favor (and financial support) of the Communist International (Comintern). Adding to the complexity of the situation, the Socialist Labor Party of America and the Socialist Party of America sought affiliation with the Comintern as well. The Comintern was adamant about its structure, however, and it sought one and only one centralized organization in each country. Merger between the CPA and CLP was demanded. The fulfillment of the Comintern's demand for unity proved to be no simple task, however, and the history of the next three years are a complex tale of splits, mergers, secret conventions, organized caucuses, and parallel organizations that lies outside of the scope of this presentation. In outline terms, a fight erupted among the leadership of the CPA in 1920 and Ruthenberg, together with a group of his English-speaking adherents such as Isaac Ferguson and Jay Lovestone as well as the Chicago-based section of the Russian federation, exited the organization (along with a major part of the group's funds) in April 1920 and joined with the Communist Labor Party to form the United Communist Party (UCP) in May. Wagenknecht headed this new joint organization with Ruthenberg placed in charge of the party press. This still left a divided Communist movement, however, with the major part of the old CPA, now headed by Charles Dirba still remaining in increasingly bitter opposition. It was not until the end of 1922 — after another merger, split, and merger — that this rift was finally resolved, with the establishment with a new unified Communist Party of America and its parallel "Legal Political Party," the Workers Party of America (WPA). During much of this complicated dance, Ruthenberg was in jail. In October 1920, Ruthenberg was tried together with his associate Isaac Ferguson in New York for alleged violation of the state's criminal anarchism law, said to have been breached by the Left Wing Section when it published Fraina's Left Wing Manifesto the previous year. The pair were tried and sentenced to five years' confinement in the State Penitentiary on October 29, 1920. The pair sat in Dannemora Prison until finally released on a $5,000 bond on April 24, 1922. Ruthenberg was immediately made Executive Secretary of the WPA upon his release on bail, with Abram Jakira in charge of daily operations of the parallel and underground CPA. The above-ground WPA headed by Ruthenberg grew rapidly, boosted by the addition of the massive