Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

As you are well aware, our Party has always come out andstill comes out for collective discussion of vital problems ofthe world communist movement. The Central Committee ofthe CPSU was the initiator of the meetings of fraternal Partiesin 1957 and 1960. In both cases these meetings wereconnected with serious changes in the international situationand the need for working out corresponding tactics in thecommunist movement. Now too we fully support the proposalfor the convocation of a meeting of all the fraternalParties.We considered it would be useful in the preparations for sucha meeting that the fraternal Parties could thoroughly and profoundlyanalyse the new phenomena in international affairsand their own activity in carrying out the collective decisionsof our movement. The Central Committee of the CPSU displayedconcern, perfectly understandable to all Communists,that the meeting should not aggravate the differences butdo as much as possible to overcome them.In their pronouncements many of the leaders of fraternalParties have recently been justly expressing the same point ofview on the necessity of taking, before the meeting, a numberof steps to create a normal situation in the communist movementand to place conflicts of opinions within the permissiblebounds of a comradely Party discussion. Now you also agreewith this, as is seen from your letter, and it can be said thatcertain progress has been made in the preparation of theforthcoming meeting.It goes without saying that when our two Parties are discussingquestions concerning all fraternal Parties, the discussioncan only be of a preliminary nature. The 1957 and 1960 Meetingshave shown that the elaboration of the policy of the internationalcommunist movement can be successful only if allfraternal Parties collectively take part in it and if due considerationis given to the extensive experience of all its componentdetachments.498