Page:Resolutions and Theses of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922).djvu/125

 of the reactionaries, was the result of the Party not being firm in its Communist convictions. The Party was still burdened with the old social-democratic conceptions.

Although the Party had enthusiastically joined the Communist International, which showed the readiness of the masses for struggle, the leading organ was not yet quite familiar with the new path. Thus, for instance, it did not dare to publish the 21 conditions adopted by the Second Congress; nor did it publish the "Theses on the Question of Revolutionary Parliamentarianism." Thus it left the Party and the masses which were following it in complete ignorance of the demands which the Communist International had put before the parties which wanted to be real Communist parties. At the same time, the leading organ of the Party did not take any serious steps for the education of the Party and of the masses for the struggle on all fields against the reaction which was threatening them. It concentrated its attention chiefly on its electoral victories, and took care not to alarm the petty bourgeois elements by showing them what the Communist Party meant and what its methods of struggle were. At a time when the financial and military oligarchy in Belgrade was getting ready to conduct a savage and decisive struggle against the revolutionary working-class movement, the Central Committee of the Jugo-Slavian Communist Party was concentrating its attention and spending its energies on such secondary questions as parliamentarianism, leaving the rear of the Party undefended and unorganised. This was its fundamental mistake.

The Jugo-Slavian Party proved itself absolutely powerless and incapable of protecting itself against the White Terror. It had no underground organisation which could have enabled it to act under the new conditions and to remain in contact with the masses. Until the dissolution of the parliamentary group the Communist deputies were the only link between the Centre and the provinces. This link was severed with the dissolution. The arrest of the leading comrades in the Centre and in the provinces left the movement without a lead. Owing to these arrests the Party almost ceased to exist. The same fate overtook the local organisations of the Party, and the danger arose of the workers' organisations, which were left entirely to themselves, becoming completely disrupted. The social-democrats, with the assistance of the police, endeavoured to make use of these circumstances which were favourable to them, but they failed.

Under the reign of terror the central organ of the Party only very slowly acquired the organisational forms and methods of struggle dictated by the new conditions. For a long time it remained passive, hoping that as a consequence of the internal differences within the ruling class, this regime would soon pass away without the active intervention of the mass of the workers. It was only when all hopes of an amnesty for the