First Published: Neo Ksekinima (New Beginning), 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
To the Local Committee of the Peiraeus Organisation:[A]
Comrades,
I'm certain that some rat, a member of the Athens Organisation, submitted to the bourgeois newspaper Elefthero Vima [B], information on the internal matters of the Party, where comrade Giatsopoulos [C] and myself are described as “intellectual secedes of the Party”. The news naturally upset all comrades, and most of all, us. We sent on the same day the following declaration to be published in Rizospastis. With it, as you can clearly see by its content, the prestige of the Party is reinstated against the shameful exploitation of our disagreements by the bourgeois paper, and most importantly,it is pointed out in the face of the instruments of the International that no-one in our camp ceases to fight its reactionary plans and its English-serving policy. This letter was not published by the Political Bureau, nor was another short simple refutation allowed to be published in Rizospastis. The prohibition of the publishing of our refuting declarations is an act that cannot be justified in any way, but only with the intention of partisan exploitation by the Political Bureau, of the shameful exploitation of our disagreements by the bourgeois press. I protest against the manner with which the Party leadership tries to exploit the mood created by planted publications in the bourgeois the Local Committee ought to demand the publication of our declaration, or else our imposed silence reaffirms, unwillingly, the planted news in the bourgeois papers — which I don't think I'm allowed to accept. The Local Committee, which observes all my daily party work as their colleague, I believe will act the way they should in the Political Bureau. Otherwise they are responsible too of the blackmail towards us by the Party leadership.
With comradely greetings,
P. Pouliopoulos
Peiraeus, July 2nd 1927
P.S. The excuse that the declaration supposedly “opens a discussion” is pretending, and no comrade in the Political Bureau believes it, for the obvious reason that the only thing it contains is the reflection of our views in the Party, something that the publicised declaration of the Political Bureau mentions also.
[A] Referring to the local committee of the KKE (CFG-Communist Party of Greece). Pouliopoulos and Giatsopoulos authored a Declaration that 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.
[B] Free Tribune in English.
[C] Pouliopoulos and Giatsopoulos were removed from the central committee of the KKE in March 1927, but weren't expelled from the party until one year later.