Comrade Zinoviev!

The draft is essentially acceptable and necessary. It is imperative to hammer into the leaders of the Western Communist parties that these parties must resolutely take the position of the leading national political force in their respective countries, that otherwise there is no point in talking about "winning" political power, that they can become such a force only by winning the support of the revolutionary elements of the countryside, and that to this end it is necessary, among other things, to put forward the new slogan of a workers' government, or if you prefer -- the slogan of a workers' government resting on the sympathy of the revolutionary-democratic strata of the peasantry.

Such an approach would immediately set the Western Communist parties on new rails, leading them onto the broad road of political struggle for a majority in the country.

I. Stalin.

Politbiuro TsK RKP(b) -- VKP(b) i Komintern. 1919-1943. Dokumenty. P. 151.

RGASPI F. 558. Op. 11. D. 734. L. 14, 14ob.

NOTE

The letter is a response to the draft ECCI theses.