39
covered with adventures and adventurers. It's quite an easy thing to denounce as a putsch any movement that has not been directly victorious. We in Russia, before victory came, met with dozens of such defeats. Had we all considered them as putsches, we would not have conquered. (Approval.)
At the very founding of this Party we were afraid that Centrist under-currents would appear now and then. And I regret to have to say that our fears have been justified all too quickly. When speaking on the Italian question a while ago, I said it was an international question, having a close bearing upon the German question. The Executive has framed a resolution and taken disciplinary measures against leading German comrades, with our venerable Comrade Zetkin at their head. We have done this with no light heart. We have deliberated twenty times, debating as to the wisdom of this step. We were well aware that such resolutions should be resorted to only in exceptional cases; I have described to you the Italian question, where on this very ground the conflict had arisen.
How did the question stand? Levi was in Livorno with a mandate from his party. He had conspired in Italy, together with Serati, against the Communist International. Everything that occurred in Livorno served to prove this.
After that five or six members withdrew from the Central Committee because they did not agree with the Executive Committee on the Italian question, and declared: "You have made a mistake, you are creating artificial splits, sects, etc." Serati travelled to Berlin, and finds his way also to Stuttgart. He wrote in the "Avanti'—having the item printed in large type—that the German Party was on his side. The young Italian brother Party thus received a blow from behind from the German comrades.
I told the German comrades: "Just imagine that after the split in Halle some of the Russian comrades,
