Written: 3 January, 1930 in Contantinipole (Istanbul)
First Published: The Militant, New York, Volume 3, No 6, February 8, 1930
Source: Microfilm collection and original bound volumes for The Militant provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription\HTML Markup: D. Walters
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1. In its last stage the conflict revealed, as is known, the complete military impotence of the present Chinese government. This in itself clearly demonstrates that there has not been a victorious bourgeois revolution in China, as Louzon, Urbahns, and others think, for a victorious revolution would have consolidated the army and the state. In China there was a victorious counter-revolution, directed against the overwhelming majority of the nation and therefore incapable of creating an army.
2. At the same time it strikingly demonstrates the inconsistency of the Menshevik policy of Stalin-Martynov, based since the beginning of 1924 on the assumption that the "national" Chinese bourgeoisie is capable of leading the revolution. In reality the bourgeoisie, with political support from the Comintern and material aid from the imperialists, was capable only of smashing the revolution and thereby reducing the Chinese state to complete impotence.
3. The Sino-Soviet conflict, in its military stage, revealed the enormous superiority of the [ Russian ] proletarian revolution, although weakened by the erroneous policy of the leadership in the last years, over the [ Chinese ] bourgeois counter-revolution, which had at its disposal substantial diplomatic and material support from imperialism.
4. The victory of the October Revolution over the April counter-revolution ( the coup by Chiang Kai-shek in April 1927 ) can in no sense be considered a victory for Stalin's policy. On the contrary, that policy has suffered a series of heavy defeats. The seizure of the railroad was Chiang Kai-shek's payment for the services rendered by Stalin. Stalin's subsequent wager on Feng Yu-hsiang was equally inconsistent.
Last updated on: 27 November 2008