masses who nominate and choose provincial conferences and party congresses, which in turn nominate and choose provincial committees and the Central Committee of the RCP. On the contrary, it is the secretarial hierarchy, the party hierarchy which to an ever greater degree chooses the delegates to the conferences and congresses, which to an ever greater degree are becoming the executive conferences of this hierarchy. The regime which has been established within the party is absolutely intolerable; it is killing the independence of the party, replacing the party with a selected bureaucratic apparatus which functions smoothly during normal times, but which inevitably misfires during moments of crisis, and which threatens to become absolutely helpless when confronted with the serious events which lie ahead. The situation which has developed is explained by the fact that the regime of fractional dictatorship within the party which unfolded after the Xth Congress has outlived itself. Many of us consciously chose not to resist such a regime. The about-face of 1921, followed by Lenin's illness, demanded, as far as some of us were concerned, a dictatorship within the party as a temporary measure. Other comrades from the very beginning reacted to it skeptically or opposed it. In any case, by the XIIth Party Congress this regime had become obsolete. It began to show the other side of the coin. The inner-party bonds began to weaken. The party began to wither. Extreme oppositional, even openly unhealthy, tendencies within the party began to take on an anti-party character, for there was no inner-party, comradely discussion of the most acute questions. And such a discussion could have revealed, without any difficulty, the unhealthy character of these tendencies, both to the party masses, and to the majority of their participants. As a result, we have seen the formation of illegal groupings, which draw party members away from the party, and we have witnessed the party losing contact with the working masses. If the situation which has developed is not radically changed in the very near future, the economic crisis in Soviet Russia and the crisis of the fractional dictatorship within the party will strike heavy blows to the workers' dictatorship in Russia and to the Russian Communist Party. With such a burden on its shoulders, the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and its leader, the RCP, cannot enter the field of the impending new international shocks in any other