From BORODIN : Stalin's Man in China, Dan N. Jacobs, 1981

When the news of February 1917 had reached Borodin, he was elated. He wanted desperately to return to Russia  . . . 

. . . As late as July 1917, Lenin was virtually unknown except in Russian socialist circles; when cited in the general press, he was described as a �pacifist agitator.� Now he had become almost a household name. Trotsky, Bukharin, and Kollontai had achieved newspaper prominence. Now they were governing and changing Russia . . .

( page 47 )

 

. . . Stalin had clung to the united-front policy after Chiang�s March 20, 1926, coup in Canton. . . . . But this path required cooperation with the bourgeoisie and militarists, and upon discouraging worker and peasant radicalism. How could a Bolshevik be against the masses and for the bourgeoisie and foreign imperialists? To counter that argument, Stalin�s policy statement said that while the Wuhan regime was not now an organ of a �revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,� it had every chance of developing into one. . . . .

But the opposition would not let Stalin off the hook so easily . . .  The situation was discussed at a meeting of the Chinese Subcommittee of the ECCI at which Politburo members Nikolai Bukharin, Palmiro Togliatti, later the head of the Communist Party in Italy, and Albert Treint of France were present. Bukharin held that the peasants must be curbed. Treint argued the contrary. Togliatti said little. At a critical moment, Bukharin . . . demanded that Stalin be heard. He telephoned Stalin, who came to the room and contended that Treint did not �take the real situation in China into consideration. To fail to take a position at the present time against the peasant revolts would be to set the left bourgeoisie against us.� [Etc.] To emphasize his point, Stalin read several telegrams from Borodin, stressing that the leadership of the KMT had decided �to struggle against the agrarian revolution even at the cost of a split with the [Third] International.� The question, said Stalin, is whether to fight, as Treint and others wanted, or whether to maneuver. To fight, he felt, would mean certain defeat. Maneuvering would gain time . . . .

On June 1, Borodin and Roy received a secret radio message from Stalin that, in effect, answered Roy�s appeal for clarification. . . .

When the message from Stalin was read at the next meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CCP, no one knew whether to laugh or cry. . . .  [T]he bewildered KMT Politburo, in the name of the CC, sent Stalin a noncommittal message: �Orders received. Shall obey as soon as we can do so.�

( page 268 )

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England :
Cambridge University Press, 1981.