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From "Mastering Bolshevism", a pamphlet containing Stalin's March 1937 report to the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU and his concluding speech on the discussion
The pamphlet can be read here, on Marx2Mao http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37.html
The report highlighted the failures of Communist Party cadre to continue and even heighten the political fight against wreckers in and around the Soviet Union, specifically the Trotskyites, who were collaborating with the Japanese and Germans to undermine the Soviet economy
This failure to uphold the political struggle was due, in Stalin's analysis, to the broad economic successes of the Soviet Union, which Party cadres failed to keep in perspective.
Instead many threw themselves into economic development programs, considering these successes to eclipse the dangers of the foreign spies and Trotskyite wreckers.
Earlier, in the 1920s, the Trotskyites, according to Stalin, represented a real trend in the workers movement of the Soviet Union, but that trend was wiped out and it no longer had any support of the workers and peasants in the Soviet Union.
Instead it's only support, by 1937, was found in the precious few elements who wanted to undermine the Soviet Union from within and restore capitalism, and by those myriad capitalist forces from without.
Many Bolshevik cadre made the error of combating the Trotskyites using old methods from when it was a force in the workers movement. Using tactics to struggle against the Trotskyites by essentially striking at them where they simply did not exist was plainly ineffective.
Instead, as Stalin argued, Bolshevik cadre who were committing this error needed to study the new form the Trotskyites took, that or party wreckers, spies of foreign agencies, economic saboteurs, etc. and adjust their tactics accordingly.
As evidence that Trotsky and his petty few supporters had long lost support of the workers movement in the Soviet Union, he cites this:
He attributes the remainder of votes not cast to Party members being occupied by tasks outside of the conference to why they didn't vote, but stated that in the most generous terms, Trotsky on possibly had 12,000 supporters in the party at that time.
Two aspects of Mastering Bolshevism should interest us, as Maoists, today. First, Stalin's report, while to my knowledge he never explicitly considered it such, is a clear example of a rectification campaign, and as such this campaign should be studied on that basis.
Second, we should get into the core of what Stalin means when he speaks of "Mastering Bolshevism". He isn't cryptic and expressly avoids being so. Meaning the answer to this question is straightforward and you should read the pamphlet to understand it.
But to present the gist of it, Stalin says that to master Bolshevism, Party cadre must remain rooted to the lowest levels of the workers movement and the party (hence the quote at the beginning of this thread).
Specifically this criticism applies most the highest, leading cadre of the Party, but we can understand it to apply to all revolutionaries, especially in our moment of struggle here in the US, when our party lacks definite form and higher leadership.
It's easy to pick out particularities which differ Stalin's proposed rectification campaign in 1937 to the particular political struggles Maoists in the US face today, but we must identify those aspects which can help us "Master Bolshevism" today.
Particularly the struggle against wreckers and saboteurs. While not truly akin to the industrial spies and informants Stalin identifies, today we face our myriad of opportunists and "wreckers", as such.
As an aside, I do not mean to imply that police spies also don't inevitably worm their way into our ranks constantly, and that we must always be vigilant about them.
Constantly elements emerge that work to wrench revolutionaries and their analyses apart from the masses. Whether it's to draw people into their own petty political projects, or to outright denounce socialism altogether, as Max Eastman, an American Trotskyite, did.
It requires more than raising up a wall to combat counter-revolutionary tendencies - such a strategy always, inevitably fails and isolates you from the masses and indeed even drives comrades into the arms of the counter-revolutionaries, as Stalin also criticizes.
The key method for combating counter-revolution in Stalin's case, or opportunism (still counter-revolutionary) in our case, is to *Master Bolshevism*. Or to update the slogan - Master Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
And what method does Stalin prescribe for Mastering Bolshevism? Tying yourself, ever tighter and tigher, to the masses, to the workers movement, and never becoming separated from it. This principle cannot be repeated enough.
It's a tough truth, but many people who call themselves Marxist-Leninist-Maoists today have no real knots holding them to the masses, they have no real connection to their struggles, even though many of them may even be demographically "of the masses".
I am expressly criticizing those people who spend very much time on the internet, but apparently lack any connection to the struggles of the masses, let alone lead struggles among the masses, as Maoists must do.
It's this error of isolating themselves from the masses that leaves these comrades open to revisionism, and creates opening for opportunists, who do go among the masses, to slander Maoism and associate it with ultraviolence, sectarianism, and other unbecoming things.
In a word - if we want to Master Maoism, we can only do so in the course of revolutionary struggle and the revolutionary struggle is found only among the masses.