First Published: Neo Ksekinima (New Beginning) [A], 1927
Re-Published: Spartakos, Texts 1930-1932 Outopia Publications, 1986
Online Version: Pantelis Pouliopoulos Internet Archive, April 2003
Translation/English Transcription: H. Antonn
HTML Markup: Roland Ferguson
Although for the Party members who know us, any refutation of the silly piece of news in yesterday’s “Elefthero Vima”, of our supposed secession from the Communist Party is completely unnecessary, in order to dissolve the relevant confusion however, we declare the following:
1. The news in “Elefthero Vima” is false and planted, all its details a fantasy. We expressed no tendency to secede from the CP and we continue to be soldiers of communism.
2. This doesn’t deter us, but rather forces us to support inside the Party the views which we happen to consider correct for the better development and organisation of the forces of the Party as a Revolutionary Party of the Greek proletariat. This precisely is the concept of the notification form our part to the Party of our views’ content, which we had announce verbally and in writing in the 3rd Conference. The fact that the bourgeois press has an interest in exploiting our internal disagreements for their reactionary purposes, cannot in any way stop the democratic ideological antagonism within the Party, no matter how sharp, to find the most correct line able to serve the proletarian revolution in the country, in the same way that this doesn’t stop the internal discussions inside all communist parties and the International. If the fear of the naive “our class enemies will hear us ” was enough to drown the discussions around the vital questions of the movement inside communist parties, then that would be equal to condemning these parties to political death.
3. Because the expression of the our disagreements today happened to be unavoidable during exceptionally serious times for the proletariat, we must declare that no other force is capable today to separate honest revolutionaries in Greece in their imperative struggle against the terrorism, which the International with low means exercises on the workers, as well as the efforts of this reactionary government [B] to serve the interests of the dark plots of English imperialism with new rash war adventures and the increasing tightening of the bonds of the semi-colonial subjugation of the country.
Athens, July 1st 1927
P. Pouliopoulos
P. Giatsopoulos [C]
[A] This declaration was intended to be published in Rizospastis (Radical), the Greek CP party organ of the day. The newspaper did not publish it, also declining to print other statements and articles by opposition members, and the opposition led by Pouliopoulos had to print its own organ “New Beginning”, in order to make known their views to party members. Pouliopoulos and Giatsopoulos further condemned the actions of Rizospastis in a related document which accompanied the Declaration.
[B] The Liberal party government, headed by Venizelos
[C] (Pouliopoulos) took part in the party's congress in March 1927, where he and Giatsopoulos were removed from the Central Committee. After publishing and circulating the pamphlet known as New Beginning they were formally expelled from the party later that year, and formed an oppositional group which solidarised itself with the struggle of the International Left Opposition. They began to publish a journal called Spartacus from December 1928 onwards, containing the main documents of the Left Opposition. They refused to join the split of the Archeiomarxists that had already taken place from the Communist Party, as they regarded it as having a sectarian attitude to the KKE. (from Open letter to the KKE, 1927).