime was somehow ‘progressive’.”1¢

The CPC’s effort in India was directed at securing a shift in the tactical line of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which had equivocated on armed struggle, like the Moscow-backed Communist Party of India, taken the parliamentary path.

The CPC approvingly published an article by a Burmese communist leader to mark the 28th anniversary of his party. It sought to snipe at Liu Shao-chi and to debunk what it called the Indian road to revolution.

The Soviet Khrushchevian revisionists and China's Khrushchev and his gang have time and again tried to make us abandon China’s road and take India’s road. ‘They said Burma was not like old China. In Burma, there was more bourgeois democracy than in old China ruled by the Chiang Kai-shek regime and it was possible to make use of bourgeois democracy in waging struggle. ‘Their aim was to make us abandon armed struggle, enter into the legal orbit and engage in long-term legal struggle.”

16 “Be Armed With Mao Tsse-tung’s Thought to Strike Down Our Common Enemy,” People’s' Daily, 10 July 1967.

17 Thakin Ba Thien Tin, “Burmese People’s Revolutionary Armed Struggle is Bound to Triumph,” Peking Review, 1 September 1967.

India, and more especially the form of its transition to socialism, has been crucial to the CPC’s alternative general line for the international communist movement. Peaceful transition through the parliamentary process was a Khrushchevian innovation al the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of Soviet Union in 1956. Khrushchev’s concept of peaceful transition, repeated by Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov, was in fact a corollary to his declaration that peaceful coexistence was the “general line of the Soviet policy.”

The peaceful transition thesis was based on an integrated strategy. In the changed international environment, the powerful socialist bloc could provide the supporting base of world revolution and by interacting with the local progressive forces outside, bring about a new correlation of forces to make peaceful transition possible. ‘Two features of the new environment—the emergence of a vast Peace Zone in Asia and the degree of economic and diplomatic support the socialist camp can give to prevent its rapprochment with the West were central to the strategy. ‘The transition, as visualized by the Soviet leadership, involved three stages. This was how Khrushchev outlined it. The working class, by rallying itself and other forces was in a position to defeat the forces opposed to the popular interest, to capture majority in parliament and transform it into a genuine instrument of the people’s will.

The winning of a stable parliamentary majority backed by a mass revolutionary movement of the proletariat and of all the working people could create for the working class of a number of capitalist and former colonial countries the conditions needed to secure fundamental social change.

In countries where capitalism is still strong and has

a huge military and police apparatus at its disposal, the

reactionary forces will of course inevitably offer serious

‘resistance. ‘There the transition to socialism will be attended by sharp, revolutionary struggle.**

Parliamentarism was the basis of the thesis stated by the Soviet leadership in the broadest of terms. The countries which could strive for peaceful transition were not specified. Peaceful transition was assumed to be the rule while non-peaceful transition (“sharp class, revolutionary struggle”) was viewed as an exception.

To the Chinese, the thesis amounted to a “clear revision of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state and revolution and a clear denial of the universal significance of the road of the October Revolution.” Peaceful coexistence as advocated by Khrushchev amounted, according to the CPC, to “excluding from the general line of the foreign policy of the socialist countries their mutual assistance and cooperation as well as assistance by them to the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations, or to subordinating all this to the policy of so-called ‘peaceful coexistence’.”®

Forms of transition to socialism and attitude to revolutionary struggles of the Third World have been among the issues of the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute, one phase of which culminated in the alternative Chinese general line of

18 N.S. Khrushchev, Report of the Central Committee of the ‘Communist Party of Soviet Union to the XX Party Congress, February 14, 1956, Moscow, 1956, pp. 42-6.

19 Editorial Departments of People’s Daily and Red Flag, “The Origin and Development of Differences Between the Leadership of the CPSU and Ourselves: Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU — 1,” Peking Review, 13 September 1963.

I4 MAOISM IN INDIA the international communist movement.” The Sino-Sovict ideological dispute can be said to have had its origins in the Soviet formulations at the 20th Congress of the CPSU. In fact, one of the minor issues related to the Congress itself.

While the CPSU claims that the CPC had accepted the thesis but had made a “180-degree turn” in its evaluation of the 20th CPSU Congress,”? the CPC maintains that it had always differed “in its view of the 20th Congress” and “the leading comrades of the CPSU are aware of it.”? It is on record that the Chinese raised this issue once again with the CPSU at the 1957 meeting of the representatives of the Communist and Workers Parties in Moscow. Peaceful transition was the main issue between the two parties and the original draft declaration proposed by the CPSU was modified on the Chinese insistence. The draft was silent on non-peaceful transition and had mentioned only peaceful transition. Besides it had described peaceful transition as “securing a majority in parliament” and transforming it “from an instrument of the bourgeois dictatorship into an instrument of genuine people’s state power.” The CPC opposed this and expressed its reservations on two successive drafts of the CPSU. A revised draft put forward by the CPC provided the basis of discussions between the two delegations before the “Joint Draft Declaration by the CPSU and the CPC” was circulated among other delegations. The declaration in its final form (on 16 November |

20 “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement,” CC, CPC, 14 June 1963.

21 CPSU Central Committee, “Open Letter to its Party Organizations at all Levels and to All its Party Members,” Soviet News, 16 July 1963.

22 Editorial Departments of People’s Daily and Red Flag, “The Origin and Development...,” loc. cit.

INDIA IN MAOIST STRATEGY 15 1957) made two major changes on the question of transition from capitalism to socialism compared with the first draft proposed by CPSU. One, the declaration besides indicating the possibility of peaceful transition, referred to non-peaceful transition and asserted that “Leninism teaches, and experience confirms, that the ruling classes never relinquish power voluntarily.” Secondly, in connection with securing “a firm majority in parliament,” the declaration emphasized the need to wage “extra-parliamentary mass struggle, smash the resistance of the reactionary forces and create the necessary conditions for peaceful realisation of the socialist revolution.”

Though the CPC was not satisfied with these changes it “conceded the point” because the leaders of the CPSU had pleaded that the formulation should have some connection with that of the 20th Congress.** ‘The CPC’s own views on the question were stated in the note “Outline of Views on the Question of Peaceful Transition.”** Briefly the CPC’s position was: It would be more flexible to refer to both peaceful and non-peaceful because that would leave the political initiative with the communists but referring only to peaceful transition would tie their hands; it might be tactically advantageous to refer to peaceful transition but it would be inappropriate to overemphasize its possibility; to the best of their knowledge there was still “not a country where this possibility is of any practical significance”; should such possibility arise the Communists could always take ' advantage of it; to obtain majority in parliament was not the same as smashing the old state machinery and establishing the new state machinery; peaceful transition to socialism

23 Ibid. 24 Appendix to ibid.

should not be interpreted in such a way that it solely means transition through parliamentary majority.”

India, the Testing Ground

Though neither the 20th CPSU Congress nor the Moscow declaration had specified the countries that held out possibilities of peaceful transition, there was little doubt that the Soviet leadership saw greatest chances of such transition in India. One of the main postulates of the Soviet strategy (economic and diplomatic support to the countries of the Peacé Zone in Asia to prevent their alignment with the West) had been tried with measurable success in India and was already part of Soviet experience. The CPI had already been persuaded to accept the strategy.

In the wake of the disastrous 1948 Zhdanovy line of insurrections in South-East Asia and amidst the changed needs of a cold war situation, the Soviet leadership decided in 1951 to replace class struggle by cold war. The Communist Party of India (CPI) swung from right reformism, most pronounced at the time of Independence (August 1947) to left sectarianism early in 1948 (Calcutta congress) and believed in the Titoite theory of intertwining of the two stages of revolution, assuming that India was already a capitalist country. In 1950, on international intervention, it abandoned the Calcutta line and switched to the Maoist: strategy of a four-class alliance for a two-stage revolution. Soviet intervention in 1951 forced the party to shelve, if not abandon, armed struggle as a tactic and settle for peaceful constitutionalism beginning with participation in the country’s first general elections in 1952. In 1953, the main controversy in the party related to the identification of the main enemy— Bnitish imperialism, which still dominated the Indian economy or American imperialism, which was the enemy of the communist parties the world over. Soviet intervention through the British communists achieved the desired shift and the fight against British imperialism was compromised to suit to Soviet cold war requirements. . The CPI equivocated, calling for simultaneous struggles against both the imperialisms and in practice lined up behind the government of Jawaharlal Nehru. The Soviet leadership was placating him to stablize his “nonalignment” and prevent its lapse into alignment with the Western camp.”*° - Soviet Union wanted a worldwide peace front and the CPI was to exert pressure on Nehru to bring him into the front. The Soviet leadership no longer regarded nonalignment a dirty word because Nehru had shown signs of independence of the Western camp.