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ences had sometimes to take the place of congresses. Such was the case for example with the Bolshevik Conference, held in January 1912. It was not always possible to elect the local committees. The principle of cooption of committeemen had to be applied again.

This illustrates the flexibility of the Bolshevik Party. Democracy for it did not present a principle applicable to all times and all conditions. The guiding factor in this was revolutionary expediency. The Bolshevik Party at one moment extends democracy in its ranks and at another it diminishes it (in periods of reaction). In the period of the civil war, and of war communism, the whole of the Bolshevik Party was converted into a military camp, and frequently, the decisions of the Central Committee were carried out as military orders. But, when the Civil War ended and the immediate danger of military intervention passed away, the Bolshevik Party again adopted the principle of democratic centralism.

With the inception of the reaction after the revolution of 1905–06, the intellectuals left the Party. The Menshevik hangers-on of the Party revealed their true petty-bourgeois physiognomy and commenced to liquidate the revolutionary slogans and the revolutionary proletarian Party. For the latter, they proposed to "substitute an amorphous body within the limits of legality even at the price of abandoning the program, the tactics and tradi-