 After the refusal, the United Kingdom on May 24–27 broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.However, at the same time, the alliance of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists fell apart; on April 12, Chiang Kai-shek and his allies massacred the Shanghai Communists (see the Shanghai Massacre of 1927).This incident was widely used by the "united opposition" (the "Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc") to criticize the official Stalinist diplomacy as deliberately a failure.