Such expressions of doubt unsettled the Soviet leadership. For if communists no longer supported the official policy, then who would carry it out? Nobody took this problem more seriously than Stalin himself. After consulting with Balytsky, whom he met twice in November 1932, Stalin sent out a letter addressed to all party leaders, national, regional and local, all across the country, declaring war on the traitors inside the party. “An enemy with a party card in his pocket should be punished more harshly than an enemy without a party card,” he proclaimed:
