Page:Theses Presented to the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920).pdf/71

 gress of Soviets. In other circumstances a boycotting of the elections may be necessary, and a direct violent storming of the parliamentary bourgeois clique, or a participation in the elections with a boycott of the parliament itself, etc.

19. In this way, while recognising as a general rule the necessity of participating in the elections to the central parliament, and to the institutions of local selfgovernment, as well as in the work in such institutions, the Communist Party must decide the question concretely. according to the specific conditions of the given moment. Boycotting the elections or the parliament, or leaving the parliament, is allowable, chiefly when there is a chance of an immediate transformation into an armed fight for the power.

20. At the same time one must constantly bear in mind the relative unimportance of this question. If the center of gravity lies in a struggle for the power outside the parliament, then naturally the question of a proletarian dictatorship and a fight in masses for it is immeasurably greater than the secondary one of using the parliament.

21. Therefore the Communist International insists categorically that it considers any division or attempt at a division within the Communist Parties united on this aim as a crime against the Labour movement. The Congress