Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 20, 2005
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was regularly
bankrolled by the Soviet Union even prior to 1967. Reports of Communists being
sustained on 'Moscow Gold' were conventional wisdom in political circles during
the Cold War. Apart from the revelations from the KGB documents in the second
volume of the Mitrokin Archives, the private papers of a Russian Ambassador
to India also confirm that the CPI directly approached the Soviet Embassy
in New Delhi for funds during the 1962 election.
In what may prove embarrassing to the CPI
(M) which is today out to rally "patriotic forces", the papers also
reveal that veteran Communist leader EMS Namboodiripad pressed Moscow to take
a pronounced pro-China stand during the Sino-Indian border conflict of 1962.
According to the diaries of former Soviet
Ambassador to India IA Benediktov, he met the Secretary of the National Council
of CPI, Bhupesh Gupta, on January 17, 1962. Gupta requested him directly for
funds for the CPI for the general election. Moscow, Benediktov noted in his
diary 10 days later, responded favourably to the request but he did not specify
the amount.
The Benediktov diaries form part of the Russian
Archives Documents Database at the National Security Archive of George Washington
University, Washington, DC. Excerpts from the diaries can be accessed on the
website of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson
Centre in Washington, DC.
In his conversation with the Soviet Ambassador,
Gupta revealed that funds from Moscow used to be handled earlier by former
Secretary Ajoy Ghosh, and "Ghosh alone". He said that because of
Ghosh's discretion, the matter had escaped media scrutiny. However, with Ghosh's
death the flow of funds had been disrupted. Gupta wanted Moscow to resume
the payments. In addition, Gupta wanted to involve EMS Namboodiripad, a person
of "crystalline honesty, whom Ghosh trusted" in the arrangements.
The recently published KGB documents have indicated some of the modalities
of disbursement.
Gupta also told Benediktov that the only other
foreign funding received by the CPI was from Sikh organisations in England.
The Communist Party of China, he added, was neither asked nor provided the
party with funds.
The Benediktov diaries reveal that Namboodiripad
expressed the gratitude of the CPI to Moscow for an editorial in Pravda on
October 25, 1962, where the CPSU temporarily reversed its position on the
Sino-Indian border dispute and took a pro-China position because it feared
a global conflict in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis.
"We ask that you transmit this to the
CC CPSU," Namboodiripad told the Soviet Ambassador, "that the publication
of this article and the advice of the CPSU contained in this letter of the
CC CPSU, truly will help our party get out of the extremely difficult position
it is now in. Before this [help] there were moments when we felt ourselves
to be simply helpless, but now the party will be able to remedy this situation.
We are grateful to the CC CPSU for this help; you can transmit this personally
from me and from Comrade B Gupta."
In expressing gratitude to Moscow for its
pro-China position, Namboodiripad said, "The most typical mistake of
many Communists, in his words, is that they cannot clearly distinguish [between]
patriotism and bourgeois nationalism." Namboodiripad, it would seem,
believed that patriotism involved being partial towards China. Unfortunately
for him, the SA Dange-led leadership of the CPI took a sharp anti-China position
and this triggered a split in the party in 1964.
