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24 MAO TSE-TUNG
propaganda policy. In the work of any department, it is necessary
to know the situation first and only then can the work be well han-
dled. The fundamental link in changing the Party’s style of work is to
carry out plans for investigation and study throughout the Party.
2. As for China’s history in the last hundred years, we should
assemble qualified persons to study it, in co-operation and with a
proper division of labour, and so overcome the present disorganized
state of affairs. First it is necessary to make analytical studies in the
several fields of economic history, political history, military history
and cultural history, and only then will it be possible to make
synthetical studies.
3. As for education for cadres whether at work or in schools for
cadres, a policy should be established of focusing such education on
the study of the practical problems of the Chinese revolution and
using the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism as the guide, and
the method of studying Marxism-Leninism statically and in isolation
should be discarded. Moreover, in studying Marxism-Leninism, we
should use the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(Bolsheviks), Short Course as the principal material. It is the best
synthesis and summing-up of the world communist movement of
the past hundred years, a model of the integration of theory and
practice, and so far the only comprehensive model in the whole world.
When we see how Lenin and Stalin integrated the universal truth of
Marxism with the concrete practice of the Soviet revolution and
thereby developed Marxism, we shall know how we should work
in China.
We have made many detours. But error is often the precursor
of what is correct. I am confident that in the context of the Chinese
revolution and the world revolution, which is so intensely alive and
so richly varied, this reform of our study will certainly yield good
results.

NOTES

1 Fuhsien County is about seventy kilometres south of Yenan.
2 The Border Region currency consisted of the currency notes issued by the Bank
of the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region Government. The Kuomintang cur-
rency was the paper currency issued by the four big Kuomintang bureaucrat-capitalist
banks from 1935 onwards with British and U.S. imperialist support. Comrade Mao