The origins of New Democracy and People’s Democracy are rooted in the experiences of the international communist movement after the coming to power of Nazism in early 1933. The Seventh Congress of the Communist International of 1935 sought to cognise, combat and crush the rise of fascism. It helps us to situate the political developments in the people’s democracies in the late Stalin period and afterwards.

There was a sharp turn in 1935 with the Seventh Congress of the Communist International forging a new approach to the international revolutionary process. The coming to power of Nazism had compelled an initially defensive strategy and tactics in the fight against fascism and imperialism. Under the leadership of Stalin, Dimitrov and the Comintern the communist parties began their new orientation. The Comintern suggested to the CPC from 1935 that there be non-Soviet democratic approach to the national revolutionary process in the struggle against Japanese imperialism. In Spain the military assault on the Spanish Republic, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, required a wide popular front of all the anti-fascist forces in Spain. The Communist Party of Spain under the leadership of Jose Diaz argued from 1937 for the establishment of a new type of democratic parliamentary republic in which feudalism and the financial oligarchy would be destroyed during the course of the national liberation struggle.¹ Historians have stressed the birth of ‘People’s Democracy’ in the communist movement in the Spanish revolution in the period 1931-1939 where a new type of parliamentary republic would lead to a state form where political power would be founded on the coalition of anti-fascist forces which would include the ‘left section of the bourgeoisie’ in the national front.² In China the need to counter Japanese imperialism led the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China to seek a united front with the Kuomintang. It came into fruition after the Sian incident in 1936. In the ‘New Stage’, written in 1938, Mao recognised Chiang Kai-shek as the ‘highest leader’ of the united front against Japan. He argued for long term unity of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang for which the first step was formation of political democracy through the People’s Political Council. Mao wrote of the need for ‘new bourgeois-democratic revolution’ which would constitute an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution of the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat in 1939 directed primarily against Japanese imperialism. The projection from January, 1940, of New Democracy by the CPC is well-known and was marked by the united front between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang in which Mao and other leaders of the party participated in the Chinese government. New Democracy continued as the demand of the CPC in the period after 1945.³ Later when the possibility of a united front with the Kuomintang clearly did not exist and when the CPC was in a strong position, Mao initiated the call for People’s Democracy.

The new states established in Central and South-Eastern Europe after the defeat of Nazism were initially known as the New Democracies. After the defeat of the pro-fascist and pro-landlord forces and the beginnings of the orientation towards socialism, the perspective opened of People’s Democracy in these countries. In his Political Report to the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party in December 1948, Georgi Dimitrov extensively discussed the question of People’s Democracy in the country, where he propounded the necessity of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat in Bulgaria and constructing socialism within the framework of people’s democracy.⁴ And a few months later, prior to the victory of the revolution in China, in July 1949, Mao published the work ‘On People’s Democratic Dictatorship.’ It replaced the earlier theses on New Democracy which were now outdated.⁵ Stalin made significant observations on the differences between the People’s Democracies in Eastern Europe and China during his discussions with Soviet economists on 22nd February 1950. He pointed out that European People’s Democracies were carrying out the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat while in China this was not yet the case. There the people’s democratic state was akin to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.⁶

People’s Democracy in the East, in China, Korea and Vietnam, was understood as passing through two stages: initially it began as an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution and then in the second stage the question of carrying out the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat and development towards socialism was posed. This understanding was derived from the experience of People’s Democracy in the European countries.

In Central and South-Eastern Europe the revolutionary process began as an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist one which was intertwined with the anti-feudal movement. The People’s Democracies did not establish the full dictatorship of the proletariat immediately or fight directly for socialism in these countries as the principal task was to ensure the defeat of fascism, attain national independence and democratic liberties; end the serfdom and slavery introduced by the Nazis; liquidate the consequences of Nazi rule and terminate the survivals of feudalism. In the initial period of People’s Democracy the middle bourgeoisie participated in the state power in a number of countries.⁷ At a certain stage from 1948-49 in these states the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry began to develop into the dictatorship of the proletariat having the objective of the construction of socialism. This was in accordance with the Leninist understanding of the need for the uninterrupted transition from the democratic revolution to socialism. The middle bourgeoisie began to be a hindrance in the onward march to socialism and had to be exposed before the masses and removed from state power. In this manner the second stage of People’s Democracy, that of socialist revolution was inaugurated.8

In the second phase the economics of the European countries of people’s democracy were not considered socialist but were of a transitional character in which there were three forms of property:

These relations of property remained such in the European people’s democracies right through till the close of the Stalin period.

The countries of the European people’s democracies, although they were stated to be dictatorships of the proletariat, were not considered to be socialist nor were their economies thought to be socialist as some exploiting classes, the middle bourgeoisie and the rural bourgeoisie, were still extant. The people’s democracies were considered as transitional economies which had barely embarked on the construction of socialism.

These countries were categorised as democratic states allied to the socialist Soviet Union. Thus, Zhdanov spoke of the ‘Soviet Union and the democratic countries’ in his speech on the international situation at the inaugural meeting of the Communist Information Bureau in September 1947.¹⁰ This characterisation was confirmed at the November 1949 meeting of the Communist Information Bureau.¹¹ Following in this line of thinking G. Malenkov in 1952 distinguished between the socialist Soviet Union and the camp of people’s democracy in his speech at the 19th Congress of the CPSU (b).¹²

In ‘Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR’ in 1952 Stalin argued that a socialist camp had arisen in opposition to the camp of imperialism:

Stalin was speaking of the formation of a socialist economic market; he did not imply that any of the people’s democratic countries of either the west or the east had become socialist states; they remained within the democratic fold.

This is evident from Malenkov’s Speech at the 19th Congress of the CPSU (b). He referred (a) to the breaking away of the people’s democracies from the capitalist system, their linking up with the Soviet Union to form a single camp of peace and democracy in opposition to the camp of imperialism; and (b) to the formation of a parallel economic market to that of world imperialism which was composed of the market of the countries in the camp of peace and democracy:

The economic consequences of the formation of two opposite camps was, as Comrade Stalin has pointed out, that the single, all-embracing world market disintegrated and two parallel world markets were formed: the market of the countries in the camp of peace and democracy, and the camp of the countries in the aggressive imperialist camp. The breakup of the single world market is the most important economic result of the Second World War and of its economic consequences.¹⁴

Soviet writers under Stalin such as A.I. Sobolev continued to draw a distinction between the socialist Soviet Union, the western people’s democracies which had formed the dictatorship of the proletariat and had embarked on the path of socialist construction and the people’s democracies of the east where there existed dictatorships of the proletariat and the peasantry, allied with national capital, where dictatorships of the proletariat had yet to be established and the path of socialist construction had yet to be inaugurated. These distinctions were to be blurred after the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956.

The transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the transition from the anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal stage of people’s democracy to the stage of the introductory steps of the construction of socialism was not entirely peaceable. This is evident from the case of Yugoslavia which withdrew from the united socialist front of the Soviet Union and the democratic states. The economic basis for this was the fierce resistance of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to the nationalisation of capitalist elements and the liquidation of the numerically largest section of the bourgeoisie, the kulaks, which was the necessary condition for the formation of the collective farms of the poor and middle peasantry. In the correspondence of the CPSU (b) to the CPY, signed by Stalin and Molotov, these questions were raised. In their letter of 27th March, 1948, they stated:

The CPY denied these charges in the letter signed by Tito and Kardelj dated 13th April 1948. Stalin and Molotov continued their line of argument in their letter of 4th May, 1948 where they contrasted the experience of the Soviet Union with that of Yugoslavia, pointing out that the Yugoslavs were not accepting the Marxist-Leninist theory that the class struggle intensified in the transition from capitalism to socialism. Stalin and Molotov cited Lenin:

It is no accident that the leaders of the CPY are avoiding the question of the class struggle and the checking of the capitalist elements in the village. What is more, in the speeches of the Yugoslav leaders there is no mention of the question of class differentiation in the village; the peasantry are considered as an agrarian whole, and the Party does not mobilise its forces in an effort to overcome the difficulties arising from the increase of the exploiting elements in the villages.¹⁶

Stalin and Molotov stressed that there was no room for complacency as in Yugoslavia the land was not nationalised; under the conditions of private property in land, it was concentrated in the hands of the kulaks who used hired labour. Class struggle could not be glossed over if socialism was to be built.¹⁷

In response to the criticism of the CPSU (b) and other parties the CPY now embarked upon a series of ultra-leftist measures to end capitalist elements and the rural bourgeoisie. These were of a demagogic character as no preparatory measures were taken prior to ‘collectivisation’, such as manufacturing and supplying agricultural machinery, so that the policies could not have been successful.¹⁸ The CPY created a new agrarian formation where ‘collective farms’ were formed not of the poor and middle peasantry as in the Soviet Union but included the rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks.¹⁹

In its resolution of 1949, the Information Bureau stated on the question of the situation in Yugoslavia:

The agricultural machine stations had owned the instruments and means of production in the agrarian sector in Yugoslavia. They were abolished by decree in 1950 on the ground that the means of production should belong to the producers themselves. The tractors and other machinery of these stations were handed over to the cooperatives for permanent use. This expanded the sphere of commodity circulation in the country. This action became the precedent for the Soviet Union and People’s China in 1958. Yugoslavia presented a model of ‘socialism’ in which capitalist elements could exist alongside kulak co-operative farms and the ‘self-administrative’ industries engaging in commodity production.

As for the Yugoslavian kulak dominated collective farms they were wound up partly in 1951, and more substantially by the Decree of Property Relations and the Reorganisation of Peasant Work Co-operatives of March 28, 1953. By the end of the year in 1953 only 1258 ‘peasant work co-operatives’ remained in Yugoslavia.²¹

Yugoslavia represented a people’s democracy which refused to uninterruptedly advance to socialism and which re-established the capitalist path of development. The Cominform pointed out in 1949 that the system of people’s democracy was liquidated in that country. In such conditions the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat could not be sustained.

If Yugoslavia serves as the major, spectacular, and successful example of revisionism in state power of the people’s democracies of the Stalin period it must be remembered that there were analogous trends of the right deviation in the other countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe. In Poland the major right deviation was that of Gomulka, who resisted the uninterrupted transition to socialism which perforce was directed against the middle capitalists and the peasant bourgeoisie. In the western territories of Poland, Gomulka and his group, contrary to Marxism, created large kulak farms and diminished the role of the poor peasantry in the party organisation in the countryside. The developments in Yugoslavia encouraged the Gomulka group in its pro-kulak policies in the rural areas and it now called for the postponement of the transition to socialism in the countryside. The nationalist perspective of the group of Gomulka was manifested in its hostility to the establishment of the Information Bureau as well its understanding of the developments in Yugoslavia.

The Marxist-Leninists in the Polish party were headed by Bierut. They rejected the view that people’s democracy in Poland was to represent a ‘harmonious compromise’ of capitalism and socialism. Bierut pointed out that ‘People’s Democracy is not a form of synthesis or solid co-existence of two different social systems, but a form of a gradual pushing-out and in the long run liquidation of the capitalist elements and at the same time a form of development and strengthening of the basis of the future socialist economy’. The Gomulka-Spychalski group were defeated, temporarily, in 1949. This permitted the continuation of the building of socialism against the remaining capitalist elements and the struggle against the strong remnants of bourgeois ideology in people’s minds. By the 1st of April 1953 there were constructed 7000 agricultural production co-operatives involving 146,500 households. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the death of Bierut, Gomulka came to power. Collective farming was never completed in Poland, the peasant bourgeoisie was carefully preserved so that the country was never able effect the transition to a socialist society.²²

Similarly, in Rumania the right-wing deviation of Vasile Luca retarded the laying of the foundations of socialism, aided by the con- ciliationist attitude of Ana Pauker and others. The policies of Luca, as those of Gomulka, echoed those of Tito and Kardelj. He opposed the development of industry which produced the means of production thereby slowing down socialist industrialisation; hindered the activity of the state farms and the collective farms and undermined the creation of peasant associations for the joint cultivation of the land; and assisted capitalist speculative trade by fixing prices of purchasing and contracting on the basis of open market prices. Ana Pauker was charged with neglecting the formation of collective farms; tolerating the activities of kulaks in the development of socialist agriculture; and displaying a lack of concern in the establishment of the Machine Tractor Stations.

Rightism on questions of agriculture had one interesting feature by which the kulaks were buttressed in Rumania. A large number of them were categorised as ‘middle’ peasants and helped in this way to evade state deliveries and the taxation policies of the state. Though the kulaks were estimated to be 6% to 10% of peasant holdings merely 2.5% of them were placed in that class. The raising of the prices of agricultural products in an unlawful manner created conditions for the enrichment of kulaks and profiteers as the prices for certain manufactured goods earmarked for the countryside were below cost of production.²³ The exposure and defeat of the right deviation in Rumania ensured the uninterrupted transition of the first stage of people’s democracy to its second stage, that of beginning the advance to socialism. The advent of Khrushchev was to retard and reverse this process in Rumania and the majority of the people’s democracies.

Where did matters stand in terms of the stage of development of the People’s Democracies in Asia: in China, Korea and Vietnam? The views of Mao and Stalin in the period 1949 and 1950 are instructive on this question.

Stalin, during the course of his discussions with Soviet economists on the 22nd of February 1952, made a clear distinction in the nature of the people’s democracies of Central and South-Eastern Europe, exemplified by Poland, and those of Asia, such as China. He argued that in the people’s democracies of Europe, political power lay in the hands of the proletariat; industry was nationalised; the Communist and Workers Parties played the guiding role; and the construction of socialism was taking place not just in the towns but also in the villages. In China the dictatorship of the proletariat did not exist. In its place there was a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. The nationalisation of industry was not complete and there existed a bloc between the communists and the national bourgeoisie. He considered that the special feature of the Chinese revolution was that the Communist Party stood at the head of the state. Stalin concluded that there was in China a People’s Democratic Republic which was only at the first stage of the development of people’s democracy.²⁴ This analysis extended to the examples of Korea and Vietnam.

The comments of Stalin to the Soviet economists apropos of China illumine Mao’s publication, ‘On People’s Democratic Dictatorship’. In this work, Mao argued that state power in China constituted a people’s democratic dictatorship which was directed against imperialism and feudalism and its local allies ‘the landlord class and the bureaucratic capitalist class, i.e., the monopoly capitalist class’ which had to be eliminated.²⁵ Political power in China was founded on the alliance of the workers and the peasants. As Mao said: ‘Who are the “people’? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie’.²⁶ This corresponded to what Stalin had described as the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. And what of the future transition of the people’s democracy from the first stage, the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal phase to the second stage of socialism? What did Mao have to say about that? This was a contentious question as the case of Yugoslavia had shown in a striking manner. Mao was writing in July 1949, midway between the first resolution of the Information Bureau of June, 1948, and the second resolution of November, 1949. Mao did not mention the necessity of the rapid and uninterrupted transition of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Indeed, he did not, no doubt for correct tactical reasons just three months prior to coming to power, mention the categorical political imperative to carry out in future the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China, implying as it did, the ejection of the national bourgeoisie and its political parties from state power. It was the moment that every effort needed to be made to win over sections of middle capital away from the monopoly capitalist sections of the bourgeoisie centred around Chiang Kai-shek. This had been a major recommendation made by Stalin to the leadership of the CPC which initially had considered the establishment of a state without the participation of any section of the national bourgeoisie.

Regarding the national bourgeoisie, Mao considered the cardinal need to educate and reform this class both prior to the establishment of socialism, which was predicated upon their elimination, and after the nationalisation of their enterprises. He argued that once the work of the people’s democratic dictatorship was accomplished:

This passage evokes great interest as in the post-1954 period the assertion that the private enterprises of the national bourgeoisie would be nationalised under socialism, was deleted from the editions of this text. The national bourgeoisie was never to be removed from the National People’s Congress or economically liquidated in the economy of People’s China.

In the article by Yu Huai ‘The National Bourgeoisie in the Chinese Revolution’ which was published in ‘People’s China’ in January 1950, the author argued on the lines of Mao on the need to incorporate the national bourgeoisie in the first stage of people’s democracy. But he recognised that:

While the contemporary writings of the CPC leadership tactically omitted mention of the need for a rapid and uninterrupted transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry to carrying out the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat no such concession needed to be made by the CPSU (b) and the Cominform. Both continuously reiterated the position of Stalin and the CPSU (b) that the people’s democratic dictatorship in China had yet to fulfil the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus, by way of example, on the first anniversary of the Chinese revolution, the journal of the Cominform wrote that:

The question of the uninterrupted transition to the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism was to be posed once production was rapidly restored to the pre-war levels and successes had been scored in the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal tasks of the people’s democratic revolution.

The nationalisation of imperialist interests and the property of the Chinese compradore bureaucratic bourgeoisie, which had close ties with the foreign imperialists took place and the state took over their factories, mills, banks and commercial enterprises in China while the completion of the agrarian revolution which was carried through on the principle that the land should belong to the tillers, destroyed the economic basis for the existence of the landlord class. That class was abolished and the peasantry was freed from the annual rents paid to the landlords. All this meant that the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist tasks of the revolution had been largely achieved by 1952. The People’s Republic of China stood on the brink of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the uninterrupted transition to socialism.

In these circumstances Mao, on June 6th 1952, argued that the principal contradiction in China was between the national bourgeoisie and the working class:

This implied that People’s China would begin the change-over to exercising the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat and inaugurate the process of transition to socialism.

A.I. Sobolev confirmed this understanding:

Further he argued with reference to China that:

The necessity of converting the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat in China in the transition to socialism was implied rather than explicit in this statement.

After March 1953 the Soviet state did not fulfil the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The termination of the proletarian dictatorship, a fundamental requirement for the retention of socialism and the uninterrupted transition to communism, was formally notified in 1961 by the CPSU so that the Soviet state now was officially considered to be ‘the state of the whole people’.

In the period 1953 to 1958 a system of generalised commodity production was built in the USSR. Directive centralised planning by Gosplan to construct communism was terminated and replaced by a new system of ‘co-ordinated planning’ of the government departments of the central government and the Union Republics. Gosplan itself was reconstructed and divided into two organisations. The powers of the directors of the enterprises were expanded at the expense of Gosplan and they were required to operate the enterprises on the principle that the criterion of efficiency was profitability. The instruments and means of production in agriculture, the Machine Tractor Stations, were sold to the collective farms. It meant that a section of the means of production which was socialised property passed over to the group property of the collective farms, thereby becoming a part of the commodity sector. Under socialism the products of Soviet industry were allocated according to plan. After 1958 the products of Soviet industry were newly designated as commodities circulating in the state sector and a score of agencies were established under Gosplan to sell the products of Soviet industry. In such conditions the economic categories such as labour power, surplus value, profit and the average rate of profit were to appear once more.³²

The ending of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of capitalism in the Soviet Union had widespread ramifications for the people’s democracies.

The people’s democracies of Central and South-Eastern Europe as we saw from 1947-48 had established dictatorships of the proletariat and embarked on the construction of socialism. The people’s democracies of Asia were still at the first stage of people’s democracy, that is the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, and China was on the brink of beginning the uninterrupted transition to socialist construction, the conditio sine qua non of which was the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Constitution of China adopted in September 20th, 1954 could have been an occasion to register the construction of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Mao in his speech ‘On the Draft Constitution of the People’s Republic of China’ of June 14th 1954 asserted that the Leninist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat was by no means outmoded. He even described the 1954 constitution as one of a ‘socialist type’.³³ Mao informed that the draft Chinese constitution had drawn upon the constitutions of the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies.³⁴ But Mao did not accept the understanding of Marxism-Leninism that the dictatorship of the proletariat was the necessary precondition for the transition to socialism. It was a question which had been posed to the CPC in the immediate past by Stalin, the CPSU (b) and the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties. The preservation of the democratic parties in the National People’s Congress in the Chinese constitution of 1954 and indeed in all subsequent constitutions to the present time confirms that the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat were never performed in People’s China. In essence the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, including the national bourgeoisie, formed in October 1949 remained frozen throughout the Mao period and afterwards. In his seminal work ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People’ which is dated February 27, 1957, Mao developed his arguments further. He elaborated that the national bourgeoisie was working for socialism in the concrete conditions of the country and that the political parties in the National People’s Congress of the working class and the national bourgeoisie would engage in ‘long-term coexistence and mutual supervision’. In the course of their work the industrialists and the businessmen would ‘remould’ themselves.³⁵ Clearly Mao did not accept the Leninist understanding that the class struggle intensifies in the transition from capitalism to socialism. Lenin considered that the dictatorship of the proletariat was necessary for the struggle against the bourgeoisie: ‘small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will.’ (“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder). But in the view of Mao it was possible in China for the bourgeoisie to help build socialism.

How did the CPC square its position and that of Marxism-Leninism on the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat? Given the open, public position adopted by the CPSU (b) and the Cominform between 1949 and 1953, that the dictatorship of the proletariat had yet to be built in China, it was a matter which could not be avoided. It was ‘resolved’ by simply asserting that the dictatorship of the proletariat had been established in 1949. This was the reasoning of the CPC:

Essentially the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry established in 1949 remained stalled and did not develop into fulfilling the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It logically followed that the claim that People’s China had embarked on the transition to socialism could not be correct. This is evident as the economic relations of socialism were not to be built in China.

The national bourgeoisie was not to be economically liquidated in People’s China. The number of industrial enterprises run by national capital in 1949 was 123,165 and they employed over 1,640,000 workers. Commercial enterprises in 1950, including individual merchants, numbered about 4,020,000 employing 6,620,000 people.³⁷ The national bourgeoisie in the time of ‘socialist transformation’ was initially subjected to restrictions in the form of the state-private enterprises and was guaranteed a profit of 5% by the Chinese state. As production expanded the profit of the national capitalists declined proportionately in relation to that of the state. The rise in labour productivity at the same time meant that the national bourgeoisie drew more in terms of dividends and bonuses so that the proportion of their profit on capital kept rising.³⁸ At this time the national bourgeoisie had a considerable hold in the economy. The state capitalist sector in the first half of 1956 in industry constituted 32% of the gross output value of industry and in commerce it constituted 25.24% of the retail trade of China.³⁹

The policy of ‘state capitalism’ was inspired by the New Economic Policy which had been followed by Soviet Russia when it was compelled to retreat and compromise with capitalism after setbacks to socialism at the close of ‘war communism’. In contrast, state capitalism was taken up in People’s China after the first phase of people’s democracy was completed and the advance to socialist transformation was ostensibly taking place.

During the years of the cultural revolution the national bourgeoisie was further restricted by having its interest on capital frozen for 12 years. Mao went back on his statement of July 1949 that the enterprises of the national bourgeoisie would be nationalised. This had been consonant with the understanding of Dimitrov that as the people’s democracy passed over to the second stage of socialism, the urban bourgeoisie which represented the last vestiges of the exploiting classes, would be liquidated. This was necessary as the roots of capitalism were not extirpated so that the capitalist vestiges persisted and would try to restore their rule.⁴⁰ In the period after the cultural revolution the blocked interest of the national bourgeoisie which had been frozen in their banks was restored to them.

The lack of the fulfillment of the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in People’s China had clear implications for the policy adopted towards the kulaks and the landlords. Engels, in his work The Peasant Question in France and Germany, had confined the membership of the co-operative farms to the small peasants rejecting any possibility of compromise with the rich peasantry.⁴¹ In the Soviet Union in line with the understanding of Marx and Engels the kulaks, the largest section of the bourgeoisie, were excluded from the collective farms. This is evident in the collective farm statute.⁴²

In the interests of the restoration of the national economy and to isolate the landlords Mao had supported the policy of terminating the requisitioning the surplus land and property of the rich peasantry and every effort was made to preserve their economy as may be seen in the statement of June 1950.

The original collective farms established in People’s China after liberation were constituted of the poor and middle peasantry. After 1955 the collective farms included the kulaks. In this way there was a family resemblance between the post-1953 Chinese collective farms and those formed in Yugoslavia after the Cominform resolution of 1948, which had been subjected to criticism in the 1949 Cominform resolution. But in addition in China the former landlords were brought into the collective farms. During the course of the upsurge of agricultural cooperation most of the rich peasantry and the former landlords were taken into the cooperatives.⁴⁴ The reactionary social classes, the kulaks, and the landlords, were incorporated later on in the ‘People’s Communes’. These were distinct from the Communes of the Soviet Union as these were comprised in terms of their class composition of the working peasantry, and in which the instruments and means of production were socialised and were not a part of group property.

Many of the economic policies adopted by Khrushchev after 1953 in the Soviet Union were embraced in People’s China. Engels had pointed out in ‘Anti-Duhring’ that commodity circulation in the economic communes was inevitably bound to lead to the regeneration of capitalism. For this reason, Stalin had opposed the proposal of Sanina and Venzher that the basic implements of production concentrated in the Machine Tractor Stations be sold to the collective farms.⁴⁵ In 1958 in the Soviet Union and People’s China the basic implements of agriculture of the Machine Tractor Stations were sold to the collective farms. As a consequence, in both states an enormous quantum of the means of production now became a part of the sphere of commodity circulation. At the 19th Congress of the CPSU (b) in 1952 the proposal to engage in manufacturing on the collective farms was criticised by Malenkov as it was inefficient, relatively costly and a diversion from agriculture.⁴⁶ Under Khrushchev the realm of commodity circulation was extended in the Soviet Union by building power stations and industrial enterprises for processing food products in the collective farms.⁴⁷ In People’s China thousands of rural industries were established in the People’s Communes including modern fertiliser plants. Mao pointed out that ‘In the communes not only land and machinery but labour, seeds, and other means of production as well are commune-owned. Thus the output is so owned.’⁴⁸ The fact that the People’s Communes owned the basic means of production, the land, the basic agricultural machinery, and, also operated widespread commune-based industries meant that a ‘gigantic’ quantity of the means of production was outside the sector of state property which constituted the property of the whole people. It is apparent that in People’s China, in the absence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that a vast sector of commodity production and circulation existed in the state-private sector and in the People’s Communes which was incompatible with the construction of socialism.

What was the response of the CPSU? Did they defend the Marxist understanding of the need for exercising the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in People’s China as the decisive pre-condition for the transition to socialism and remonstrate that it was not possible to alter the basic laws on the transition period from capitalism to socialism which, as Dimitrov had said, was valid for all countries? No. On the contrary, the political and economic developments in People’s China, which included the refusal to support the need to assert the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the rightist policies with regard to the national bourgeoisie, the rich peasantry, and the landlords after 1953, gained the approval of the leaders of the Soviet Union. At the 20th Congress of the CPSU Khrushchev noted that much that was ‘unique’ in ‘socialist’ construction was being done in the People’s Republic of China:

The CPSU and the CPC despite differences of form clearly concurred on the repudiation of the views of Marxism-Leninism on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism.

On August 15th, 1945 Soviet troops, after defeating the Japanese Kwantung army, liberated Korea from the 36 year long rule of Japanese imperialism. Korea was the first colony to gain liberation after the Second World War. In these circumstances:

Pak Hen En set about reorganising the Communist Party and became its General Secretary; a preparatory committee was organised for this purpose and a programme of action was worked out. The Communist Party became the centre of the democratic forces in the country.⁵⁰ In October, 1945, Kim Il Sung came to head the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Corresponding to the requirements of a New Democracy, Kim Il Sung at this time argued that Korea should take the road of progressive democracy which would give the people rights, freedom and full independence. Progressive democracy, he said, was distinct both from the democracy of the western countries and also from socialism: this new type of democracy would be both anti-feudal and anti-imperialist for the interests of the broad popular masses and the patriots and not just for one class. Accordingly there had to be formed a democratic national front of all the democratic and patriotic forces composed of the workers, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, the religious communities and the ‘honest national capitalists’.⁵¹ This alliance of classes and tasks correlated to the requirements of both new democracy and the first stage of people’s democracy. Under this perspective, the property of landlordism, comprador capital, the pro-Japanese elements was taken over by the state. Major industry was nationalised and the agrarian revolution was carried out. These policies ended the colonial and semi-feudal character of North Korean society. Capitalism was not ended completely. Private industry and trade remained in the towns and the largest section of the bourgeoisie, the kulaks, were in existence in the countryside.⁵² By 1947 the state controlled 80.2% of industry with 19.8% remaining in the private sector.⁵³ By 1949 in industry the state sector and the co-operatives of the industrial enterprises comprised 90.7% of total industrial production. In agriculture the socialist sector was composed of the state farms, stock-breeding farms and the farm machine leasing stations constituted 3.2% of the agricultural section and rose to become the leading sector by 1955. By the end of 1956 agricultural co-operatives were established in 65.2% of total farm households. The first Machine Tractor Stations were built in 1950 with Soviet assistance.⁵⁴

The Korean People’s Democratic Republic had been proclaimed on 9th September, 1948. However, the US aggression on Korea between 1950 and 1953 made matters very complex for the uninterrupted transition from the first to the second stage of people’s democracy, from the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was the basis for the transition to socialism. It was necessary to economically recover from the devastation caused by US imperialism.

In August 1958 it was argued that in the DPRK the socialist transformation in relations of production both in town and country had been completed so that socialism was firmly established.⁵⁵

But the transition from the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry to the dictatorship of the proletariat did not take place in the DPRK. This would have required the elimination of the national bourgeoisie from the united front which ruled the state. Kim Il Sung asserted, writing in March 1956 - the month following the 20th Congress of the CPSU, that this people’s power nonetheless constituted the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Some people say that our people’s power is not one that exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat because it is based on a united front. This is entirely an erroneous view. Today our people’s power is a state power that belongs to the category of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the northern half of the Republic, now in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism, the functions of the proletarian dictatorship of our people’s power must be strengthened even more.⁵⁶

The functions of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ were necessary in a consolidated form it was said because there existed small commodity producers, private manufacturers, private merchants in the rural and urban areas and the tasks of the socialist revolution needed to be accomplished.⁵⁷ How did Kim Il Sung assert that there was a dictatorship of the proletariat in the DPRK when in fact it had not been established, when the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry actually still existed? This was done by arguing that the questions of the transition period and the dictatorship of the proletariat had to be decided not on the vantage point of Marxism-Leninism but on the basis of the Juche principles. It was necessary, said the Korean leader, to avoid ‘flunkeyism’ and ‘dogmatism’ by rejecting ‘the thinking of other countries’. Marx examined these questions in the context of developed capitalist countries and Lenin too operated in a backward but still capitalist country. It was necessary to proceed from the practical experiences in socialist construction in Korea.⁵⁸ This effectively implied that it was not mandatory for a People’s Democracy in a former colonial and semi-feudal country to oust the national bourgeoisie from the ruling united front or to economically liquidate the national bourgeoisie and the kulaks. The Juche principle did not accept that the principles of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin were applicable to Korea. Stalin and the Cominform, on the contrary, were very clear that Marxist principles were applicable in the former colonial countries in the newly constructed people’s democracies of the east.

The Korean Workers’ Party expressed the understanding that after the successful revolution in a colonial revolution the country had to go through a transitional period to socialism. It was necessary for the people through people’s democracy under the leadership of the working class to end the foreign and domestic imperialist forces, the feudal landlords, to nationalise the key industries and lay the foundations of an independent national economy. This would be done in the preparatory period which was known as the people’s democratic revolution. This people’s democratic dictatorship was led by the working class and was based on the worker-peasant alliance in alliance with the national bourgeoisie.⁵⁹ So far so good. But it was then considered that the people’s democratic dictatorship performed ‘essentially the function of the dictatorship of the proletariat’. This argument obliterated the distinction between the people’s democratic dictatorship and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It ended the difference between the two phases of people’s democracy, between the class basis of the two stages of people’s democracy and the distinct tasks of the two stages of people’s democratic revolution. The outcome of this was to justify the non-establishment of the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in North Korea to avoid the necessity to economically liquidate the national bourgeoisie and the rural bourgeoisie. In place of elimination these reactionary bourgeois classes were ‘to be educated and remoulded into socialist working people’. It was then later claimed that the capitalist ownership of the means of production was ‘abolished completely’.⁶⁰

The national bourgeoisie was composed of the manufacturing and merchant elements. In 1949 total industrial production in the state sector and the co-operative industrial enterprises constituted 90.7% and after the process of ‘socialisation’ had started in 1955 this increased to 98.3%.⁶¹

Capitalist trade and industry were transformed by way of organizing producers’ cooperatives according to business lines in close combination with reorganization of handicrafts. There were three forms of producers’ cooperatives The first form was an initial form of cooperative economy in which the production tools were not placed under common ownership and work alone was done on a collective basis. The second form was a semi-socialist form in which the means of production were under both joint and private ownership and both socialist distribution according to work done and distribution according to the amount of investment were applied. The third form was a completely socialist form in which all means of production and funds were turned into common property and only socialist distribution applied. The second form was popular in the cooperation of capitalist trade and industry. It was a rational form which was readily acceptable to capitalists because it applied the distribution according to the amount of investment while laying stress on the socialist principle in the ownership of the means of production and distribution. A considerable number of entrepreneurs went over to the third form through the second form.⁶²

In the Soviet Union socialisation was founded on the basis of the nationalisation of private property which became the property of the whole people. In addition there existed in the Soviet Union the group property of the collective farms, industrial co-operative artels and consumer societies of the working peoples.⁶³ In North Korea this was not the case. The term ‘socialisation’ was utilised for the group property or the collective property of the middle bourgeoisie whose property was not expropriated. The formation of the group property of national capital converted them into ‘socialist working people’ it was speciously argued.⁶⁴ The national bourgeoisie would later be taken to communist society.⁶⁵

It logically followed from this that the rural bourgeoisie would be incorporated into the ‘collective farms’ along the lines of the prior Yugoslav and Chinese practice. At the time of agricultural co-operation in Korea official statistics held that the poor peasantry constituted 40% of the rural population; the middle peasantry 59.4%; and the kulaks were categorised at an unusually miniscule figure of 0.6%. At the end of 1956, 80.9% of the rural households had joined the ‘co-operatives’. Sections remained outside these institutions such as the well-to-do peasants, peasants engaged in trade and farming, peasants widely dispersed in the mountain areas and peasants in the newly-liberated areas. This movement for a ‘socialist’ agriculture was completed in August 1958. Parallel to the national bourgeoisie, the kulaks also underwent ‘remoulding’ in order for them to be converted into ‘socialist working people’.⁶⁶

There was one area where the North Koreans ran counter to the dominant international practice in the post-Stalin period of initiating commodification of the means of production. In the Soviet Union Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) had been established from 1928 to assist the collective farms in agricultural production. The MTS were a part of the socialised means of production which worked with and guided the working peasantry in the collective farms.⁶⁷ The collective farms represented a form of group property under socialism. In the Soviet Union and its allies in Europe (excluding People’s Albania) and in People’s China the MTS were ended in 1958 which strengthened the sphere of commodity circulation in the respective economies. Machine Tractor Stations were established in the DPRK in 1950 with Soviet aid introducing tractors and other machinery for use in the co-operative farms and helped to restrict the role of the kulaks in the rural economy. During the war period the farm machine hire stations were increased three-fold and between 1956 and 1960 their number nearly doubled further.⁶⁸ It is a matter of interest that in August 1958 Kim Il Sung privately criticised the dissolution of the MTS in the Soviet Union by Khrushchev and contended that the handing over of the state property of the people to the co-operatives was contrary to the need for the transition to communism.⁶⁹

Lenin in Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat argued that until the abolition of classes it was necessary to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.⁷⁰ He noted that the overthrow of the landlords and the capitalists was a relatively easy task. More difficult was the task of abolishing classes and abolishing the difference between the factory worker and the peasant and to make workers of all of them. Classes necessarily remained in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat; without it, it was not possible for classes to disappear; the proletarian dictatorship would cease to exist only once classes disappeared. By the overthrow of the bourgeoisie the proletariat took the most decisive step towards the abolition of classes. In order to complete the process the proletariat must continue its class struggle, making use of the apparatus of state power and employing various methods of combating, influencing and bringing pressure to bear on the overthrown bourgeoisie and the vacillating petty bourgeoisie.

The collision between the CPSU (b) and the CPY arose in 1948 as Yugoslavia was reluctant to transit to the second stage of people’s democracy - socialism. This necessarily required that the state of Yugoslavia exercise the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is no coincidence that Stalin and Molotov pointed to Bernstein, Vollmar and Bukharin in their correspondence with Tito and Kardelj. Bernstein was identified with the view that socialism would come about through capitalism itself. Vollmar belonged to the right wing of German Social Democracy, who during the development of the party’s agrarian programme, defended the interests of the well-to-do peasants and asserted that the Grossbauern, the kulaks, could provide support for the socialist restructuring of the countryside. Bukharin had entered into opposition to the party policy of collectivisation of agriculture based on the working peasantry. His understanding was that it was possible to build socialism in the Soviet Union in co-operation with the kulak class; that it was necessary to industrialise on the basis of the kulak market. It became clear that the Yugoslav leadership were hostile to the economic liquidation of the rich peasant bourgeoisie. Even when they felt obliged to collectivise they included the kulaks in the ‘collective farms’. This was to become a precedent for the Chinese and the Koreans after 1953. Such was the hostility of the Yugoslav leadership to internationalist socialism that they incarcerated its supporters in concentration camps such as at the notorious Goli Otok. The Cominform in its 1949 resolution concluded that the Yugoslavs had liquidated the People’s Democratic system, gone over to the camp of US imperialism; while internally they had established a police state in which the social basis consisted of the kulaks in the countryside and the capitalist elements in the towns; the State sector had ceased to be the people’s property as State power was in the hands of the enemies of the people.⁷¹

In the post Stalin period the question of upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat for building socialism and communism was no longer a desideratum for the majority of the communist and worker’s parties holding state power. People’s Albania remained an exception to this trend, and it progressed to being the only people’s democratic state which established socialism. In general it was not regarded as imperative to distinguish between a socialist state and a democratic one. Khrushchev now referred to not one but a plurality of socialist countries at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in 1956.⁷² He reversed the understanding of Zhdanov, Stalin and Malenkov of 1947-1952 on this question. In a similar way, Yugoslavia which had liquidated the people’s democratic system, was now incorporated into the putative ‘socialist camp’. There was now no necessity to demarcate between people’s democratic states where there existed a dictatorship of the proletariat and those where state power was still at the stage of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Nor was there now any pressing requirement to complete the collectivisation of agriculture or to socialise the means of production in agriculture to be considered a socialist country. The magnanimous formulations of Khrushchev and the CPSU elevated to the status of ‘socialism’ the people’s democratic states in the west which were in the main in transition to the formation of market economies as well as the people’s democracies of the east which declined to fulfil the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat or economically liquidate national capital and the peasant bourgeoisie. The people’s democratic

states with felicity embraced the designation that they were now socialist states.

Endnotes:

1 José Diaz, ‘Organising for the Victory of the Spanish People.’ Communist International, May, 1937. Jose Diaz Archive at https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/ diaz5-1937.pdf

José Diaz, ‘Tres Años de Lucha’, Ediciones España Popular, México, julio de 1942, 500 pp.

2 T.V. Volokitina, G.P. Murashko, and A.F. Noskova, ‘Narodnaya Demokratiya: mif ili realnost’? obshchestvenno-politicheskiye protsessy v vostochnoi evrope 1944-1948’, Moskva, ‘Nauka’, 1993, C. 3.

3 Mao Tse-tung, The New Stage, Report to the Sixth Enlarged Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, New China Information Committee, Chungking, 1938, pp. 21, 33-4, 42, 49, 50, 55; Interview Given by Mao Tse-tung to Mr. Wang Kung-Tah, Correspondent of the Associated Press, February 1938, reproduced in Revolutionary Democracy, Vol. XI, No. 2, September 2005;

The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party, December 1939, People’s Publishing House, Bombay, n.d.;

China’s New Democracy, People’s Publishing House, Bombay, 3rd Edition, June, 1950, p. 5.

4 Georgi Dimitrov, ‘Political Report of the Central Committee to the V Congress of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Communists)’, 19 December, 1948. Georgi Dimitrov Archive at www.revolutionarydemocracy.org

5 Mao Tse-tung, On People’s Democratic Dictatorship. Mao Tse-Tung Archive at https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/MaoPPD2.pdf

6 J. V. Stalin on People’s Democracy in China, 22nd February 1950 https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/pdchina.htm

7 A. I. Sobolev, People’s Democracy, a New Form of Political Organization of Society, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/sobolev.htm

8 This section is based on that headed ‘Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Feudal Revolutions in Central and South-Eastern Europe.’

9 A. I. Sobolev, loc. cit.; Lenin and Stalin on the State Form of Dictatorship of the Proletariat’; D.I. Chesnokov in Communist (Bombay), No. 2, February-March 1950.

10 A. Sobolev, ‘Peoples’ Democracy as a Form of Political Organisation of Society’, Bolshevik No. 19, October, 1951. Printed in Communist Review, London, January, 1952, pp. 3-21. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/sobolev2.htm

11 A. Zhdanov, The International Situation, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1947, p. 9.

12 ‘The Struggle for Peace, National Independence, Working Class Unity’, Resolutions and Reports of the Meeting of Information Bureau of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Hungary in November, 1949, p. 2. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/cominform.pdf

13 G. Malenkov, Report to the Nineteenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), October 5, 1952, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1952, p. 7. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1951/economic-problems/ch06.htm

14 Malenkov, op. cit., pp. 15-16.

15 Royal Institute for International Relations. The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute, RIIR, London, November 1948, p.16.

16 Ibid, p. 42.

17 Loc. cit.

18 Resolution of the Information Bureau Concerning the Situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, 28th June 1948, ibid., p. 66.

19 ‘Model Statutes of the Agricultural Artel’, Inprecor, Vol. 15, No. 13, 23rd March, 1935, p. 370.

20 ‘Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the Power of Murderers and Spies’, Resolution of the Information Bureau (1949), in The Struggle for Peace, National Independence, Working Class Unity, PPH, Bombay, 1950, https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/cominform.pdf p. 62.

21 Petro Rasic, Agricultural Development in Yugoslavia, Publicity and Publishing Enterprise Yugoslavja, Beograd, 1955, pp. 43, 46, 47.

22 Boleslaw Bierut, ‘Roots of the Mistakes of the Polish Party Leadership’, (1948). Revolutionary Democracy, April 2019, pp. 135-143; Frantsishek Yuzyak (Vitold), ‘The Victory Over the Right-Wing Nationalist Group within the Polish Workers’ Party Has Paved the Way Towards the Unity of the Working Class and Socialist Construction’, translated from the Russian ‘Pol’skaya Robochaya Partiya v borbe za natsionalnoe i sotsialnoe osvobozhdeniye, Moscow 1953, pp. 224-255, in Revolutionary Democracy, Vol. XXV, No. 1, October, 2019, pp. 165-191.

23 ‘Document Concerning Right Deviation in Rumanian Workers’ Party’, Rumanian Workers’ Party Publishing House, 1952, in the section on People’s Democracy, Rumania, Revolutionary Democracy Archive. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/

24 J.V Stalin, ‘Five Conversations with Soviet Economists’, Revolutionary Democracy, Vol. IV, No. 2, September 1998.

25 On People s Democratic Dictatorship, 1st July, 1949, Peking 1950, p. 8. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/MaoPPD2.pdf

26 Ibid., pp. 6-7.

27 Ibid., p. 8.

28 https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/huai.htm

29 ‘First Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China’, ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy’, organ of the Communist Information Bureau, September 29, 1950. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/china.htm

30 ‘The Contradiction Between the Working Class and the Bourgeoisie is the Principal Contradiction in China’, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung: Vol. V https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_21.htm

31 A.I. Sobolev, 1954, op. cit. Section headed Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Feudal Revolutions in the East. Emphases added.

32 Vijay Singh, ‘Stalin and the Question of ‘Market Socialism’ in the Soviet Union After the Second World War’, Revolutionary Democracy, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 1995.

33 Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, Vol. V, Peking, 1977, p. 297.

34 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_37.htm

35 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_37.htm

36 Kuan Ta-tung, The Socialist Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce in China, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1960, pp. 127-8. Emphasis added.

37 Ibid., p. 24.

38 Ibid. p. 82.

39 Ibid. p. 56.

40 Georgi Dimitrov, ‘Political Report of the Central Committee to the V Congress of the Bulgarian Workers’ Party (Communists)’, 19 December 1948. Georgi Dimitrov Archive at www.revolutionarydemocracy.org

41 K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, London, 1968, p. 645.

42 ‘Model Statutes of the Agricultural Artel’, Inprecor, Vol. 15, No. 13, 23rd March, 1935, p. 370.

43 Mao Tse-tung, ‘Fight for a Fundamental Turn for the Better in the Financial and Economic Situation in China’, June 6, 1950, in New China Economic Achievements 1950-1952, Compiled by the China Committee for the Promotion of International Trade, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1952, p. 6.

44 Chi An, ‘Agricultural Cooperation: A Record of Achievement’, People's China, October, 1956, p. 13.

45 J.V. Stalin, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Moscow, 1952, p. 101.

46 G. Malenkov, ‘Report to the 19th Congress on the Work of the C.C. of the CPSU (b)’, Moscow, 1952, pp. 75-76.

47 History of the CPSU, Moscow, n.d., Second revised edition, p. 670.

48 Mao Tse-tung, A Critique of Soviet Economics, New York, 1977, pp. 144-5.

48a N.S. Khrushchov, ‘Report of the C.C. of the CPSU to the 20th Party Congress’, Moscow, 1956, p. 43.

49 A. I. Sobolev, op. cit.

50 F. I. Shabshina, Korea: After the Second World War’, Colonial Peoples’ Struggle for Liberation, Reports to the Joint Session of the Scholars’ Council of the Institute of Economics and the Pacific Institute of the Academy of Sciences, USSR, devoted to the problems of the national and colonial movement after the Second World War, 1949. Published by People’s Publishing House Ltd, Bombay, n.d., pp. 81-2.

51 Kim Han Gil, Modern History of Korea, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, Korea, 1979. pp. 169-184.

52 Ibid., p. 191.

53 Kim Byong Sik, Modern Korea: the Socialist North, Revolutionary Perspectives in the South and Unification, International Publishers, New York, 1970, p. 37.

54 ‘E. Pigulevskaya, Koreyskiye narod v bor”be protiv imperialisticheskikh agressorov’, Akademia Nauk SSSR, Institut ekonomi,’ ‘Uglublenie krisisa kol”onialnoye sistemy imperialism posle mirovoi voiny’, Gosizpolit, Moskva, 1953, C. 149. Ibid. p. 47.

55 Ibid. p. 47.

56 Kim Il Sung, On Juche in Our Revolution, Vol 1, FLPH, Pyongyang, 1975, in For the Successful Fulfilment of the First Five-Year Plan, March 6, 1958, p. 215.

57 Loc. cit.

58 ‘On the Questions of the Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, May 25, 1967 in Kim Il Sung, Works, Vol. 21, FLPH, Pyongyang, 1985, pp. 228-232.

59 Kim Byong Sik, op. cit. p. 78-79.

60 Ibid., p. 79.

61 Ibid., p 47.

62 Kim Han Gil, op. cit. p. 387.

63 Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., (1955 edition), Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1957, p. 524.

64 Kim Il Sung, ‘The Democratic People’s Republic is the Banner of Freedom and Independence for Our People ...’, in Selected Works, Volume 5; Pyongyang; 1975; p. 151.

65 Kim Il Sung, ‘Let Us further Strengthen the Socialist System of Our Country’, in Selected Works, Volume 6, Pyongyang; 1975, p. 317.

66 Kim Han Gil, op. cit. pp. 383-5.

67 ‘Kratkiy Economicheskiy Slovar’ Moskva, Gosudarstvennoe Izdat”elstvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958., pp. 169-70.

68 Kim Han Gil, op. cit. pp. 243, 332. Kim Il Sung, ‘On Juche in Our Revolution’, Vol. 1, FLPH, Pyongyang, p. 252.

69 The adored Kim Jong Il. Official biography of the North Korean leader, Obarrao Publishing House, Milano, 2005, pp. 118-119.

70 VI. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Second printing, 1974, pp. 107-117.

71 The Struggle for Peace, National Independence, Working Class Unity, PPH, Bombay, 1950, op. cit. p. 49. https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/cominform.pdf p. 62.

72 XX S”ezd, Kommunisticheskoy Partii Sovietskogo Soyuza, Stenograficheskiy otchet, Tom 1, Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoy Literatury, Moskva, 1956, C. 13. Following this A. I Sobolev refers to ‘the mighty socialist camp’. See: ‘Some Forms of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism’, Delhi, 1956. www.revolutionarydemocracy.org

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