In January 1978, the Workers and Peasants Party came out into the open and sought legal recognition from the government. It was at that time reported to be “headed by Dogu Perincek, a former university assistant who had led an extreme Revolutionary Proletarian Enlightenment group within the umbrella Dev Gene organization in the mid-1970s.” In announcing the party’s application for legal recognition, Dogu Perincek announced that his party’s program was one “opposing American imperialism and Soviet social imperialism as well as terrorism, as favoring stronger ties with Greece and Third World countries, SED, Dokumentation 1980, page 160.and as ultimately aiming at the creation of a classless society.”
The pro-Moscow Communists denounced the Workers and Peasants Party. Radio Moscow claimed that it was “Maoist and anti-Soviet, accused it of covert alliance with extreme rightists, and denied that it was a true workers’ and peasants’ party.”[503]
In September 1978, the Workers and Peasants Party issued a joint statement with the Communist League of Austria defending the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea, which, the document claimed, “is being attacked by Vietnamese leaders at the instigation of the social imperialists.”[504]
The First Congress of the Workers and Peasants Party met in Ankara in January 1980, attended by 300 delegates. It adopted party statutes and an agrarian program, and elected Dogu Perincek as its Chairman.[505]
The Workers and Peasants Party followed the international line of the successors of Mao in China. This was demonstrated in 1980 when, as Frank Tachau reported, the party “went so far as to renounce violence and even see advantages in NATO and in some foreign policy positions of the PPP and the Justice Party. Its explicit opposition to disorder and separation enabled it to continue to operate legally even under martial law before the September coup.”[506]
There were several other pro-Maoist parties in Turkey. One was the Revolutionary Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey, which was established in 1969. It held its First Congress in September 1977, during which the party program, statutes and an agrarian policy were adopted.[507]
Another Turkish Maoist group was the Communist Party of Turkey (Marxist-Leninist), which was founded in 1970.[508] After the death of Mao this party strongly opposed Hua Kuo-feng. In 1981, it participated in a conference sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States to establish an international grouping of such parties, pledging support of orthodox Maoism.[509] In 1992 it was still listed as an affiliate of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, formed as a result of the 1981 conference, and bringing together those parties and groups loyal to the Maoism of the Great Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four.[510]
Finally, there was the Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey, established in 1979, headed by Cetin Kaya. It supported the Albanians in their opposition to Mao’s successors.[511]
Part Ⅲ: Asia and Oceania
Japanese Maoism
The Japan Communist Party (JCP) was one of those which, after some hesitation, adopted a neutral stance in the conflict between the Soviet and Chinese parties. As a consequence, both pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese splinters broke away from the main party.
Early Problems of Japanese Communists with the Cominform
The Sino-Soviet dispute was by no means the first time that the Japan Communist Party had been embarrassed by events in the International Communist Movement. Early in 1950, the Cominform (Information Bureau of Communist and Workers Parties) had blasted the policies of a part of the Japanese Party leadership. Interestingly enough, at that time, the Chinese party had joined in the Cominform’s attack.
When the Japan Communist Party had been revived after World War Ⅱ, its top leadership came from people who had spent long years in exile, and those who had spent the war years (and before) in jail. Among the most notable figures to emerge was Sanzo Nosaka, who had spent several years with the Chinese Party leadership in Yennan. He emerged as the leader of one of the major factions within the Japanese Party leadership.
Takato Yamabe, writing in the dissident U.S. Trotskyist newspaper Labor Action, described the two conflicting points of view within the JCP in the postwar period. “There have been two elements in the JCP’s tactics and strategy from the outset. One is the vehemently anti-American, violent revolution position of Secretary General Kyuichi Tokuda, whose motto is ‘national independence’ the other is the moderate, peaceful-revolution position of Nosaka, who invented the slogan ‘beloved Communist Party’ immediately upon his return to Japan. … Whatever popular support the CP has in Japan is due to the Nosaka line. The last two years of adherence to Tokuda’s tactics of violence have cost the CP post of its mass following.”
It was the Nosaka line that was attacked by the Cominform, and the Chinese. The Cominform said that “Nosaka says that Japan has all of the conditions necessary for a peaceful transition to socialism even under military occupation … and that the CP is capable of taking power by democratic means via parliamentary institutions. … That this Nosaka theory has absolutely nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism is obvious. In essence, his theory is anti-democratic and anti-socialist.”
This blast brought a crisis within the Japanese CP. A Plenum of the Central Committee engaged in a “self-criticism” and resolved that “Our party has now corrected the faults and is developing along correct lines.” But at the same time, the CC statement noted that “Comrade Nosaka, as the most courageous of popular patriotic figures, has won the confidence of the masses.” Nosaka remained in the top leadership of the Japan Communist Party.[512] However, one British source noted that, with the temporary disgrace of Sanzo Nosaka, the “tough Kyuichi Tokuda was favored by the Russians, who made him leader of the Japanese party.”[513]
Early Attempts of JCP to Be Neutral
Nikita Khrushchev’s famous “secret” speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, in which he denounced Stalin, caused problems within the Japanese Communist Party leadership. But the first reaction of the JCP was to laud the 20th Congress without mentioning the Khrushchev.[514]
However, once the Sino-Soviet quarrels came into the public domain, the situation of the JCP became more difficult. The Central Committee of the JCP in November 1960 dealt with the problem. Under the leadership of the Secretary General Kenji Miyamoto, this meeting engaged in “a studied attempt to hew to a neutralist line between Moscow and Peking, with some positions being taken that accorded with current Chinese emphasis.” Miyamoto “deemed it necessary to take a position on the struggle between the Soviet Union and China.”[515]
Shortly before the JCP’s Eighth Congress in 1961, a pro-Soviet group, led by Kasuga and consisting of seven members of the Central Committee, resigned from the party. However, another pro-Soviet group, led by Yoshio Shiga, remained within its ranks.[516]
503
Foregoing from Frank Tachau, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1979, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 213.
504
Frederick C. Engelmann, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1979, page 116.
506
Frank Tachau, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1981, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 453.
509
Interview with Carl Dix, National Spokesperson of Revolutionary Communist Party, New York City, December 15, 1992; see also A World to Win, organ of Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, London, March 1992, page 31.
512
Foregoing from Taketo Yamabe, “Japanese CP in Quandary as Cominform Blast Seeks to Impose Suicidal Line-Toeing Course,” Labor Action, organ of “Schachtmanites,” New York, February 20, 1950, page 4.
514
Kenneth Ledlard Ward, “Postwar Splits in the Japanese Communist Party,” (manuscript), May 1979, page 8.