In 1923 there was an unsuccessful attempt by the Communists to bring the country to revolution. When this uprising was quelled, the Communists turned to terrorism in order to gain their goals, and in 1925 a plot to assassinate King Boris was formulated. Once again the Communists met with failure, as the king not only lived but grew more powerful. In the last half of the 1920s the party faded from the scene, but by the early 1930s it was again revived and grew in popularity. During the late 1930s the party went underground as the king increased his power. In 1939 the Communists reappeared and merged with the left-wing Workers Party; in the 1939 elections the party doubled its representation and took on an air of greater respectability. In 1941, while the war was under way, the Communists realized that Bulgaria was falling into the German camp. Although they were powerless to stop this alliance, their activity in evoking pro-Soviet sentiment was successful to the extent that--coupled with the basically favorable sentiments of the Bulgarian people toward the Russians--it prevented the monarchy from declaring war against the Soviet Union. Once the Germans began to invade the Soviet Union itself, the Bulgarian Communists committed themselves to a policy of armed resistance, known as the partisan movement. Historians dispute the extent of partisan activity; some state that it did not become active until the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in 1943, and others claim that the movement was active from the onset of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1942, on the initiative of Dimitrov, the Fatherland Front was established. The organization was essentially a coalition, composed of members of the Workers Party, the Bulgarian Agrarian Union, the Social Democratic Party and the BKP. Its purpose was to overthrow Boris and rid the country of the Germans, simultaneously forming a new government that could more adequately meet the needs of the workers and the peasants. In 1943 the National Committee of the Fatherland Front was formed, and this committee became the vehicle for the communist takeover in 1944. In the same year the so-called National Liberation Army, composed of partisans and certain units of the Bulgarian army who had joined forces with them, was established. In the fall of 1944 there were approximately 18,000 people in the National Liberation Army, augmented by some 200,000 people who sheltered and assisted them.