In February 1944, Pablo, fully involved with the movement, was elected the General Secretary of the European Bureau of the
Fourth International (FI), which had re-established contact among the European Trotskyist parties. As leader of the European Bureau, Pablo also played a key role in re-unifying, re-centralising and re-orienting FI. In March 1944, he mediated the reunification of the French Trotskyist parties into
PCI. In July 1946, he visited Greece to help convene the Unification Congress of the Greek Trotskyist groups in
Penteli, which successfully reunified the two main Trotskyist parties,
EDKE (formerly EOKDE) and (
Agis Stinas')
DEKE, into
KDKE. Pablo and
Ernest Mandel were instrumental in winning the FI to a position that asserted that the
Eastern European states conquered by the
Soviet Armed Forces in 1944–45 had by 1948 become what they described as
deformed workers' states. Pablo participated in the Second World-Congress in April 1948 and served as General Secretary of the FI from 1948 to 1960.
Turn to the mass parties In the uncertain aftermath of
World War II, when the Trotskyists were numerically dwarfed by the mass
communist parties and their hopes for a revolutionary breakthrough were dashed, Pablo also advanced a new tactic for the FI from its Third World-Congress in 1951 onward. Splits of revolutionary dissenters were likely to develop in the traditional mass parties of the working class. To gain influence, win members, establish a Marxist wing and most importantly to avoid becoming isolated sectarian circles with no connection to the working class, the Trotskyists should—where possible—join, or in Trotskyist terminology enter, the mass
communist or social democratic (Labour) parties. This form of
entryism was intended to be a long-term tactic. It was understood by all that the FI would retain its political identity and its own press. Entry was seldom carried out without splits or even violent conflict within the local propaganda circles, but proved to greatly add to local groups' flexibility where it was put into practice. Independent work should continue in Latin America, Ceylon, the United States, India. The innovative part of Pablo's proposed "entryism sui generis", which was accepted by the Tenth Plenum of the Third World-Congress of the Fourth International, was in the approach to the Stalinist parties wherever they were a majority working-class party. Due to the extremely bureaucratic leadership of the Stalinist parties, Trotskyists would be prevented from proceeding in the same way as they would with reformist mass-parties, and had to maintain separate independent work, which "must be understood as having its chief aim to assist the work of entry". Inspired by the
Cuban Revolution as well as the
Tito–Stalin split demonstrating that the Stalinist Communist Parties may not unalterably subordinate to Stalin, Pablo also started to argue that even the Stalinist parties who were in power in various countries at the time could be pushed into taking leadership in revolutionary conflicts by the mass activity of the working class, which caused further controversy and division within the ranks of the FI. Pablo was speculating on a
split between the Stalinist regimes in China and the USSR as early as 1951. Pablo writes: "the rise of Communist Parties to power is not the consequence of a capacity of
Stalinism to struggle for the Revolution, does not alter the internationally counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, but it is the product of an exceptional combination of circumstances which has imposed the seizure of power either upon the Soviet bureaucracy (in the case of the
European buffer zone) or upon certain Communist Parties (
Yugoslavia,
China)". The central document emphasized the basic role of workers' democracy, not only as political factor, but also as indispensable for economic development. The second document was on "Colonial Revolution since the End of the Second World War", focusing on conflicts between
French imperialism and the Vietminh, the
Algerian War, and the
Suez crisis which led to the nationalisation of the
Suez Canal. The document argued that since the world revolution had first been successful in the East, instead of—as was expected by Marxist theoreticians—in the Western countries. Colonial revolution, which could only be victorious as
permanent revolution, thus was an integral part of the
world revolution, and constituted a link between
October and the triumph of the world revolution. The document contained a detailed study of the colonial movements, examined the respective roles of proletariat and peasantry in the colonial countries and emphasised the importance of
guerrilla warfare in colonial countries, not only as a military factor but as a factor in the organisation and political education of the masses. The congress insisted on the necessity for the Trotskyist movement, especially in the imperialist countries, to devote a large part of its activity to aiding colonial revolution.
Arrest in Amsterdam In 1960, it was decided to move the headquarters of the Fourth International from Paris to Amsterdam because of the return of
Charles de Gaulle to power, which made it less advisable to stay in Paris. In Amsterdam, it was thought, the Trotskyists would be freer to operate, and they would be closer to the European headquarters of the Algerian Revolution, which was in
Cologne. He took refuge in
Morocco. After the victory of the Algerian Revolution in 1962, he became an adviser in the economic reconstruction in the Government of
Ahmed Ben-Bella. Pablo was also part of a four-man committee tasked with drawing up a decree concerning property that had been seized by the Algerians after the French colonials had fled the country. Being busy with the situation in Algeria also made it difficult for him to defend himself against accusations leveraged against him by the FI's leadership. • Disagreement with the assessment of Maoism as evolving towards revolutionary Marxist positions, to which it was necessary to offer critical support. • Disagreement with the assessment of the Khrushchev tendency of the Soviet bureaucracy as a simple personal quarrel. Pablo had maintained that the Khrushchev tendency was more receptive to pressures of Soviet society than the Stalinist tendency that sought to overthrow it. • Disagreement with the support given by the executive committee of the United Secretariat to
Holden Roberto against the
People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in Angola. Pablo favored supporting the latter. Publicly defending those positions would lead to Pablo and his supporters being accused of having violated
democratic centralism, thus placing themselves outside the Fourth International. This was followed by the expulsion of Pablo's supporters from the United Secretariat. == Outside the Fourth International ==