Concerning Questions of the Chinese Revolution

On May 9, 1927, Stalin wrote an article about the Chinese Revolution. On May 15, 1927, it was published in Rural Communist issue No. 10. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 9 of the Complete Works of Stalin.

On April 21, 1927, Stalin had published the article “The Questions of the Chinese Revolution” in Pravda issue No. 90, criticizing a series of wrong views of the opposition on the question of Chinese revolution, pointing out that it is not appropriate to “immediately form Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies” in China at that time. However, Marchulin had different views on this, and wrote a letter to the journal Rural Communist and quoted Lenin’s words to refute Stalin’s views.

The editorial department of the journal Rural Communist forwarded this letter to Stalin. Stalin replied this critique with a new article titled as “Concerning Questions of the Chinese Revolution: Reply to Comrade Marchulin”, pointing out that Marchulin misunderstood and misquoted Lenin’s words, and at the same time, he elaborated on two questions of “whether or not to establish the Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies in China” and “when to establish the Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies in China.”

On the question of “the establishment of Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies in present-day China”, Stalin expressed his opposition explicitly based on the following arguments: Firstly, the basis of Marchulin was Lenin’s speech and theses at the Second Congress of the Comintern, where he spoke only about peasants’ Soviets, of toilers’ Soviets, of Soviets of the working people, but Lenin did not utter a single word about the formation of Soviets of workers’ deputies. Secondly, in his speech and theses, Lenin had in mind those countries where there can be “no question of a purely proletarian movement”, where there was “practically no industrial proletariat”, and Lenin talked about such countries as Central Asia, Persia, but not China.

With his quotation from the “Supplementary Theses of the Second Congress of the Comintern”, Stalin pointed out that Marchulin confused Lenin’s speech and theses with Roy’s “Supplementary Theses”, and that Marchulin misquoted Lenin’s words. First, the author of the “Supplementary Theses” of the Second Congress of the Comintern on the national and colonial question was Roy, not Lenin. Second, Lenin’s theses had been written and published long before the Second Congress opened. And since the discussion in the congress commission revealed the necessity for singling out from the backward colonies of the East such countries as China and India, so it was as Roy’s theses that they were submitted at the Second Congress and was adopted as a “supplement” to Lenin’s theses.

On the issue of the conditions for the formation of workers’ and peasants’ Soviets in China, Stalin argued that it was necessary to form workers’ and peasants’ Soviets in China but “theses Soviets cannot be formed at any time and under any conditions”. Firstly, “Soviets of workers’ deputies are organs of the struggle of the working class against the existing power, organs of an uprising, organs of a new revolutionary power, and only as such can they develop and gain strength.” Secondly, “if the conditions do not exist for a direct mass struggle against the existing power, for a mass uprising against that power, for the organization of a new revolutionary power,” then the formation of workers’ Soviets “is inexpedient, since, in the absence of these conditions, they run the risk of decaying and becoming mere talkshops”, and it will be a risk of putting the revolution in China in a most difficult position.

On the timing of the establishment of Soviet representatives of workers and peasants in China, Stalin argued out that it was the time when the victorious agrarian revolution has developed to the full, when the Kuomintang, as a bloc of the revolutionary Narodniks of China (the Kuomintang Left) and the Communist Party, begins to outlive its day, when the bourgeois-democratic revolution, which has not yet triumphed and will not triumph so soon, begins to manifest its negative features, when it becomes necessary to pass step by step from the present, Kuomintang type of state organization to a new, proletarian type of organization of the state.

On “China’s current task”, Stalin pointed out that “The agrarian revolution in China must be broadened and deepened. Mass workers’ and peasants’ organizations of every kind must be created and strengthened—from trade-union councils and strike committees to peasant associations and peasant revolutionary committees—with a view to converting them, as the revolutionary movement grows and achieves success, into organizational and political bases for the future Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies.” Thus Stalin opposed the immediate formation of Soviets of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies in those days of China.

In this article, Stalin ignored that the Chinese revolution at that time passed through the stage of democratic revolution, which truly reflected the realities of China, instead he equated “China’s bourgeois democratic revolution stage” with “Kuomintang phase of the Chinese revolution”, which was divorced from China’s actual situation and had a negative impact on China’s revolution.