On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

An important article written by the editorial department of People's Daily, reviewed and revised by Mao Zedong; discussed and approved by the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, it was published in People's Daily on April 5, 1956. In February 1956, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held its 20th Congress.

During the conference, Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made a secret report “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”, sharply exposing and criticizing some of the major mistakes made by Stalin in leading the socialist construction of the Soviet Union, as well as the serious consequences of his cult of personality, and generally denouncing Stalin. The secret report caused a great shock within the socialist camp and the international communist movement and created ideological confusion among the people.

The article “On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” gives a positive evaluation of the 20th CPSU Congress's opposition to the cult of personality, pointing out that the issue of opposing cult of personality occupies an important position in the 20th CPSU Congress. The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union very sharply exposed the prevalence of the cult of personality, a phenomenon that used to cause many errors in work and undesirable consequences in the life of the Soviet Union over a long period of time.

This courageous self-criticism of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for its own mistakes demonstrates the high degree of principle in the life of the Party and the great vitality of Marxism-Leninism.

The article gives full recognition to Stalin's achievements.

It is pointed out that after Lenin's death Stalin, as the chief leader of the Party and the state, creatively applied and developed Marxism-Leninism. In the struggle to defend the legacy of Leninism and against its enemies— the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and other bourgeois agents—Stalin expressed the will and wishes of the people and proved himself to be an outstanding Marxist-Leninist fighter.

The article also analyzed the mistakes of Stalin in his later period: It is pointed out that: during the latter part of his life, Stalin took more and more pleasure in this cult of the individual, and violated the Party's system of democratic centralism and the principle of combining collective leadership with individual responsibility. As a result, he made some serious mistakes such as the following: he broadened the scope of the suppression of counter-revolution; he lacked the necessary vigilance on the eve of the Anti-Fascist War; he failed to pay proper attention to the further development of agriculture and the material welfare of the peasantry; he gave certain wrong advice on the international communist movement, and especially made a wrong decision on the question of Yugoslavia. On these issues, Stalin fell victim to subjectivism and one-sidedness, and divorced himself from objective reality and from the masses.

The article presents the idea that communists must adopt an analytical attitude to errors made in the communist movement. Some people consider that Stalin was wrong in everything; this is a grave misconception. Stalin was a great Marxist-Leninist, yet at the same time a Marxist-Leninist who committed several gross errors without realizing that they were errors. We should view Stalin from a historical standpoint, make a proper and all-round analysis to see where he was right and where he was wrong, and draw useful lessons therefrom. Both the things he did right and the things he did wrong were phenomena of the international communist movement and bore the imprint of the times.

The article raises the importance of the mass line in opposing the cult of the individual.

It is pointed out that: the whole history of our work teaches us that whenever this line is followed, the work is always good, or relatively good, and even if there are mistakes, they are easy to rectify; but whenever this line is departed from, the work is always marred by setbacks.

This is the Marxist-Leninist method of leadership, the Marxist-Leninist line of work. It is necessary for us to establish certain systems, so as to ensure the thorough implementation of the mass line and collective leadership, to avoid elevation of oneself and individualist heroism, both of which mean divorce from the masses, and to reduce to a minimum subjectivism and one-sidedness in our work which represent a departure from objective reality.

This article was the first time that the Communist Party of China expressed its unique views on the major issues of the contemporary international communist movement, which received widespread attention from international public opinion and had a far-reaching impact.