While the CPI was exploring avenues of cooperation with the national bourgeoisie, CPSU ideologues were busy developing the theory of peaceful transition. The theory acquired official prominence in February 1956 in the 20th Congress of CPSU. But the so-called “theory of world revolution in the atomic age” had started surfacing in Russia soon after the spate of People’s Democratic Revolutions in East Europe. The first outline perhaps emerged in the Conference of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. In his key report to the conference, eminent Soviet Orientalist EM Zhukov discussed the various features of the People’s Democracies and also dwelt on the question of non-capitalist path and the problem of transformation of the National Democratic into a Socialist Revolution.
After the 20th Congress, the CPSU leadership sought to internationalise their new-found enthusiasm for peaceful transition through two global gatherings of communist and workers’ parties in Moscow – first in November 1957 and then in Nov 1960. Thanks to the determined opposition of CPC, CPSU had to amend the 1957 draft to reckon with the possibility of non-peaceful transition and the need for overcoming the resistance offered by reaction through vigorous extra-parliamentary action. But even after these changes, the two statements still remained heavily loaded in favour of the Soviet world view and the CPC had to make several concessions out of deference to the CPSU ‘leadership’s wishes and the CPSU’s stature as the “leader” party. For example, the 1960 Moscow statement had a highly positive assessment of the fighting capacity of national bourgeoisie. The statement said that in the present historic conditions, favourable domestic and international conditions arise in many countries for the establishment of an independent National Democracy”. It further stated that in “the present conditions, the national bourgeoisie of colonial and dependent countries unconnected with imperialist circles is objectively interested in the accomplishment of the principal tasks of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolution and therefore retains the capacity of fighting against imperialism and feudalism,”
Though the Moscow statement also qualified this thesis by bringing in the question of varying concrete conditions, the CPI found no reason to exclude India from the “many” countries awaiting the arrival of National Democracy. The CPSU too made it clear that it included India high on its list of States of National Democracy. In an interview with the Link magazine in 1961, E Zhukov reiterated the point, “Previously we used to underestimate the revolutionary potentialities of the national bourgeoisie in such countries. Now we think that the social position of the national bourgeoisie enables it to lead the struggle against imperialism. The national bourgeoisie in under-developed countries has not yet exhausted its revolutionary possibilities”. The CPI(M) programme too continued to uphold the 1957 and 1960 Moscow statements as “two great Marxist-Leninist documents,… an invaluable guide for all Communists, the working class and all progressive forces the world over”. The only difference was that the CPI(M) would not directly extend the Thesis of National Democracy to the Indian situation.
