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solved that the election of delegates to the conference shall take place after the members of the party have discussed the question as to whether an alliance should be concluded with the Cadets, after all the members of the party have voted on this question. Elections are a business in which the masses directly take part. Hence, every Party member must intelligently decide the question as to whether we should vote for Cadets at the elections, or not. And only after an open discussion of this question, after all the members of the Party will have got together, will it be possible for each one of us to take an intelligent and firm decision."

Here, as in many other places, Lenin particularly stresses the activity and participation of the whole of the membership in the decision of Party questions. It is they who at the conferences and congresses elect all the leading party bodies, which are responsible to their constituents. At the same time, the decisions of the higher party organs are obligatory for the subordinate Party organs. This is the application of the principle of democratic centralism, which, already at that time, was practised by Lenin, with some modifications made necessary by the factional struggle between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. We shall refer to this again.

In the severely illegal conditions in the period of the reaction and of the imperialist war, it was impossible normally to convene Party congresses and conferences. In the period between the Fifth Congress (1907) and the Sixth Congress (1917) confer-