Anti-revisionist

History

Mao Zedong first denounced the Soviet Union as revisionist at a meeting in January 1962. In early 1963, Mao returned to Beijing after a prolonged visit to Wuhan and Hangzhou, and issued a call to combat domestic revisionism in China. A 'central anti-revisionist drafting group' was formally constituted, led by Kang Sheng, which drafted anti-revisionist polemics, which were later personally reviewed by Mao before publication. The 'Nine Articles' emerged as the centre-piece of anti-Soviet polemics. Anti-revisionism would emerge as a key theme in Chinese foreign and domestic policies, reaching a peak during the 1966 Cultural Revolution. China friendship associations turned into anti-revisionist organizations, and Western Europe anti-revisionist splinter groups began to emerge (such as the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of France, the Grippa group in Belgium, and the Lenin Centre in Switzerland). In Beijing, the street where the Soviet embassy was located was symbolically renamed as 'Anti-Revisionism Street'. In the wake of the 1964 split in the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) would reject Soviet positions as revisionist, but the party did not fully adopt a pro-Chinese line.