ABSTRACT
In his speech to the organizational section of the 8th Congress on 20 March 1919, V. V. Osinskii, representing the discontented delegates of the Moscow party organization, stated that local party organs never got to hear about the political line laid down by the CC. As a collective organ, Osinskii said, the Committee apparently had no real existence. Decisions were all too often made by a much smaller group of people, Lenin and Sverdlov, with perhaps another official present. Osinskii demanded a stronger CC with 21 members. 1 Grigorii Zinovev, representing the position of the leadership, thought the criticism exaggerated and considered a 21-member CC to be unnecessarily heavy. At the sixth session of the congress on 22 March he proposed: “Nineteen is the number that gives us the possibility to create a Political bureau with a fitting composition, and an Organizational bureau and a Secretariat, as well as a itinerant [raz” ezdnuiu] collegium.” 2
