 Gitlow argued that though the CPSUs official line as determined by the 15th congress was correct, the Stalin leadership had veered so far away from it that the Party's general line was no longer correct and was going in the direction of Trotskyism.After the National Bureau of the group upheld its support for the current position on the Russian question at a New York mass meeting on February 2, 1933 Gitlow resigned.At the next plenum of the CPOs National Committee, February 11–13, Becker presented an appeal with the signatures of 13 members which criticized the Lovestone leadership on the "Russian question" and on a number of other issues related to the groups work within the labor movement and relationship to the official Communist Party.