League of Communists of Yugoslavia - Split With The Centrists

Split With The Centrists

But the growth of the party also incited arguments about party's agenda and resulted in a split between two currents: The reformist Centrists, stressing that the Kingdoms was an industrially underdeveloped state and not ripe for revolution, opposed an emphasis on class struggle and a close connection between the party and the trade-unions and favored participating in the political life by legal means and working towards social reforms. The decidedly Communist Revolutionaries, arguing that the prerequisites for a revolution already existed, favored a centralized party, a close alliance with the unions and the seizing of power by force, including terrorist tactics.

The 2nd party congress, held in June 1920 in Vukovar, saw the revolutionaries led by Filipović prevail. The party changed its name to Communist Party of Yugoslavia (Komunistička partija Jugoslavije) and elected Filipović and Sima Marković as political secretaries. The Congress also supported to the idea of a Balkan Communist Federation. The Centrists objected to their marginalization and in September published their Manifesto, in which they denounced the October Revolution as "irrational" and as "violence on the course of history" and the Bolsheviks as using the Comintern as an instrument of their foreign policy, using "all foreign parties as their own blind agents" The manifesto was signed by 53 leading party members, which all were expelled from the leadership, while 62 members who had expressed solidarity with them were given party punishments. The centrists for a time formed they own party before they united with Social Democrats in the Socialist Party of Yugoslavia.