09.06.2000

Accepted on June 9, 2000. Updated on January 3-4 and May 21, 2004.

Ideology and Methods

We are Marxists. We believe that the legacy of classical Marxism in all of its main instances adequately reflects social processes that are occurring in the modern world. Nowadays, we can observe that Marxism is consigned to oblivion in the societal consciousness due to the quite specific historical events and is quite adequately described within the framework of the categorical apparatus of Marxism itself. A correct approach to the societal phenomena is not possible without using the methods of historical materialism, basis dialectics and superstructure, the theory of proletarian revolution and proletarian internationalism. Marxism-Leninism, which explained the capitalist states’ transition into the stage of imperialism, has become the legitimate transformation and vulgarization of Marx and Engels’s Marxism. Nowadays, the legitimate transformation and vulgarization of Lenin and Stalin’s Marxism has taken shape of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It considers the superstructure as a factor on which, at the end of the day, the success behind the construction of socialism will depend.

«Representatives of the bourgeoisie that sneak into the Party, the government, the Army and the cultural circles are a batch of counterrevolutionary revisionists who will seize political power and turn the proletariat dictatorship into bourgeois dictatorship once the opportunity ripens».

Mao Tse-tung

Historical Questions

We believe that socialism, which politically may only be a dictatorship of the working people under the leadership of the proletariat, is the necessary path toward a communist world – a world without inequalities and totalitarian regimes. We consider Soviet Russia and USSR in the time of V. I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin (1917-1953) and China during the time of Mao Tse-tung (1949-1976) to be the role models for the execution of such a dictatorship. As Maoists, we believe that class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat continues will continue in a different form and under socialism, its principal arena will be the communist party, which will have a leading position in the construction of socialism. Stalin’s death in 1953 and Mao’s death in 1976 became historical borders after which, the victory of bourgeois elements over the proletarian ones inside the KPSS and the CPC became ever more indisputable. This has eventually led to the acknowledgement of state capitalism and the regeneration of both countries into social-imperialist regimes. This is the source of the unconditional reactionary character of the USSR’s restoration slogans. It may be that the peoples that inhabit its former territory, after each one of them will commit a socialist revolution, will raise the question of creating some sort of a transnational union; however, we cannot predict neither the date, nor the shape nor the character of such a union.

Modern World

Today’s world appears to us divided in three groups of countries: 1) The countries of the metropolis (USA, Western Europe, Japan, etc.); 2) Relatively rich countries and/or those with a large military/industrial potential, which occupy an intermediate position (Russia is included among them); 3) Third world countries that are being exploited by the countries of the previous two groups (the majority of ex-USSR republics fall into this category). The revolutionary role of the proletariat in each of the mentioned groups of countries is different:

In the countries of the metropolis, the working class is being won over by the imperialists at the expense of the surplus profit stemming from the exploitation of Third World countries and at this point in time cannot be viewed as a revolutionary force. We are to regard as the main contradiction of this given group the national contradiction; as the main revolutionary forces – the oppressed minority of the working class, which, as a rule, does not belong to the historically-dominant nation (ex. foreign workers) alongside the revolutionary intelligentsia. In the countries that occupy an intermediate position between the Metropolis and the Third World, the main force of the socialist revolution is the proletariat and the main contradiction at this point in time continues to be the class contradiction. However, in favour of the two-faced socio-economic character of these countries, the proletariat here is infected with a national and chauvinistic ideology as well as with reformist illusions. In this case, the main ally of the proletariat in its class struggle is the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie. In the Third World countries, the struggle of the proletariat for its rights is inseparable from these countries’ struggle for an authentic national independence. Here, the natural ally of the proletariat is the small and significant part of the national bourgeoisie. In many cases, the nearest and immediate goal of the proletariat’s struggle in these countries is not a socialist revolution, but rather the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Its main method is the strategy of people’s war.

Strategy and Tactics



We believe that correct tactics result from a correct strategy, which, in turn, results from a correct ideological and political line. We believe that the struggle against imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy goes hand in hand with the struggle against revisionism, chauvinism and opportunism. Our goal is to carry out a socialist revolution and the transition to the construction of communism as a society in which the oppression of any given social group by any other one – whether class, national or sexual – would be impossible. The driving force of such a revolution is the working class and the conductor is the vanguard disciplined revolutionary communist party. A party with a system of democratic centralism, which includes in itself organisation, leadership, discipline and hierarchy. We believe that the ruling bourgeoisie will never give away its power without a fight. Putting an end to bourgeois dictatorship is possible only through the formation of a public opinion in favour of the seizure of power by means of an armed struggle. However, we believe that any armed movement on Russia’s territory will be inevitably suppressed as long as the objective conditions for its mass support by the potentially revolutionary layers of the population will not be met. The creation of a vanguard disciplined revolutionary communist party on Russia’s territory, led by the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is impeded by the objective historical conditions caused by the long dominion of revisionist khruschev-brezhnevite social imperialism. For the post-soviet Russian proletariat, the main consequence of this dominion has become the oblivion of not only the traditions of mass revolutionary struggle, but also the basic self-organisation skills, readiness to defend one’s own rights, libertarian and self-management aspirations. Modern Russia’s working class is isolated, passive and apolitical. Overcoming such a situation will take a long time. The inability of the modern Russian ‘communist movement’ to develop a correct ideological and political line is conditioned by its ideological, organizational and cadre-oriented continuity inherited from the revisionist KPSS khruschev-brezhnevite period. The heaviest legacy of KPSS inside the Russian communist movement are deformed phenomena such as chauvinism, xenophobia, anti-democratism, the overcoming of which is not possible without the rebirth of revolutionary traditions of the working class. We consider our main tactical task to be the propaganda of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and revolutionary campaigning among the proletariat and the intelligentsia.

Note: It must be taken into consideration that modern Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is unthinkable without handling the questions of national liberation (the unconditional recognition of the rights of nations for self-determination); sexism and patriarchy (struggle for the rights of women and sexual minorities); bourgeois democracy (the demand of maximum bourgeois rights and liberties, declared, but in most cases not respected by the state); ecology (the stop to the chemical exploitation of nature by any modern state is only possible after the victory of the socialist revolution).

Long live the great proletarian red banner of the ideas of Mao Tse-tung!

The proletariat and the oppressed peoples of all countries, unite!

This document is the (preliminary) program of the Russian Maoist Party (RPM).