April 18, 1927
To the Eastern Secretariat of the ECCI:
Returned from leave of absence, I found the photograph of Chiang Kai-shek sent me through
the Eastern Department of the ECCI and the request promptly to send him my autographed
picture. Had I received such a request through the Foreign Office, then, regardless of my
attitude toward this request, I would find the fact itself explainable. But it is
absolutely incomprehensible to me why the Eastern Department of the ECCI-the international
organization of the communist vanguard of the proletariat occupies itself with such a
thoroughly compromising matter as the spreading of portraits of Chiang Kai-shek. And this,
moreover, as a result of a malicious irony of fate, on the eve of the coup d'etat carried
out by him. I do not doubt that this job, unseemly for the ECCI, was done by some employee
of the Eastern Department not empowered to do it, without the knowledge of the leading
persons and especially of the Presidium of the ECCI, as a consequence of which I deem it
necessary to bring this distasteful affair to your attention. The picture of Chiang
Kai-shek I am herewith returning.
With communist greetings,
L. Trotsky
Copy: To the Presidium of the ECCI and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee
From the Militant (New York), September 17, 1932.