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In Mexico the Comintern's agent and the general consul of the RSFSR got in touch (at first through R.Mallen) with some people who might become his natural allies in the realization of the Bolshevik goals.These men were the Hindu emigrant Roy and the American-Mexican radicals Ch.Phillips and I.Granich (M.Gold). Borodin's choice proved to be irreproachable. Being the activists of the radical wing of the mexican socialist party these people gave very precious help to Borodin's mission.
The Russian Bolshevik's influence, in turn, was decisive on their life.
M.Borodin's mexican mission ceased to be the sealed mystery almost from the beginning. On his deliberate or accidental revealing his incognito, "the mysterious visitor" converted his stay in Mexico into the Polichinelle's secret. Too many people appeared to know about Borodin's arriving. Only the search of the diamonds entrusted to Mallen and Phillips was covered with an aureole of mystery.
Perhaps, it was not planned to keep in secret the diplomatic part of the mission. Publicity might even be useful. The news about the successful negotiations between Moscow and Mexico-City would, probably, help to run the diplomatic blockade of the Soviet Russia. According to Phillips, Borodin was going to present his credentials "only if there was an indication that they would be accepted, and that the Soviet Government would be recognized..." The sounding of the President Carranza's attitude, however, showed the impossibility of the whole affair. The President dare not to oppose to the USA and the Entente powers so demonstratively and even the official meeting with Russian general consul appeared to be impossible. In spite of Roy's words about "the de-facto recognition of the new regime in Russia" and "the diplomatic victory" of Borodin one should conclude : the expected diplomatic success didn't go through.
Borodin, however, saw optimistically to his work "on the other side of Atlantic": " ...things look very bright indeed... The Mexican Socialist Party, now the Communist Party, has declared for the Third International. In Cuba a Communist Section has been organized. In both these places great enthusiasm is displayed. Also, in Mexico a bureau has been formed for the purpose of calling a Latin American Congress... The main object of this Congress is to unite all the revolutionary elements and form a Latin American branch of the Third International".(27)
It would be mistake to put down the creation of the MCP to Borodin's efforts exclusively. There is no doubt, however, that his influence to the leaders of the radical wing of the socialists (primarily to Roy and Phillips) expedited whole the process. "The roving delegate"'s power given him by the organizing commission of the Comintern was reasonable enough and that let him to operate autonomously from the leadership located in Moscow. It was Borodin who gave "recognition" of the Mexican Communist party "as a part of the THIRD INTERNATIONAL".(28)
In the letter to the MCP's general secretary J. Allen Borodin welcomed "important measures, among them the decision to affiliate your [Allen's] Party with the Third International...[that would cause] far-reaching consequences in the course of the revolutionary movement of the Mexican working-class" and assured Allen that as the party was "the only one in Mexico" which was "proletarian and revolutionary" the MCP's delegate would be "admitted with the full rights..." Borodin promised to lay the matter before the ECCI and was sure that the party would already have been admitted to the moment of its delegate's arriving to Moscow. It was, probably the same letter, that was called the Secretariat of the III Internacional's message in M.N.Roy's memoirs. However it was signed by M.Borodin and there were no other signatures.
The Provisional Latin American Bureau of the Third International formed by the MCP consisted of three Mexican communists (J.Allen, E.Torres, A. Ruiz), the Peruvian Hurmachea and the American Brewster, and, according to the head of that body J.Allen the Bureau formulated its aim as to call the Latin American Communist Congress, to publish the newspaper "El Comunista Latinoamericano" and the start the propaganda with an object of developing the revolutionary movement throughout the continent.(30)
According to Borodin's project the Bureau's activity had to be just a part of a larger-scale program. As "the Bureau of the Third International" was not in position "to keep in constant touch with every country separately" the Bolshevik missionary started the organization of a bureau located in Spain which was to include the delegates from Spain, Holland, Italy, France, England and Latin America and "to take the form of a news agency ...so that the mutuality of information may be real." (According to Borodin's words, the bureau was decided upon by "a conference of Spanish and Mexican comrades) (31) The idea was welcomed by the ECCI's Bureau in Amsterdam sought to maintain relations "with Spain and through Spain with Mexico and the Pan American Bureau for the purpose of distributing news and information and forming a connection link between Russia and these countries."(32)
The Latin American Bureau drastic measures to organize the continental communist congress and its invitations and the emissaries were sent to Cuba, Central America, and some other countries. The crisis in the mexican communist movement, however, prevented the realization of that idea. The first conference of the Latin American communist parties was held only ten years later --in 1929 in Buenos Aires.
Even after Borodin had left Mexico he continued to be the MCP 's mentor and the arbiter of the growing crisis of the newly born mexican communist movement when some different sympathetic to the Bolsheviks groups disputed each other's right to be represented in the Comintern.
The messages trying to denounce the MCP and Roy's right to speak for the mexican proletariat flocked to Moscow. The Socialist party secretary F.Servantes Lopez wrote that the MCP was formed of 6 individuals (!).Roy was accused of being voted the "deciding vote in favor of seating as delegate [of the National Socialist Congress] the corrupt Luis N.Morones, a leader of the type of Ebert", who became the head of the reformist trade-unions; J.Allen was qualified as "a parasite who has no known occupation" and the Latin American bureau member E.Torres as the police employee.(33)
According the Mexican Administration of the I.W.W.'s letter to the ECCI the MCP was "entirely unrepresentative of the class conscious workers of the country and ... composed largely of men whose intriques are on a level with those of the Scheidemans of Germany...", and the I.W.W. members expressed their "emphatic protest against any recognition" of M.N.Roy, calling on the Comintern 'to repudiate this schemer", accused of being "an agent provocateur" and who was, according to the letter, "at best an ambitious politician seeking only personal ends..."(31)
It was a deserter from the American army Linn Gale who had became the most fierce opponent to the MCP. Gale was the activist of the mexican socialist movement and the publisher of the "Gale's Magazine". Roy claimed that Gale was a sort of extortioner who had begun to blacken his (Roy's) reputation after the unsuccessful attempt to get money for publishing "Gale's Magazine".
At the National Socialist Congress Roy was fiercely attacked by Gale on the matter of Morones' seating. After Roy's victory Gale and his followers left the Congress and formed the Communist party of Mexico. According to their words, it was the CP of M and not the MCP that became the "only Nation-Wide Organization in Mexico Unequivocally Committed to the Principles of Revolutionary Communism."(35)
Being the mouthpiece of the anti-Roy and anti-MCP forces, Gale in his letter to S.Pankhurst insisted that Roy "was in the pay of the German embassy ... and then "flopped" and sold out to American financial interests. ...he is trying to split what little communism there is in Mexico in order to weaken the resistance to American intervention... Whether he is really a dangerous agent provocateur or simply a rich, ambitious fellow who wants to use the movement for his own purposes, the workers here will never forgive him for his alliance with the agent of Gompers [Morones]."(36)
Borodin, however didn't try to reconciliate the contesting groups, at the contrary, he unequivocally supported his own child, the MCP. Borodin's "experience both in communism and in judging people" was reasonable enough for the Amsterdam bureau leaders, and one of them (probably, it was S.J.Rutgers) wrote that "B.... considered Roy a very fine fellow and good communist, whereas he warned me particularly for Gale and for him only. He described Gale not as a spy or something of the kind, but as a fantastic self-seeking man. ...B. ...have more confidence in the policy of Roy. ...I have full confidence in B., who has watched conditions at the spot."(37)
Borodin's position was not stipulated by the missionary's responsibility to defend his neophytes, but primarily by Roy's personality. It was not by chance that Roy was raised to the Comintern's Olymp already from the beginning while his mentor remained in the shadow for a long time carrying out the work which hadn't to become known. The hindu revolutionary who was capable of becoming an influential man in mexican politics, was by Borodin (and later by Lenin and the ECCI)'s opinion, the person of greatabilities to become one of the leaders of Asia's anticolonial struggle and, perhaps, to lead it. Borodin wrote to Rutgers that Roy "believes that the salvation of India doesn't lie in the nationalist movement... but in the Hindu proletariat who must fight for the same for which the proletariat of the rest of the world is fighting. He thus look upon the work in India as part of the Communist International. It is with this object that he goes to India."(38)
It had been Borodin's idea to charge Roy with the preparation of "a report and resolution on the proletarian movement of the colonies"'(39) that became the starting point to Roy's famous "Supplementary Theses on National and Colonial Question" presented to the II Congress of the Comintern equally with Lenins's ones.
"A very curious but somewhat significant incident, characterizing to what extent the so-called left communism may go"-thus Borodin described the circumstances of the creation of "the Communist section" in Cuba he had observed. During the short stop for some five hours in Havana Phillips was sent by Borodin to "get material on the [workers'] movement and what prospects are there for the organization of the workers on the principle of Third [International]" and returned "in state of high glee and very happy": "in a couple of hours a Communist section was actually organized with Salinas... at the head and a resolution of affiliation with the Third adopted..." To Borodin's question why "section" and not "party", Phillips answered: because they didn't believe in such things. To them Party was a forbidden word.
The left Anarchist M. Salinas' disbelief in Party didn't prevent him, however, from the sending the letter (perhaps, through Borodin and Phillips) to Moscow (41) asking for admission to the world-wide proletarian party (the Comintern) and declaring of the readiness "to fight by all its forces for the propagation of its [the Comintern's] ideas and for the defeat of the bourgeoisie throughout the world", and, at last , expressing the section's desire to be represented in the Bureau
of the International and at the forthcoming II congress of the Comintern and at the Latin American Communist Congress.(42)
Borodin's critical attitude to "the communist section"'s leftism, however didn't prevent his "adjutant" Phillips from the attempt to become not the MCP's delegate only at the II Congress of the Comintern but Salinas' representative too. But the Bolshevik missionary, perhaps, considered it impossible to put this matter on the ECCI. The Credentials Committee of the congress remained this question undecided up to the presenting of the mandate."(42)
Michael Borodin had a possibility to cross Atlantic once more. In 1921 the Pan American bureau of the Comintern (44), which had to resolve difficult problems of the amalgamation of the communist movement of the USA, Mexico and the propaganda of the communist ideas in other countries of the continent, tried to persuade the ECCI that the Bureau wanted Borodin "because he had certain particular qualifications for this particular job."(45)
There were another plans in the head-quarters of the world revolution, however. Borodin was sent to England and then, in 1923 the RCP/b/'s Politburo under Stalin's suggestion appointed him (Borodin) as the political adviser to Sun Yatsen's revolutionary government, instructing Borodin to be guided by interest of the Chinese National Liberation movement and "by no means be carried away by the goals of the implanting of communism..."(46)
It was in that country, though in absolutely different circumstances than in the New World's ones, where Michael Borodin's activity became world-famous.