Tridib Chaudhuri
Date: 1950
Publisher: Revolutionary Socialist Party (republished by MIA with kind permission of the RSP CC)
Transcription/HTML: Mike B. and Salil Sen for MIA, 2007-2008
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
This work is a historical document, a real time analysis of the seemingly sudden turns and twists in the "line" of the Communist Party of India, particularly during the period spanning from early 1948 to mid-1950 — a crucial phase in the life of the CPI, also known as the Ranadive period — in response to the cues, often rather abstruse, received from the "headquarter" of world revolution — the CPSU, usually via the Cominform.
This analysis has been done from an independent, non-conformist, Marxist point of view.
The analysis rather compellingly shows up how the CPI was woefully tied to the coattails of the CPSU, and its policies pendulated in tune with the foreign policy imperatives of the USSR. And this becomes perfectly understandable in terms of the Maniulisky formulation back in 1935, as cited and highlighted here, characterising the "reinforcement of the USSR" as the "central axis" of "world proletarian revolution". The formulation, or rather prescription, is essentially only a restatement of the policy of "Socialism in a Single Country" — as would be applicable in case of the foreign communist parties following the Moscow leadership.
It goes to the credit of the author that he could quite perceptively anticipate that the "China Way" as prescribed by the editorial of the Cominform organ, 'For a Lasting Peace, For a People's Democracy' (Jan. 27 1950) would in the given case not, by any stretch, mean following the Chinese example of resorting to a protracted civil war waged by a peasant army led by the Communist Party to eventually capture the state power. It would inevitably mean going back to the days of collaboration with the major wing of the ruling Indian National Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru. The author concluded that the leftward turn in India's foreign policy — cozying up with the Soviet Bloc, demands precisely that. This was posited when there obtained considerable confusions within the ranks of the CPI itself as to the precise meaning of the said editorial, so very out of tune with rather recent positive pronouncements made by authoritative "experts" like V.V. Balabushevich and A.M. Dyakov on the Ranadive "line".
The author's prediction would prove prophetic.
—Sukla Sen, 2008
