I found the following passage in the Wikipedia web page on "Democratic Centralism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism ):
After the successful consolidation of power by the Communist Party following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin, instituted an temporary ban on factions within the party in 1921 - a ban that was later made permanent by Stalin. According to critics, this made the democratic procedures an empty formality and in reality, superiors prohibited criticisms and appointed those who nominally elected them to their positions and told them what decisions to make (see Nomenklatura).[3]
I was suspicious! After all, it sounds exactly like the Trotskyist position.
But the real question is: Is it true? Did "the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin", intended the "ban on factions within the party" to be "temporary"?
Fortunately the transcript of the 10th Party Congress of 1921 is available online in Russian, at http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/K/KPSS/_KPSS.html#010 (DejaVu format). So I downloaded it and read the relevant passages.
There is NO suggestion at all, either from Lenin or from anyone, that the ban on factions -- Resolution No. 12, "On Party Unity" -- was intended to be "temporary", or anything other than permanent.
So I rewrote this section of the Wikipedia article as follows:
After the successful consolidation of power by the Communist Party following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin, instituted a ban on factions within the party as Resolution No. 12 of the 10th Party Congress in 1921. It was passed in the morning session on March 16, 1921 (Protokoly 585-7). Supporters of Trotsky sometimes claim that this ban was intended to be temporary. But there is no language in the discussion at the 10th Party Congress suggesting that it was intended to be temporary (Protokoly 523-548).
My guess is that many -- maybe all -- Wikipedia articles concerning the USSR, Russian Revolution, etc., have been composed in a similar, i.e. dishonest, lying manner.
At any rate, beware!
There is an awful lot of falsehood about Soviet history being passed off as the truth.
For the past decade or so I've been doing research on documents from the former Soviet archives. As a result, I have been able to recognize a lot of utter falsehoods (a polite word for "lies") about Soviet history that are passed off as truths. Not only by the media, either, but by people who should know better.
Today's New York Times obituary of famous Soviet physicist Vitalii Ginzburg repeats some false statements by Ginzburg. It says:
"Then an especially terrible time came: Stalin went totally insane," he wrote in his autobiography for the Nobel committee. Stalin initiated a wave of anti-Semitism and hostility toward intellectuals in the early 1950s that nearly derailed Mr. Ginzburg’s career. He was removed from the hydrogen bomb project, accused of anti-Communist leanings and denied promotions, he wrote. He also suffered for his marriage to a woman who had once been arrested on charges of plotting to assassinate Stalin. "It was a tremendous luck that the great leader did not have enough time to carry out what he had planned to do and died, or was killed, on 5th March, 1953," Mr. Ginzburg wrote.
In his Nobel autobiography Ginzburg does indeed say things like this:
Then especially terrible time came. Stalin went totally insane, repressions were going on, culminating in "the case of doctors" and a bestial anti-Semitism related to it. It seems that the corresponding documents have not been found yet. They may not have existed, as it was clear even to bandits that it was better not to leave trace. According to the rumors, "the doctor killers" were whether to be hanged on the Red Square or exterminated in some other way, and all Jews were to be exiled into some camps already built. ... It was a tremendous luck that the Great Leader did not have enough time to carry out what he had planned to do and died, or was killed, on 5th March, 1953.
This is all false. Briefly:
Everything in the country started to change very quickly, suffice to mention the rehabilitation of "the doctor killers" and the shooting up of Beriya, who was the head of the Soviet "atomic project" (by the way, he was a good organizer and probably not more of a bandit than all the rest).
In 1999 an official volume of documents on Beria was published (Lavrentii Beriia. 1953. Moscow, 1999, pp. 21-23), in which it was revealed that: it was Beria who
(These documents are now online in Russian at http://labazov.livejournal.com/655083.html#cutid2 GF 11.15.09)
After Beria had been arrested (or killed -- we can't be sure which) Khrushchev had Ignat'ev restored to a leading post, and even named him as a "victim" in his infamous "Secret Speech" at the 20th Party Congress (click on the link and search for "Ignatiev" to find this passage - GF)
At least Ginzburg agrees with many of the more objective researchers today that Beria was a fine manager!