tell me which one

also, can anyone tell me what the english for "Baumwollentkernungsanlage" might be.
i made it out to be "cotton egrenation unit" but that gets only one google hit.

and, is the following sentence correct?

"Bakdash's Communist Party established itself as a block party in line with the regime that drew its entire power from the graces of the incumbent Ba'ath party."

i am wondering about the use of "block party" in english, and about "graces"

Baumwollentkernungsanlage = cotton gin

Re "potentates", maybe "sheiks" would be better understood, if not strictly correct. and I would change 'possibility' to 'opportunity'.

Don't understand what is meant by a block party.

i don't think the sheikhs were meant.

a block party during the cold war was supposed to be a party aligned with either the east or west block. i have seen it in that sense on google altho rarely.
i did not recognise it in my mother tongue neither.

In this context, potentates suggests sheikhs (as you said, it has a certain tribal or village flavor) so I wouldn't use it here. I don't like power holders either.

Bloc in the sense you mean is so spelled, but "bloc party" wouldn't mean anything to me. A "block party" in the US is a party (in the soirée sense) held by neighbors on one city block, the stretch of one street between two intersections. So I wouldn't use "bloc party".

Now that I've had another look at the sentence, I would say something like "Aflaq went into exile in Baghdad, allowing the party leaders there to represent themselves as the true Baathists".

And I would simplify the second one a lot. Just say that the communists followed the Baath party line. I can't rewrite it without seeing it and I don't think I'll go back and forth again.

OK, it was the eastern or western bloc, without the k. But the sentence still doesn't work very well, and I can't find a way to change it easily.

Something like 'the .. communist Party aligned itself in a bloc with the regime that drew its power from the patronage of the Ba'ath party".

"Local party leaders" seems about right, or local bosses, local chiefs. "Potentate" suggests a single holder of absolute state power to me.

I would say something like "Bekdash's party joined the Baathist regime's bloc of loyal parties" or "Bekdash's party joined the bloc of client parties supporting the Baathist regime".

Apparently when the SCP politburo decided to throw its lot in with the regime and join the National Progressive Front, one Arabic newspaper published a cartoon showing a shopfront with the sign:

SYRIAN COMMUNIST PARTY
Prop. the Baath Party