for the Republicans. However, the Communists refused to
swear the requisite oath, and in consequence were not permitted to take
office, the Radicals and Democrats forming a union to carry on. It was
agreed to have a new election and the other parties, being now awakened,
determined that the Communists should not again top the poll. But in the
provincial towns they have not by any means shown themselves a
disintegrating influence. At Ni[vs], for example, they conducted the
municipal affairs quite satisfactorily, while at [vC]uprija they
perceived that it would be impossible to put into effect their entire
programme, and so, after fourteen days, they resigned.

THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM IN YUGOSLAVIA

... As for the Communists in the Skup[vs]tina, it may be argued that
though this party of over fifty members has ceased to exist we should
have said not simply that they are innocuous but that they have been
rendered so. They were in principle against any State which violated
their somewhat hazy ideas on the subject of Capital: while professing to
aim at the holding of wealth in common they secured a great deal of
their success at the polls through the bait of more land for the
individual, which they dangled before the eyes of the most ignorant
classes. Some of the electors who supported them were prosperous farmers
unable to resist the idea of a still larger farm; but the majority of
their adherents were as ignorant as they were gullible. Yet one should
remember that for most of them this was practically their first
experience of an election: the constituencies which had formerly been in
Austria-Hungary had always seen the booths under the supervision of the
police, while the Macedonian voter (three Communists were returned for
Skoplje) had only known the institutions of the Turkish Empire. Being
told by the Communists that their box at the polling-station was really
the box for the poor, the Fukara, all the gypsies and so forth of
Skoplje, who had never voted in their lives, hastened to claim the
privilege, under the impression that a Communist Government would
liberate them from taxes and military service. Other reasons for the
success of the Communists in Yugoslavia, an essentially non-industrial
State, were the general discontent with post-war conditions, and the
virus which so many of the voters had acquired in Russia or on the
Dobrudja front during the War. The activity in the Skup[vs]tina of this
very indige