TheGroup of Democratic Centralism (Russian:Группа демократического централизма,romanized: Gruppa demokraticheskogo tsentralizma), sometimes called theGroup of 15, theDecists, or theDecemists (децисты,detsisti), was a dissenting faction within theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union in the early 1920s.

The Group was formed in March 1919 at the8th Party Congress. It was composed mostly ofBolshevik intellectuals who criticised the leadership of the Communist Party for excessive centralisation of political power in the party, removal of local party initiative, and rigid control from above within the industry, Party and local administration. They believed that thedemocratic aspect ofdemocratic centralism had been degraded.^[1] Opposed to what they viewed as a dictatorship of the Party, the Group advocated a return todictatorship of the proletariat.

The group's original leaders wereOld BolsheviksValerian Obolensky-Ossinsky,Vladimir Smirnov,Timofei Sapronov,V. N. Maximovsky,M. S. Boguslavsky,A. Z. Kamensky,Isaak Dashkovsky andRaphail Farbman. Their influence within the Party, always limited, peaked at the9th Party Congress in March–April 1920 when they were given partial support on some issues by senior Communists likeMikhail Tomsky andKonstantin Yurenev. Nonetheless, their proposals were voted down. They were active during the intra-Party "trade union discussion" in late 1920-early 1921 when the Party split into numerous factions, but didn't gather much support and the faction became moribund after the10th Party Congress in March 1921.

The Group's leaders continued to protest what they saw as a gradual abolition of intra-Party democracy throughout the early 1920s and joinedLeon Trotsky'sLeft Opposition in 1923. In 1926 Sapronov and Smirnov formed the "Group of 15", which joined theUnited Opposition headed by Trotsky,Grigory Zinoviev andLev Kamenev. They were expelled from the Communist Party at the15th Party Congress in December 1927 along with the rest of the United Opposition.Although some of them repented and were re-admitted to the Party in the early 1930s, they were purged, charged and executed during theGreat Purge in the late 1930s.

• Obolensky-Ossinsky attended the World Social Economic Conference organised by theInternational Industrial Relations Institute held at theVereeniging Koloniaal Institute,Amsterdam. This was the first occasion thatSoviet officials had travelled to the West to discuss how theFive Year Plan worked.^[2] He was executed in 1938.

• V. I. Lenin. "Ninth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.)", inCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 439–490, also see the Notes sectionavailable online
• V. I. Lenin. "The Party Crisis", inCollected Works, 1st English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 32, pages 43–53, also see the Notes sectionavailable online

• Group of Democratic Centralism
• 1919 establishments in Russia
• 1921 disestablishments in Russia

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