During the Civil War, the Spanish Communist Party gained considerable influence due to the Republican force's reliance on weapons, supplies and military advisers from the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the Communist party (now working as the dominant force within the PSUC) constantly proclaimed that it was promoting "bourgeois democracy" and was fighting in defense of the Republic, not for proletarian revolution. Opposition to collectivization and the camouflaging of the true nature of the Spanish revolution by the Communist party was mainly due to the fear that the establishment of a revolutionary socialist state would antagonize Western democracies. The PSUC had also become the major defender of the Catalan middle classes against collectivization, organizing 18,000 tradesmen and artisans into the Catalan Federation of Small Businessmen and Manufacturers (GEPCI).