First Published: Neo Ksekinima, 1927
Online Version: Pantelis Pouliopoulos Internet Archive, March 2003
Translation/English Transcription: H. Antonn
HTML Markup: Roland Ferguson
To the Conference of the Peiraeus Communist Organisation[A]
Dear Comrades,
In the last ten-day period's joint conventions, you have all seen with indignation what low means the faction leading the Party used to shut the eyes of comrades, facing the terrible problems which the opposition set to the Party for resolution. They didn't seek to give, like honest revolutionaries, any positive answer to the to the opinions of the opposition, in order to persuade the organisation that our views are erroneous. Their only "argument" was that we're after wrecking the party. That this is clear slander, you all know from your own experience, because all of you after the conference saw the dedicated party work of the opposition comrades in Peiraeus, and especially of those portrayed as the most dangerous "wreckers". And in the way that our actions have been unquestionably improving and uplifting the level of the Party in Peiraeus, in the same manner our views on the crisis in the Party and its resolution were proven true, as we analysed them broadly to you and discussed them in the bolshevik way with the representatives of the Political Bureau in front of you.
Today's announcement of the P.B. is an impudent answer to the unanimous indignation you expressed in your conventions against the methods of the P.B., methods which are not only antiproletarian and anticommunist, but corrupted in the most bourgeois way. With this announcement, the opposition is officially declared by the leadership, not only outside the Party, but an enemy of the Party, and members are called to choose: either with the P.B. and in the Party, or with the opposition and out of the Party. They seek to blackmail the organization, and if its majority goes finally to the side of the opposition in the Conference, they will seek to dissolve the opposition. Therefore, they continue in Peraeus what they have already done in Athens, where they expelled currents, nuclei and members (Party Organisation - Athens Youth) because they sympathised with the views of the opposition. And they dishonourably already attempt to drop responsibility for the split they so desperately seek to the opposition.
We declare in the most categorical way, that we'll do everything we can for the P.B.'s splitting plan to fail, and to prove even to the most naive that our "dissolutionism" is slander. We don't think that the party crisis will be resolved with a new split in Peraeus. One mustn't have the slightest idea of the spirit of the views of the opposition in order not to realise that a new split would add more confusion to the existing situation, that it would waste invaluable resources in sterile struggles. The crisis in our movement will be resolved only with a universal work of action and education, embracing the whole of the country's movement, and seeking to capture both theoretically and practically the big issues of the Greek revolutionary proletarian movement, in their entire breadth and depth. This historic task is long and hard; it will be done not spasmodically, but systematically, and its centre being the KKE, as the sole party of the proletariat in the country, towards which all improvement efforts must converge. We never ceased supporting this for a single moment, ever since we found ourselves fighters within the movement.
For these reasons, comrades, we consider our duty today to propose to you: All those who have been truly persuaded, not only by personal sentimentalities and prestige, that our views are the only correct ones, to declare it like true communists, who in forming and expressing their opinion, is disgraceful to be influenced by anyone's terror. No matter whether they find themselves in a minority or the majority, they must declare absolute discipline even to the illegitimate current Party leadership, and not seek to elect comrades of the opposition to the leadership of the Organisation, since the P.B., with the dilemma it poses, pre-announces in this case a dissolution of the organisation, that is, a split. They must let elect the leadership that the P.B. will propose (blank vote with a protest, the way the current C.C. was "elected" in the 3rd Congress), and under its command to work with all their strength, without bitterness or disappointment unworthy of communists, with the aim to create in the Balkans' largest proletarian centre a true communist organisation. Reality will give everyday new strength to our arguments and the necessity of things will very quickly bring to an end the current dangerous situation, opening new broader horizons of development to our Party.
Revolutionary Greetings,
P. Pouliopoulos
Peraeus, August 2nd 1927
[A] First published in the "Neo Ksekinima" (New Beginning) special paper of the opposition, circulating inside the Greek CP at the time (1927). Re-published in "Spartakos, documents 1930-1932" by Outopia Publications, December 1986.