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p As in Russia, in all the countries that have taken the road to socialism, the hegemonic force of the revolution was the proletariat, which acted in alliance with other strata of the working people, above all the peasants, under the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist parties. As a result of the revolution power passed from the exploiters to the working class. Moreover, the experience of revolutions has shown 205 that at the time the particular revolution is accomplished the specifics of the development of the country concerned and the new phenomena in the international situation must be taken into consideration. There were three main factors underlying these new conditions and phenomena.

p In the first place, the revolutions unfolded at a time when the Soviet Union was already in existence and its peoples had by their practical work demonstrated the superiority of socialism over capitalism. This had a tremendous impact on all social development in the world and led to the consolidation of the democratic forces and the unity of the working masses round socialist ideals.

p Further, the revolutions took place after the Soviet Army had smashed the nazi troops in Europe and the Japanese militarists in Asia.  [205•*  This undoubtedly facilitated the triumph of these revolutions. In particular, the presence of Soviet troops in these countries fettered the reactionary forces and prevented them from starting a bloody civil war. The existence of a powerful socialist neighbour was the safeguard against imperialist interference. Furthermore, the Soviet Union rendered the People’s Democracies extensive economic, political, diplomatic, military and moral assistance.

p The specifics of these revolutions also sprang from the economic and political changes that had taken place in the capitalist world itself. These changes were characterised by the intensifying crisis of capitalism, the aggravation of interimperialist contradictions and by the contradictions between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the masses, with the result that the adversary’s position was substantially undermined.

p All these circumstances affected the course and character of these revolutions, the alignment of the class forces operating in them, their duration, and so on. In every continent and in each country the revolution had its own features.

p Let us consider the features of the revolutions in the European countries.

p One of them was that from the very outset the 206 democratic revolutions were of an anti-fascist, national liberation character. In Russia, it will be recalled, the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution was mainly an anti-feudal movement. Anti-feudal aims were also pursued by the democratic revolutions in the European countries (with the exception of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, where these aims had been achieved earlier). However, because these countries were under nazi German rule, the sharp edge of the struggle was directed chiefly against the nazis. This process developed simultaneously: inasmuch as the landowners and the financial-industrial bourgeoisie were the mainstay of German imperialism, the popular struggle against fascism was, at the same time, a struggle against the landowners. Anti-feudal tasks were thus carried out by the revolution as part of the principal task, that of deposing nazi rule.

p The objectives facing the proletariat in the democratic revolution determined the forms of the struggle. The nazi dictatorship could not be destroyed by peaceful means. The issue was decided in favour of the working people by a fierce class struggle and its highest form—an armed uprising.

p The uprisings in these countries were prepared and carried out in the course of the national liberation struggle against fascism in a situation witnessing the defeat of the nazi armies at the fronts of the world war. In the summer of 1944 Georgi Dimitrov told Marshal Georgi Zhukov that “the Soviet victories played an immense role in intensifying the people’s liberation movement in Bulgaria. Our Party heads this movement and has steered a firm line towards an armed uprising, which will be started when the Red Army approaches”.  [206•* 

p The armed uprisings triumphed in 1944-1945. In these violent revolutions, which were in the nature of democratic, national liberation struggles, the hegemonic force was the working class headed by the Communist parties. The uprisings were directed against the nazi enslavers and their mainstay in these countries—the local monopoly bourgeoisie and the big landowners. Not only the working class and the peasants, but the intelligentsia and also the petty bourgeoisie 207 and some segments of the middle bourgeoisie were oppressed by the nazis and this brought them into the struggle for national liberation, widening the social basis of the revolutions and in many respects distinguishing these revolutions from the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, where the liberal bourgeoisie was a counter-revolutionary force seeking conciliation with the tsarist autocracy.

p In analysing the features of the people’s democratic revolutions, it must be noted that they were not identical in all the European countries. For instance, as distinct from the revolutions in the other countries, the people’s democratic revolution in Bulgaria was socialist in character. This was due to the specifics of that country’s historical development and the fact that the bourgeoisie was unable to participate in the democratic movement. As Academician T. Pavlov, member of the Political Bureau of the CC BCP, noted, “the Bulgarian bourgeoisie, which had relinquished its hegemony in its own bourgeois-democratic revolution as far back as during the struggle for the independence of the church, agreed to its second historical capitulation during Bulgaria’s liberation in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which in our country objectively played the role of a bourgeoisdemocratic upheaval”.  [207•*  As a result, Bulgaria suffered not so much from the development as from the backwardness of capitalism. The uprising of September 9, 1944, which pursued anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, national liberation objectives, could not, as Georgi Dimitrov stated at the 5th Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1948, help but smash the foundations of the capitalist system and go beyond the framework of bourgeois democracy. In effect, the power in the centre and in the localities passed to the proletariat allied with the working masses, to the Fatherland Front committees, in which the leading role was played by the Bulgarian Communist Party. The revolution replaced the fascist dictatorship by a people’s democratic power, which, in effect, performed the functions of a proletarian dictatorship. In Bulgaria the dictatorship of the proletariat was consolidated gradually, in the course of a sharp class struggle, which in 1947 ended with the nationalisation of 208 industry.  [208•*  This did not change the substance of the course of events, but, as Todor Zhivkov, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, stated in his report to the 7th Party Congress “was a distinctive feature of the development of precisely a socialist and no other revolution, which, it is alleged, only grew into a socialist revolution.”  [208•** 

p The socialist revolutions in the European countries likewise had a number of specifics of their own.

p A feature in common is the mainly peaceful establishment of the proletarian dictatorship (except in Bulgaria). After the revolution that took place as a result of the defeat of the nazi German invaders, the working class with the Communist Party at its head occupied a firm position in its country. Relying on the popular movement, strengthening its alliance with the working peasants and using part of the state apparatus, which had passed to its control as a result of the democratic revolution, the working class skilfully won one position after another and ensured the peaceful growth of the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution. This growth was achieved in a bitter class struggle. As the people’s democratic regime gained strength, the enemy engaged in wrecking, sabotaging all the measures taken in the interests of the people. The capitalists constantly conspired against the working class, using the links of the state apparatus controlled by them. (The Rightopportunist, counter-revolutionary forces active in Czechoslovakia in 1968-1969 likewise operated under the slogan, “The worse, the better".) However, lacking the support of the people the enemy failed to divert the revolution’s development and start a civil war.

p The triumph of the socialist revolutions in Central and Southeastern Europe was further evidence that the 209 proletariat has every possibility of overcoming its bourgeoisie by peaceful means, provided the capitalists of other countries do not go to the assistance of the bourgeoisie.

p However, the peaceful character of the revolution in some respects complicates the process of future socialist transformations. Although the bourgeoisie is deprived of its economic foundation and is limited politically, it retains its position in social and political life for a long time and resists the building of socialism. This was vividly demonstrated by the events in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968-1969.

p An extremely important feature common to the revolutions in the European People’s Democracies was that some socialist tasks were carried out not after the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship, as was the case in the Soviet Union, but directly after the democratic revolution. These tasks included the nationalisation of some industries and the introduction of elements of planning, the institution of control over the commercial activity of capitalist enterprises and various reforms in the judiciary, the taxation system and the electoral law.

p Also a specific of the revolutions in the People’s Democracies was that the dismantling of the old state machine and the creation of a new state apparatus proceeded gradually. In many cases use was made of the old forms of state organisation, into which the working class injected a new content. In Poland, for example, during the initial period after the country’s liberation the institution of voivodes and elders existed side by side with the people’s councils. Some links of the old state apparatus, including the crown, were preserved in Rumania for a number of years after the overthrow of fascism.

p In the concrete conditions prevailing when the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe were liberated from fascism, which had abolished the national independence of these countries and all democratic freedoms, the restoration of the legal norms that had been in operation earlier accentuated the national liberation angle and the restoration of state independence and basic democratic freedoms.

p The socialist revolutions in the European countries differed also as regards the composition of the class forces involved. In Russia the socialist revolution was effected by 210 the working class in alliance with the poorest peasants, who comprised the bulk of the population. In the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe the working class accomplished socialist revolutions in alliance with the working peasantry, including the middle peasants. This affected the character of the agrarian reforms in these countries, distinguishing them from the agrarian reforms in Soviet Russia.

p Lastly, while speaking of the features common to the revolutions in the European countries, we must mention an extremely important circumstance, namely, that the success of these revolutions was ensured by the unity of the working class. During the war co-operation was established in all nazi-occupied countries between the Left and democratic parties and groups in the form of national associations. In Poland, for instance, they set up a National Front which made it possible to institute an underground parliament—the Krajowa Rada Narodowa. Under socialism in Poland the National Front grew into the Popular Unity Front embracing allied political parties and mass public organisations.

p In the European countries the proletariat was the backbone and leading force of the national fronts. In the course of the struggle the Communists exposed the reactionary Right-wing Social-Democratic leaders and isolated them from the working class, paving the way for and then forming a union with the Social-Democratic parties on the principled foundation of Marxism-Leninism. An immensely important step in uniting the working class was the integration of the trade union movement, which was led by Communist and Workers’ parties.

p The fact that there were some features in common in the victorious revolutions in European countries by no means implies that revolutionary changes took place in the same way in all these countries. On the contrary, each had their own specifics. It was by taking these specifics into account that the Communists were able to chart the correct road for the socialist revolution. In so doing they made creative use of the experience of the October Revolution without the least attempt to copy it blindly.

p In Czechoslovakia, too, the revolution had many features of its own. Already before World War II Czechoslovakia 211 was a developed industrial country with a numerous and organised working class that had a high cultural level and was closely linked with the countryside politically and economically. There were deep-rooted parliamentary traditions. All this determined the forms and methods used by the Czechoslovak working class in its struggle to set up a proletarian dictatorship. As a result of the national and democratic revolution, the power in Czechoslovakia passed to the National Front Government led by the Communists. However, in that period the working class temporarily had to share power with the bourgeoisie. “We,” Klement Gottwald said in April 1945, “cannot govern alone and neither can they (representatives of the bourgeoisie.—K. Z.) govern alone. They cannot govern without us, and we cannot govern without them, but they cannot do without us more than we cannot do without them”.  [211•* 

p In this situation the Communist Party took resolute steps to unite all the patriotic forces round the working class, promote the growth of the people’s democratic revolution into a socialist revolution and secure the transfer of all power to the working class. On Communist initiative the government passed a law nationalising the banks, mines and big factories. This placed more than 60 per cent of the industry under state control. A land reform, in which agricultural workers and small and middle peasants united in peasant commissions took an active part, was carried out in the countryside. The old state apparatus was gradually dismantled and the key elements of the new, people’s apparatus of power were formed. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia implemented these and other measures by peaceful means, making wide use of the National Assembly. However, this use of the National Assembly did not mean that Czechoslovakia advanced towards socialism through a parliamentary struggle. The struggle for socialism went on chiefly in the shape of revolutionary changes that were put into effect by the people after the country was liberated from fascism. In its work the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia relied on the proletariat, the working peasants 212 and other strata of working people, organising and mobilising them for the struggle to establish a proletarian dictatorship.

p Despite all its efforts, reaction was unable to start a civil war. Fearing that the people would finally turn away from them at the elections, the reactionaries attempted to carry out a counter-revolutionary coup in February 1948. But this attempt was foiled by the Communist-led working class without firing a single shot. Acting in the spirit of the parliamentary norms and traditions that had existed earlier in bourgeois Czechoslovakia, the Communist Party secured the National Assembly’s approval of a programme formulated by the government headed by Klement Gottwald. This victory in the main consummated the growth of the people’s democratic revolution into a socialist revolution and opened the way for socialist construction.

p A feature of the revolution in Poland was that the solution of socio-economic and political problems was closely linked with ensuring the country’s independence and sovereignty. The Soviet Army’s decisive contribution to Poland’s liberation helped to overcome age-old Polish hostility for Russia cultivated by the ruling classes and to strengthen the conviction that the nation’s independence and prosperity were linked with socialism. An important role was played by the economic and political development of the western areas that were returned to Poland. This was an argument in favour of the patriotism of the Marxist-Leninist Polish Workers’ Party.

p The growth of the people’s national consciousness in the struggle for democratic reforms enabled the working class to gain the upper hand over reaction. This was expressed, above all, by the success of the PWP and its allies at the elections. However, the class struggle time and again took the form of armed clashes with the counter-revolutionary underground. Decisive in effecting the transition to socialist construction in 1948 was the merging of the working-class parties to form the Polish United Workers’ Party.

p In the eastern part of Germany the development of the revolution intertwined with the struggle against fascism. Inasmuch as large segments of the middle and petty bourgeoisie had been influenced by the nazis for many years, an extremely sharp struggle had to be waged in order to 213 win the majority of the people to the anti-fascist, democratic bloc. At the elections in the autumn of 1946 the Socialist Unity Party of Germany won nearly half of the total votes.  [213•* 

p The revolutionary changes that removed the foundations of imperialism and militarism and led to the establishment of an anti-fascist, democratic system were completed by the spring of 1948. The most important of these changes were the land reform, the transfer of enterprises owned by war criminals and active nazis to public ownership, and the denazification of all spheres of life. These changes were the first phase of the people’s democratic revolution. Its further development and growth into the socialist revolution was achieved by strengthening the state sector of the economy, the transition to long-term planning, the extension of democratic organs of administration and other measures of a democratic nature.

p In Hungary the people’s democratic revolution unfolded in the autumn of 1944 in liberated territory. The power of the workers and peasants, resting on a large network of national committees, was established in December 1944 with the formation of a provisional national government. The political parties united in the Hungarian National Independence Front, which was, in effect, a broad class alliance of the proletariat, the peasants, the urban petty bourgeoisie, democratic intellectuals and part of the bourgeoisie, which had opposed the nazi invaders. Subsequently, when reactionaries infiltrated into the National Front, the Communists formed a Left-wing bloc in March 1946, which strengthened the unity of the working class and its alliance with the peasants. The National Front was used to expose and isolate the bourgeoisie.

p Reaction was quickly suppressed after a conspiracy was uncovered at the close of 1946. The Left-wing forces carried the elections in 1947, and the integration of the workingclass parties in June 1948 led to the triumph of the socialist 214 revolution in the political sphere. The power of the working class was established.

p The revolution had distinctive features in Rumania. The democratic revolution in that country began with an armed uprising of the people, as a result of which the militaryfascist dictatorship was deposed on August 23, 1944 and a determined struggle was launched against bourgeois- landowner rule. A National Democratic Front, uniting the democratic parties and groups and headed by the Communists, was set up in the course of that struggle, which was directed by the Communist Party. Led by the Communists the people seized the local organs of power (prefectures and local councils) by force and installed their own representatives in the key posts. The Communists used the actively operating factory and peasant committees to block the reactionary measures of the bourgeois-landowner organs of state and put into effect important political and economic measures of a democratic character, one of which was the seizure and division of the landed estates. As a result of broad popular action headed by the working class, a people’s democratic regime was established in Rumania on March 6, 1945. The Communists had the decisive say in the democratic government set up on this basis. In the course of 1946 and 1947 the parliament, in which were represented the Communist Party, the Social-Democratic Party, the Agrarian Front, the National People’s Party, the Hungarian Popular Union, the Liberal Party and various political groups, was the vehicle of the new power. This period witnessed the institution of workers’ control in industry in the shape of industrial administrations, a monetary reform, which abolished the cash funds which the bourgeoisie had not invested in industry, the adoption of a law forbidding the purchase of land by kulaks, the transfer of the national bank to the state, the expulsion of reactionary elements from the army and the Ministry for the Interior, a reform of the election law, and other reforms.

p At the elections in November 1946 the Left Democratic Front won 341 seats in the parliament, and 36 seats went to representatives of reactionary circles. This allowed the new regime to abolish the reactionary forces. A new, socialist stage of the revolution began in Rumania in 1948 after the last of the bourgeois representatives were removed from the 215 government, the monarchy was deposed and a people’s republic was proclaimed.

p In Yugoslavia new organs of power were set up in the course of the national liberation struggle, which was headed by the Communists. The victorious national liberation struggle placed the power in the hands of the working class and the peasants. Basic socio-economic reforms, including the nationalisation of industry, the banks and transport, were carried out in 1945-1946, and this laid the foundation for the country’s socialist development.

p In Albania the national liberation struggle during the Second World War was in some respects a civil war with a distinct class character. The defeat of the reactionaries brought the democratic forces to power. The first stage of the people’s democratic revolution was in the main consummated towards the beginning of 1946.

p The revolutions in the European countries are evidence of the diversity of the ways and methods of achieving change, and this shows that the peoples and Communist parties of these countries have contributed greatly to the practice of revolution. However, this practice has not repudiated the general laws of revolution. On the contrary, it has confirmed them. This, too, is of immense theoretical significance.

p In the Asian countries and also in Cuba the revolutions had their own specifics.

p Take China. As distinct from the European socialist countries, China was a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state with the peasants comprising five-sixths of the population.

p The people’s democratic revolution triumphed in China in 1949, and the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 meant that the bourgeois- democratic revolution had been in the main consummated. With the formation of the PRC the democratic dictatorship of the people in effect became a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

p The people’s revolution in China was preceded by a long armed struggle (lasting nearly a quarter of a century) against foreign imperialism, the feudal lords and the compradore bourgeoisie. The aim of this struggle was to achieve a democratic revolution. In cases where the Communist 216 Party of China regarded itself part of the united antiimperialist front of the proletariat of all countries and the oppressed peoples of the East forming a close alliance with the world’s first country of the dictatorship of the proletariat its successes were tangible. However, during the Chinese ’ revolution the CPC departed time and again from correct strategy and tactics. These were chiefly errors of the Leftist type and were expressed in an underestimation of the united front of Communist and national revolutionary forces and in the refusal to work in the Kuomintang. One of them was the attempt, in 1929-1930, to start a nation-wide uprising and get the workers and the then numerically small Chinese Red Army to seize the country’s main centres. It was contended that a revolutionary situation had matured throughout the world and that China was the centre of the world revolution. There were other extremes, notably, inadequate or no attention to work in the towns.

p In China the peasants were the main driving force of the revolution. The revolutionary war affected not the entire country but individual areas. Revolutionary bases were set up in rural localities, and from there armed forces were sent to liberate towns. A democratic dictatorship, whose social foundation consisted of two classes—the working class and the peasants—was established in territory liberated by the revolutionary people. This was a bourgeois-democratic dictatorship because it only changed the feudal system of land tenure and did not abolish private ownership (of the national bourgeoisie) of the means of production and the individual ownership of the peasants.

p A major distinctive feature of the people’s revolution in China was that besides the working masses its participants were the national bourgeoisie and various democratic elements and groups. The discontent of these strata with the tyranny of the foreign imperialists and local compradores and feudal lords was utilised by the Communist Party to draw them to the side of the revolutionary peoples. This unquestionably helped to develop the revolution and enhance its scale.

p In China the bourgeois-democratic revolution grew peacefully into a socialist revolution, i.e., in the same way as in the European People’s Democracies. The national bourgeoisie was won over to the side of the people and this 217 helped to strengthen the political alliance with it in the struggle for the socialist revolution.

p Three other Asian countries are advancing along the road of socialism. They are the Mongolian People’s Republic, which was the second country in the world to begin building socialism, the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Like China, they were colonial or semi-colonial countries. The relations of production were predominantly feudal and for that reason the revolutions in these countries were of an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal nature with the agrarian problem taking precedence over all others. However, they were not the usual kind of bourgeois-democratic revolutions. They differed from the anti-colonial revolutions in countries like, say, India or Indonesia, in that the hegemonic force was not the national bourgeoisie but chiefly the working strata—the working class and the peasants—and that millions of peasants and other democratic strata discontented with the colonial and feudal regime were united under the leadership of the Communist parties.

p The existence of common features in the development of the revolution in these countries does not mean that they have been or are advancing towards socialism in one and the same way. In each country there has been an intricate process of revolutionary transformations.

p On the basis of the experience of non-capitalist development in the Soviet eastern republics, Lenin told the 2nd Congress of the Comintern in 1920: ”. .. with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.”  [217•* 

p Guided by the experience of the Soviet eastern republics, its analysis of the political and economic situation in Mongolia and the enormous significance of Mongolia’s close ties with the Soviet Union, the 3rd Congress of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, held in 1924, found that non-capitalist development was the surest and only acceptable way of advancement for Mongolia. This conclusion 218 underlay the Party’s second programme, adopted at the 4th Congress in 1925.

p In Mongolia, where a working class was non-existent, only one party was formed. This was a people’s party, which initially consisted solely of peasants. The Mongolian experience has shown that if such a party champions the vital interests of the oppressed class and correctly understands and skilfully applies the Marxist-Leninist teaching to precapitalist relations it can become the leading and organising force of its country’s development towards socialism.

p The experience of Mongolia has demonstrated that peasants who have won state power can thoroughly master the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and apply it under the leadership of their Marxist Party even under the most complex specific conditions of a country’s historical development.  [218•*  In the 1920s and 1930s the dictatorship of the working peasants successfully grew into a dictatorship of the working class simultaneously with the growth of the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution.

p Japanese militarism’s defeat at the hands of the Soviet Army opened the road to freedom, democracy and socialism for the people of Korea. However, that country’s partition determined the nature and sequence of the solution of the problems of revolutionary development. The Korean Party of Labour “with the purpose of building a fully independent democratic state has put forward the militant task of utilising the favourable conditions created by the great Soviet Army in the northern part of the country to turn that part of the country into a powerful revolutionary democratic base and mobilise all the patriotic democratic forces of South Korea against the policy of the United States imperialists to secure the country’s colonial enslavement”.  [218•** 

p An expression of this guideline was the establishment of the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea in February 1946. This organ of power was founded on the alliance between the workers and peasants led by the working ctess and relying on the united democratic national front, which consisted of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal 219 democratic forces. This authority fulfilled the functions of a people’s democratic dictatorship.

p With the working people in power it was possible to enforce anti-feudal and socialist reforms at the very first stage of the revolution. Reforms which eradicated feudalism, promoted democracy and created the material conditions for building the foundations of socialism were put into effect under the guidance of the Party of Labour. A land reform was carried out and industry was nationalised, with the result that the state sector became predominant in the economy and socialist relations of production were established.

p Of colossal importance to the development of the revolution was the creation, in February 1948, of the People’s Army as an instrument strengthening and safeguarding the people’s democratic system. The Supreme People’s Assembly—the all-Korea legislative organ which adopted the Constitution of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and formed an all-Korea government—was elected in August 1948 as a result of elections held in South and North Korea. As was noted in the report of the CC to the 3rd Congress of the Korean Party of Labour, “the creation of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic was a new historic event in the struggle for our country’s unity, independence and democratic development”.  [219•* 

p A people’s democratic revolution took place in Vietnam in August 1945. It swept away the colonialists and feudal lords and led to the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This revolution was the result of three stages of a nation-wide revolutionary movement  [219•** : the bourgeois democratic movement of 1930-1931, whose objectives were to drive out the imperialists, overthrow the feudal lords, achieve national independence, transfer the land to those who tilled it, and establish a workers’ and peasants’ power; the broad democratic movement of 1936-1939 aimed at wresting power from the colonialists, the crown and the bureaucracy, achieve democratic freedoms, improve the life of the people and defend peace; the national liberation movement of the anti-imperialist united national front and 220 the democratic front for the independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh) in 1939-1945.

p The August revolution decided the question of power, but the war of aggression started by the French colonialists halted the implementation of democratic tasks. For eight years the Vietnamese people fought a heroic war of Resistance, finally defeating the French invaders in 1954. Important democratic reforms, notably an agrarian reform aimed at restricting and then abolishing the landowner class and improving the life of the working people, were carried out during the war. As was noted in the CC report to the 3rd Congress of the Working People’s Party of Vietnam: “... having victoriously ended the war of Resistance, our Party completed the agrarian reform in the northern part of the country, abolished feudal land ownership once and for all and translated into life the slogan ’Land to those who till it’. The attainment of the two basic objectives of the people’s democratic revolution in North Vietnam has been an historic triumph of the Vietnamese people. It has opened the road for a new stage of the Vietnamese revolution.”  [220•* 

p The character of the revolution in Cuba was very specific. The objective conditions for revolution matured as a result of an acute exacerbation of the contradictions under the reactionary Batista regime. The basis of the national liberation revolution was enlarged also by the discontent of the national bourgeoisie with United States domination in the country’s economy and socio-political life. On the other hand, the subjective factors of revolution had also matured, this being manifested chiefly in the activities of the Popular Socialist Party and the revolutionary July 26 Movement.

p The armed struggle against the dictatorship began as a guerrilla war. In the course of the struggle, which grew to massive proportions, the bourgeois opposition organisations made every effort to isolate the revolutionary vanguard of the people. However, in face of the growing revolutionary pressure they were compelled to declare for a broad front that included the Popular Socialist Party. In the night of January 1, 1958, following decisive victories by the Insurgent 221 Army, Batista resigned the presidency and fled to the Dominican Republic.  [221•*  A government was formed with Fidel Castro at its head after a short period of virtual dual power, when the bourgeois opposition parties made an attempt to halt the further development of the revolution, contending that the aims of the movement had been attained and the struggle was at an end. Following the fundamental social and political reforms of 1959-1960, the power finally passed to the working people.

p A feature of the Cuban revolution was that armed action by the Insurgent Army was the principal form of the revolutionary struggle, that “the driving forces of the revolution were the working class, the peasants, the intelligentsia and the urban middle strata”, and that the revolutionary movement was headed by two political forces: the July 26 Movement and the Popular Socialist Party, which had set their sights on an anti-imperialist, agrarian, people’s revolution.  [221•** 

The experience of revolutionary changes in European and Asian countries and in Cuba thus shows that the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism remain in force in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism. Fidelity to these principles was what led to the conspicuous successes of the Communist and Workers’ parties in the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship. Moreover, this experience strikingly bears out Lenin’s pronouncements on the diversity of the ways of transition to socialism in the different countries.