9. VII.1927. To Molotov and Bukharin The devil take you both: you have somewhat let me down by requesting my opinion on the new directives (regarding China) without providing concrete fresh material. The draft new directives mentioned both Tan Shengzhi and the disarming of the workers (“actual disarming,” Tan Shengzhi “has actually become an instrument of counter-revolutionaries,” etc.), but, firstly, no concrete facts were indicated there, and secondly, neither the press nor the ciphered messages (which I had at the time) said anything about the existence of such facts. And not only did you let me down somewhat, but I also let you down, perhaps, with my long and rather angry reply by cipher. Having received the draft of your new directives, I decided: so the opposition has finally worn down Bukharin and Molotov with the flood of new “theses.” And they have finally succumbed to the blackmail; so Klim (K. E. Voroshilov. — Ed.) will now be glad that he has finally secured the release from payments to Wuhan, which is why he voted with pleasure for the new directives. And so on in that spirit. Now I see that all that was not so. Yesterday I spent the whole day reading the new materials brought by the courier. Now I am apprehensive not that the new directives have been sent, but that they have been sent belatedly.

I do not think that leaving the National Government and the GMD could ease the position of the Communist Party and "put it on its feet." On the contrary, leaving will only facilitate the beating of communists, will create a new discord and, perhaps, will even prepare something like a split.

But there is no other path, and — all the same — in the end we would have had to come to this path. This phase must, absolutely must be gone through. But the main thing now is not this. The main thing is whether the present Chinese Communist Party will succeed in emerging with honor from this new phase (underground, arrests, beatings, executions, betrayals within its own ranks, provocations within its own ranks, etc.), emerging strengthened, tempered, without splitting up, breaking into small pieces, disintegrating, degenerating into a sect or a series of sects. This danger cannot at all be considered excluded, just as one cannot consider excluded the possibility of an interval between this bourgeois revolution and the future bourgeois revolution, analogous to the interval we had between 1905 and 1917 (February). Moreover, I consider that such a danger is more real (I mean the danger of the Chinese Communist Party breaking into small pieces) than certain imaginary realities with which China now abounds. Why? Because, unfortunately, we do not have a genuine, or, if you like — a real Communist Party in China.

Setting aside the middle-peasant Communists, who represent good fighting material but are completely unversed in politics, what does the current Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party represent? Nothing but a "complex" of general phrases picked up here and there, unconnected to each other by any line, any guiding idea.

I do not want to be very demanding of the CPC Central Committee. I know that one cannot be very demanding of it. But here is a simple demand: carry out the directives of the ECCI. Did it carry out these directives? No. No, because it either did not understand them, or did not want to carry them out and deceived the ECCI, or did not know how to carry them out. That is a fact. Roy blames Borodin for this. That is foolishness. It cannot be that Borodin enjoys greater weight with the CPC or its Central Committee than the CI. Roy himself wrote that Borodin did not appear at the CPC congress because he was forced to go into hiding... Some (some!) explain this by saying that the bloc with the KMT is to blame, which ties the CPC and prevents it from being independent. That is also incorrect, although every bloc binds the members of the bloc in one way or another, which does not yet mean that we should be against blocs in general. Take the five coastal provinces of the NRA from Canton to Shanghai, where there is no bloc with the KMT at all. How to explain that the NRA's agents succeed more in the work of disintegrating the "army" of the communists than the communists do in the work of disintegrating the NRA's rear?

Is it not a fact that a whole number of trade unions are breaking away from the CCP, while the CEC continues to sit tight? What kind of "independence" of the CCP is this?.. The reason, in my opinion, lies not in these factors, although they do have their significance, but in the fact that the current Central Committee (its upper crust) was forged during the period of the nationwide revolution, it received its baptism precisely during this period, and it has proved completely unsuited to the new, agrarian phase of the revolution. The Central Committee of the CCP does not understand the meaning of the new phase of the revolution. There is not a single Marxist mind in the Central Committee capable of understanding the underlying basis (the social underlying basis) of the events taking place. The Central Committee of the CCP failed to utilize the rich period of the bloc with the Kuomintang in order to carry out furious work on the open organization of the revolution, of the proletariat, of the peasantry, of revolutionary military units, on the revolutionizing of the army, on counterposing soldiers to generals. For a whole year the Central Committee of the CCP sat on the Kuomintang's neck, enjoyed freedom of work, freedom of organization, and did nothing to transform the conglomerate of elements (admittedly, quite militant ones), incorrectly called a party, into a real party... Of course, work was going on at the grassroots level.

And for this we are indebted to the middle-peasant communist. But it is characteristic that it was not the CC that went to the workers and peasants, but the workers and peasants who went to the CC, and the closer the workers and peasants approached the CC, the further this, if one may say so, CC distanced itself from them, preferring to kill time in behind-the-scenes conversations with the leaders and generals from the GMD. The CC of the CP sometimes prattles about the hegemony of the proletariat. But the most intolerable thing in this prattle is the fact that it does not understand a single thing (literally – not a single thing) about hegemony, killing the initiative of the working masses, disintegrating the "spontaneous" actions of the peasant masses, and reducing the class struggle in China to ranting about the "feudal bourgeoisie" (it has now been definitively established that the author of this term turns out to be Roy). This is the reason why the directives of the CI were not carried out. This is why I was afraid to let such a party drift freely across the "ocean-sea" ahead of time (it would break up before it had time to grow strong...). This is why I now consider the question of the party to be the fundamental question of the Chinese revolution. How to cure this conglomerate, incorrectly called the Chinese Communist Party in our circles? Recalling Chen Duxiu or Tan Pingshan will not help here, of course, although I do not object to summoning them and teaching them a thing or two.

Other measures are needed. It is necessary to create good Marxist-Leninist literature in the Chinese language, substantial, not from "proclamationettes," allocating the necessary sum for this without hesitation right now, without delay (one can tell Klim that this will cost much less than maintaining 100 of his hemorrhoidal counter-revolutionary officials for half a year).

Furthermore. We have been too preoccupied with organizing a system of advisers attached to the armies in China (and these advisers proved to be politically out of place, since they never knew how to warn us in time about the defection of their "chiefs"). It is time now to get down seriously to organizing a system of Party advisers attached to the Central Committee of the CPC, to the departments of the Central Committee, to the regional organizations in every province, to the departments of these regional organizations, to the Komsomol, to the Peasant Department of the Central Committee, to the Military Department of the Central Committee, to the Central Organ, to the federation of trade unions of China. It is necessary to purge from China Borodin, and Roy, and all those oppositionists who hinder the work there. It is necessary to send to China, as a rule, not those we have no use for, but good workers. It is necessary to arrange matters so that all these Party advisers form a single whole in their work, directed by the chief adviser attached to the Central Committee (who is also the representative of the CI). These "nannies" are necessary at the present stage, given the weakness, formlessness, political amorphousness, and lack of qualifications of the current Central Committee. The Central Committee will learn from the Party advisers. The Party advisers will make up for the enormous shortcomings of the Central Committee of the CPC and its regional leaderships. They will also serve (for the time being) as the nails fastening the present conglomerate into a party. And so forth. In this spirit. As the revolution and the party grow, the need for "nannies" will disappear. Well, that is enough. I shake your hands. I. Stalin.

P.S. Acknowledge receipt of this letter. Also communicate your opinion. If you find it necessary, you may give it to other members of the PB to read as well. I. St.