Democratic Centralists (Decists, DC) - opposition group in the Soviet Communist Party. They emerged in 1920 from ultra-left opposition groups (against the peace of Brest-Litvosk, against one-person management in factories, the military opposition against the use of former tsarist officers as specialists in the Red Army). They accused the Bolshevik leadership of replacing the Democratic with bureaucratic centralism and claimed to defend authentic Democratic centralism, hence the name. Leading members were Osinsky, Bubnov, Kosior, Drobnis, Sapronov and V. M. Smirnov. They disbanded with the ban of factions in 1921. 23 members who continued the group's activities were expelled. In 1923, many of the remaining Decists were involved in the formation of the Left Opposition around Trotsky. In the following years individuals such as Bubnow and Ossinski capitulated. Others separated from the Left or United Opposition because they considered the struggle to reform the Bolshevik Party hopeless ("Declaration of the 15", 1926). This "Group of 15" around Sapronov and V. M. Smirnov is also often referred to as Decists. Others such as Drobnis and Kosior remained in the Left Opposition. In 1927, both the members of the Group of 15 and the former Decists in the Left Opposition were expelled from the party.

[from Lenin, Selected Works, Volume 9 [German version], Note 20:] The group "Democratic Centralism" ("Decists") came into being at the time of the IXth Party Congress, in early 1920. Its name derives from its platform, in which the question of centralism and democracy inside the party and Soviet apparatus was at the forefront. However, the way in which this group raised the question of democratic centralism had nothing whatsoever in common with the position of this question in the Bolshevik Party.

The party statute says, "The guiding principle of the organizational structure of the party is democratic centralism."

The party organs are elected from bottom to top and are accountable to the party organization. All party organizations are autonomous in deciding local issues. The subordinate party organs are unconditionally subordinate to the superior ones; the overall party is led by the CC, which is elected at the party congress. According to the Party Statute, the principle of democratic centralism combines the self-activity, initiative of every Party member and every Party organization with the iron Bolshevik discipline.

At the same time, the possibilities for the development of intra-party workers' democracy and workers' democracy in the trade unions and in the soviets are not always the same. "The form of organization and methods of work" - says the X. Party Congress - "is entirely determined by the respective concrete historical situation." For example, during the civil war a more or less developed workers' democracy would undoubtedly have been harmful and would not have promoted the organization of victory. Under these conditions, the methods of workers' democracy were severely restricted both in the party and in the trade unions and the soviets. The state of war made it necessary to partially replace eligibility for election with appointments, etc. The Party thus subordinated the question of centralism and democracy to the tasks of revolution, the tasks of the struggle of the working class at the given concrete stage; the question of organization is inseparably connected with the political tasks of the Party.

The "Democratic Centralism" group, on the other hand, separated the question of organization from the political tasks, turned workers' democracy into an end in itself, and distorted the Bolshevik conception of democratic centralism in an inadmissible way. Thus, comrade Ossinski, one of the leaders of this group at the time, wrote in "Pravda": "Democratic centralism, that is the principle, the guiding rule, which is unconditionally valid for even a moderately developed legal proletarian organization, a rule for which no restrictions are permissible.”

The "Democratic Centralism" group gave the impression to be fighting bureaucratism in the Party and the Soviet apparatus, but in reality it was blatantly attacking the foundations of the organization of the Party and the Soviet state itself. It fought to loosen the Party's leadership of the state apparatus and the trade unions, and in fact sank down to the slogans of bourgeois democracy in a Soviet shell. In the group's theses on the construction of the party, this tendency is expressed in the following proposal: "For the purpose of directing the activities of the supreme Soviet and trade union centres, the CC issues directives to their factions on the most important issues. The Central Committee does not deal with the preliminary consultation of projects in their details and does not deal with the current affairs." The sense of this proposal was very well understood by the class enemy. Thus, the Menshevik "Sotsialistitcheskiy Vyestnik" ("Socialist Messenger") wrote in February 1921 "All in all, all they are asking is that the Central Committee of the CPR or its 'Politburo' at least should not interfere in the 'details' of the activities of the Council of People's Commissars or the All-Russian Central Executive Committee - but in doing so they have already made an attack on the purity of the 'dictatorship', and the logic of struggle and life will in time convince them too that without freedom itself (!) for the 'Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries' there can be no freedom for the masses of communists, that the 'constitution' must be respected not only within the Communist Party but also for the whole democracy of the country.”

In the field of party building, the "Democratic Centralism" group called for [...] full freedom for the factions and movements in the party.

On the trade union question, the group had in fact no position of its own. It did not see the crisis in the interrelation between the classes, it did not notice the difficulties that arose from the economic disruption. It attributed everything to the bureaucracy of the Soviet apparatus, of which it spoke in a Menshevik manner.

In the course of the discussion, the representatives of the group spoke almost exclusively on the issues of party building, detaching the question of organization from politics, turning democracy into an end in itself, seeking to loosen the party's leadership of the state apparatus and revising the Leninist foundations of the construction of the Bolshevik Party in a Menshevik manner.

The petty bourgeoisie felt "strained" within the framework of the iron proletarian dictatorship, and the "Democratic Centralism" group, which reflected the pressures of the petty bourgeoisie, sought to achieve a "softening of the regime". The group's struggle against the military methods of work used by the party during the period of the civil war was directly described by Lenin as "the worst Menshevism and social revolutionary methods. [...]