Statement of the 81 Parties (1960)
81개 당 성명 (1960)
The statement adopted by the meeting of 81 communist and workers' parties in Moscow, 10 November to 1 December 1960. Meant to paper over the Sino-Soviet conflict exposed at the Bucharest meeting of June 1960, it continued the 1957 Moscow Declaration with a common line on peaceful coexistence, the prevention of war, peaceful and non-peaceful transition and the national-liberation movement. In its 1963 Open Letter the CPSU said that the overwhelming majority of parties had rejected the Chinese leadership's wrong views and that the Chinese delegation signed the statement only at the end; the Chinese party for its part demanded that the revolutionary principles of the Statement and of the 1957 Declaration be upheld.
In depth
The disputed sentences
In 1963 the two parties quoted the Statement in different ways. The CPSU's Open Letter cited its passage that "under conditions of peaceful coexistence favourable opportunities are created for the development of the class struggle in the capitalist countries and of the national-liberation movement of the peoples of the colonial and dependent countries", to argue that the struggle for peace and the revolutionary struggle were organically linked. The Chinese Proposal cited the 1957 Declaration and the 1960 Statement as both stating that "the ruling classes never relinquish power voluntarily", against generalising peaceful transition.
The meeting
81 parties took part; Soviet sources omit the names of three, one of them believed to be the Communist Party USA. The meeting was preceded by the conference of twelve parties of the socialist countries in November 1957 and the Bucharest conference of June 1960, and followed by the Moscow international meeting of June 1969. Cuba was represented by the Popular Socialist Party.