Osinsky is the pseudonym of old Bolshevik Valerian Valerianovich
Obolensky. Born in 1887, Osinsky is an often forgotten but very
influential Bolshevik and theoretician. He started off on the left-wing
of the Bolsheviks, being active around the journal Kommunist. After the
revolution, he became chairperson of the Supreme Soviet of the National
Economy but lost that position due to his opposition to the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk. He was elected in 1919 as a delegate to the founding
congress of the Communist International, and in this same year became
part of the oppositional tendency, or unofficial faction of the
Democratic Centralists, alongside other figures such as Sapronov and
Smirnov.
The Democratic Centralists, or Deceists, were a tendency within the
Bolshevik party who came together on the basis of attempting to reform
the organizational structures of the nascent Soviet state. In
particular, they questioned the existing relationship between the party
and the state, which they saw as inefficient and undemocratic. They were
concerned with the proliferation of unresponsive bureaucracy due to
either excessive centralization, duplication, or triplication of roles
that were supposed to deal with the same competencies. They also heavily
opposed the encroaching militarism of the government which was caused by
the civil war. They realized that this was demobilizing the workers and
disenchanting them from the idea that the Soviet government was their
own. During the brief time during which they were active, they pushed
for more debate, and more collegiality at all levels, proposing new ways
of running the government. They became moribund after the 10th Communist
Party Congress, which alongside approving most of their demands, also
approved the temporal ban on factions.
https://cosmonaut.blog/2020/12/31/going-back-or-moving-forward-speech-to-the-8th-cpsub-congress-by-n-osinsky/
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