Journal of Soviet Ambassador to the DPRK A.M. Puzanov for 1 March 1958

…1 March 1958

I visited Kim Il Sung and at the instruction of the Soviet government and confidentially passed him the text of an Aide Memoire which was presented to the US Ambassador in Moscow by Minister A. A. Gromyko.

Kim Il Sung thanked the Soviet government for sending the text of the Aide Memoire.

In the conversation which was held Kim Il Sung informed [me] that the KWP CC Presidium had examined and approved the reports which will be made at the KWP Party conference. Kim Il Sung said that in the report about the further strengthening of the unity and solidarity of the Party (Pak Geum-cheol [Pak Kum Chol] was approved as the speaker) reference is made to teaching Party members in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, and to fighting revisionism, as the Moscow Declaration speaks of this. The result of the struggle against factionalists inside the KWP will also be summed up. Kim Il Sung said we have had no manifestations of revisionism in the Party. However, as Zhou Enlai told us during the visit with the delegation, our two members of the opposition who fled to China are revisionists. In Zhou Enlai's words, they not only opposed the policy and leadership of the KWP CC but also of the CPC CC and CPSU CC. Therefore we are placing serious reliance on a struggle with revisionism as a warning and by way of ideological solidarity. Kim Il sung then said that inasmuch as the KWP is a mass Party formed as a result of the unification of two parties, it is faced with the task of strengthening and expanding the Bolshevist nucleus in the Party. The reports will be published in the press, except the section of the report about the second issue on the struggle against the members of the opposition inside the KWP.

As regards the organizational findings, noted Kim Il Sung, they've already been spoken of (in this and in previous conversations Kim Il Sung did not name those opposition members about whom a decision will be made at the Party conference). Kim Il Sung said the CC Presidium will not make any suggestions at the Party conference regarding Kim Du-bong and Pak Ui-won; they have decided to act democratically. The solution of the problem will depend to considerable degree on the behavior of Kim Du-bong and Pak Ui-won at the Party conference.

(Quoting Pang Hak-se, V. I. Len'kov informed me that the majority of the Presidium members did not agree with Kim Il Sung's suggestion to leave Pak Ui-won as a deputy premier; evidently the issue is of appointing Pak Ui-won as chief of the department of timber procurement after the Party conference. However, Kim Il Sung said nothing about this to me in this conversation).

Kim Il Sung then also reported that nine members will be added to the KWP CC through the promotion of candidate members. There will also be additional [popolnenie] candidate CC members) [SIC, no open parentheses]. After the end of the Party conference a KWP CC Plenum will be held which will approve the decisions of the Party conference and hear a report of the Minister of National Defense about the DPRK Armed Forces.

Today, said Kim Il Sung, I am giving a speech at a republic conference of provincial and district MVD officials in which I will make reference to increasing the struggle against the intrigues of counterrevolutionary elements, and I will also give an explanation that we have a dictatorship of the proletariat and not a dictatorship of popular democratic strata, as some of our officials incorrectly understand and imagine.

I thanked Kim Il Sung for the information.

Nam Il was present at the conversation.

Nam Il informed [me] that the KWP CC had sent Ri Il Gen [sic], Chief of the Agitprop Department and KWP CC member, to the conference in Prague on the issue of publishing an international theoretical journal of Communist Parties.