revolutionaries and the volunteer militias (Freikorps) of former soldiers who resisted them saw the Russian Revolution as a possible template for a post-imperial Germany. The Communist Party of Germany had been established in Berlin at a three-day congress held between 30 December 1918 and 1 January 1919. The USPD itself broke apart at a party convention held at Halle on 12 October 1920. The left-wing majority among those present - which included Lieberasch - voted to join the Moscow sponsored Communist International ("Comintern"), and a few weeks later, on 4 December 1920, the left-wing USPD members formally switched their memberships to the Communist Party, which is frequently identified in sources from the early 1920s as the United Communist Party ("Vereinigte Kommunistische Partei Deutschland" / VKPD). Like many in his position, he now undertook a succession of official functions within the party. It was also as a communist that in 1921 Arthur Lieberasch was elected to membership of the Leipzig city council ("Stadtrat"), becoming the leader of the communist group on the council in 1927. Regional parliamentarian Regional elections were held in November 1922. Arthur Lieberasch was elected to the Parliament of Saxony ("Sächsischer Landtag") as a Communist Party member. The Communists polled well enough to deny the SPD an overall majority and the regional government that emerged initially in Saxony was a minority SPD one. The Communist group became the second largest in the Landtag in 1926. Party comrades submitted Lieberasch as their candidate to be First Deputy President of the Chamber, but the centrist and right-wing "bourgeois" parties joined together to block his election. The 1920s were a period of political instability in Saxon regional politics. Lieberasch was re-elected to it in 1926. Party officer As a member of the regional party leadership team ("KPD-Bezirksleitung") for western Saxony, Arthur Lieberasch was Secretary for Trades Union questions. In 1923, at the eighth party conference, he had been elected to the party's "Trades Union Commission" ("Gewerkschaftskommission"). By this time he was seen as part of the right win within the Communist Party which, during the 1920s, was falling increasingly into the hands of a younger generation of left-wingers. Party split The Communist Party finally split early in 1929. Within the Saxony party leadership his traditional trades union principals were not naturally compatible with the thesis of "social fascism" propounded by the hard-line doctrinaire Stalinists such as Rudolf Renner and Walter Ulbricht