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up everywhere. Intellectual quarrells took place between various schools.
For awhile, Communism or Bolshevism was in a state of under-current, being greatly hampered by the lunatic watch of the government against the importation of Communist literature and the communication with Soviet Russia.
Alarmed and frightened by the growing tendency of the opposite ideas, the possessing classes hurried to exterminate all „dangerous thoughts“ with the usual ruthless methods. Since early 1920, there appeared again the hysteric confiscations of „dangerous“ papers and the arrests of Socialists; almost all revolutionary propaganda meetings were brutally broken and dispersed by police and Japanese „Black and Tan“.
Fortunately, however, instead of extinguishing the revolutionary thought, this bourgeois terrorism resulted, firstly, in a hasty withdrawal of the counterfeit Socialists and Socialist Philistines from the stage, putting an end to the „popularisation“ of Socialism, and justly leaving the victory in the hands of Revolutionary Socialists; secondly, in adding fresh fuel to the revolutionary fire, in driving all Revolutionists toward Communism. The study of Communist theory and the fragmentary informations about the real conditions in Soviet Russia through the foreign books and papers began to appear on all the Socialist papers. Although the propaganda or agitation for Communism is absolutely prohibited, it is being carried on by every possible means among workers, soldiers, policemen, and teachers with a good amount of crop.
Thirdly, it met with a cynical effect in uniting those revolutionary elements into one solid army[1]„The Socialist Federation of Japan“ which was, in the teeth of every counteractions of the authority, openly formed in Tokyo, December 1920, although it was practically founded three months before. The Federation is in form neither a Communist nor Socialist Party which possesses a certain definite programme, but merely a body calling together individual persons and groups which has tendency of Revolutionary Socialism in a wider sense. But practically it was engineered and led by the Baibun-sha group and dominated by Communism. Therefore, the formation of the Socialist Federation is a preliminary proceeding to create a Communist Party at no very distant date.
- ↑ The Manifesto produced by the Organising Committe of Socialist Federation was confiscated before distribution. 10th Dec. was
