Source: Tom 17

June 3, 1926

CC of the VKP, Comrade Molotov.

Decipher immediately.

Grisha's [Zinoviev's] theses in fact proceed from the following assumptions: 1) stabilization is ending or has already ended; 2) we are entering or have already entered a period of revolutionary upheavals; 3) the tactic of gathering forces and working within reactionary trade unions is losing its significance and receding into the background; 4) the tactic of the united front has exhausted itself; 5) we must build our own trade unions, relying on the minority movement. Hence Grisha's proposal that we take the initiative in a direct break with the General Council.

In the current historical situation, this entire orientation is, in my opinion, fundamentally wrong, because it pours water on the mill of Amsterdam and the Second International, and condemns our Communist parties to sectarianism.

I believe that:

1) Stabilization has not ended, although it was and remains unstable.

2) The provocation of the strike by the English Conservatives was an attempt by capital to establish firm stabilization — that is, in this case it was not revolution that attacked, but capital.

3) This attempt did not and could not lead to a strengthening of stabilization, but it also did not lead to the victorious development of the workers' revolutionary struggle and the destruction of stabilization. Moreover, some categories of workers were unable even to preserve the previous level of working conditions and struggle as a result of the strike.

4) As a result, what we have is not a new period of a stormy revolutionary offensive, but a continuing stabilization — temporary, unstable, but still stabilization — fraught with new attempts by capital to launch new attacks on workers, who are still forced to defend themselves.

5) The task is to continue the policy of gathering forces and the real united front, and to prepare the working class to repel new offensives of capital and to convert defense into a broad revolutionary offensive of the proletariat against capital, into a transition to the struggle for power.

6) Hence the necessity of intensifying Communist work in the reactionary trade unions, with a view to transforming them from within and gaining control over them.

7) Hence a resolute struggle against Zinoviev and Trotsky, who are pursuing a line toward splitting the trade union movement, against the united front, in favor of Oudegeest and Sassenbach.

8) Hence a resolute struggle against Zinoviev and Trotsky, who are pushing the English trade union movement into the arms of Amsterdam and the American Federation of Labor.

9) Hence a resolute rebuff to the line of Zinoviev and Trotsky, which leads to the isolation of the Communist parties from the masses and the surrender of the masses to the monopoly leadership of the reformists.

10) Hence a resolute rebuff to any attempt to take the initiative in breaking the AUCCTU with the English trade union movement, for a break with the General Council under present conditions cannot but mean a break with the trade union movement of England, to the benefit of Amsterdam.

11) A break with the General Council must lead to the disruption of the policy of trade union unity also in France and Germany, since the reformists of France and Germany are not a bit better than the English reformists.

12) The work of the Profintern and the minority movements must be intensified, and their authority raised.

13) The English Communist Party must be taken under unconditional protection against discrediting by Zinoviev and Trotsky.

14) A number of practical proposals of Comrade Lozovsky must be accepted, and in general complete agreement must be established between Tomsky and Lozovsky.

15) Merciless criticism of the center and left of the General Council is absolutely necessary.

16) This criticism does not exclude and cannot exclude the possibility and necessity of preserving the Anglo-Soviet Unity Committee.

17) Not in the ECCI theses, but in the form of a separate resolution, a decision must be adopted that the AUCCTU Plenum adopt a resolution on the report of the AUCCTU Presidium regarding the results of the May strike, with criticism of the treachery of the right and the spinelessness of the left, sending this resolution by radio, as well as to the Communist Party and the minority in England and to the General Council for information.

18) The trade union minority and the English Communist Party must launch a furious campaign for the re-election of the executive committees of the unions and the General Council, from the standpoint of expelling the traitors like Thomas and their hangers-on from the left and electing new revolutionary leaders.

19) Bukharin's theses should proceed from the decisions of the Politburo and the Politburo's English commission on questions relating to the English strike, bearing in mind that Zinoviev is breaking with these decisions in his theses.

20) Zinoviev's theses must be rejected entirely, as liquidationist, and our own theses must be counterposed to them.

21) Rejection of Grisha's theses may provoke bluffing about resignation, which should not be feared in any case.

22) I do not think my coming is necessary (so in the text. — Ed.).

23) If, nevertheless, discussions over the direct wire are needed, send a message over the wire and I will respond.

Transmitted June 3.

J. Stalin.

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Source: Letters of J.V. Stalin to V.M. Molotov. 1925–1936. P. 62–65.

RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 1. D. 3266. L. 1, 2.

NOTE: Oudegeest, J. — Social Democrat, head of the Dutch railway and tramway workers' union. Sassenbach, J. — head of the German saddlers' union, figure in the International Secretariat of Trade Unions.