Soon after the Second Congress of the Communist Party, the centrist socialists were expelled from the Party, leaving only the leftist socialists, primarily communists, in the party (Pavolwitch, 1971). In 1921, the expelled socialists joined with the Social Democrats to form the Socialist Party of Yugo slavia (Pavolwitch, 1971). The Communist Party was now ready to compete on its own in the Yugoslav political environment.
SUPRESSION OF, AND SUPPORT FOR THE COMMUNIST
The Communist Party immediately set out to establish a network of party and labor group organizations across the coun try (Pavolwitch, 1971). Local elections in 1920 and 1921 indi cated that the Party had a relatively wide appeal. They were
able to obtain majorities in many towns and cities, including Belgrade and Zagreb (Pavolwitch, 1971). In the 1920 general elections held in the fall of that year, the Communist Party elected 53 out of a total of 419 members to the national par liament (White, 1951). More significantly, however, the Com munist Party was one of only two parties, the other being the Democrats on the right, to elect representatives from every province in the country (Pavolwitch, 1971). On the left, therefore, the Communist Party had established itself in the 1920 general election as the only national party.
In the 1920 election, votes for the Communist Party were largely ascribed to a protest vote (Pavolwitch, 1971). Limited agrarian reform by the government had muted much of the protest in the countryside; however, resentment against the prevailing economic situation in the cities was strong, and Macedonians and Montenegrins objected at the efforts of the government to Serbianize Yugoslavia (Auty, 1970).
The success of the Communist Party, although it had elected only 12.6 percent of the members of parliament, caused the government, in a panic of fear, to enact repressive mea sures against the party (Djilas, 1962). All communist or...