LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
possible and hardly desirable, in view of our poverty 
of propagandists. Propaganda should be carried 
on by the Committee as a whole and must be 
strictly centralized, and my idea of the matter is 
therefore as follows: the Committee charges certain 
of its members to organize a propagandist group 
(which will act as a branch department of the Com- 
mittee or be one of the Committee institutions). 
This group, making conspiratorial use of the serv- 
ices of the district groups, will conduct propaganda 
throughout the whole town, and in every locality 
«within the competence” of the Committee. 1f 
necessary, this group may set up a sub-group, and, 
so to speak, transfer certain of its functions, but 
only with the sanction of the Committee, and the 
Committee shall always and unconditionaly possess 
the right of detailing its delegate to each group, 
sub-group, or circle which has any contact at all 
with the movement. . . 
By the way, while on the subject of propagandists, 
I should like to say a few words in criticism of the 
usual practice of overloading this profession with 
people of little capacity for it and thus lowering 
the level of propaganda. Almost every student 
without any selection is regarded as a propagandist, 
and the whole of our youth demand that they 
should “be given circles.” This tendency must be 
fought, because it is doing a lot of harm. As a 
matter of fact, capable propagandists well-grounded 
and trained in theory are very rare (to become such 
a propagandist requires a fair amount of training 
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