“Kadry reshaiut vse,” the Soviet Union’s one-time supreme leader Joseph Stalin’s famous 1935 slogan has been alternately translated into English as ‘cadres decide everything’ on ‘cadres are the key’. The difference is fine but noteworthy.
If the first is to be closer in essence to the original, one might question if it was meant more for lip-service than with real intent for practice. If the second translation is to be considered, there can perhaps be no argument over the fact that cadres are, indeed, the key to political parties. Communist parties worldwide have all been cadre-based parties.