Bolshevik Central Committee Elections

[Binh]

How did the Bolsheviks elect their Central Committee in the pre-revolutionary period? Secret ballot? As a slate or unified list of candidates or as individuals with the highest number of votes determining who got on the CC (if that's the case, how did they determine how many seats on the CC there were to fill)?

Please post sources for any/all information on this question in this thread as well.

[Q]

Regarding the slate system, this article (http://www.karlmarx.net/topics/democratic-centralism-1/theoriginofthe%E2%80%98slatesystem%E2%80%99) makes the point that the Bolsheviks did not introduce it until after the revolution. A short quote:


“In 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, the first signs appeared of a basic change in the actual manner of selecting Central Committee members. This was the practice of making up a semiofficial slate of aspirants, to be voted on de facto as a group by the Congress delegates. The occasion happened to be the most acute crisis ever experienced by the Soviet leadership, when it came under attack both externally from peasant rebels and the naval mutineers at Kronstadt, and internally from the left and ultraleft factions represented by Trotsky and the Workers' Opposition. Having decisively defeated his critics within the Communist Party in the pre-Congress delegate se*lection, Lenin evidently decided to use his influence not only to oust several key oppositionists from the Central Committee but to expand the body from nineteen to twenty-five, thereby creating in all nearly a dozen openings for new people.

The fact that a slate of recommended official candidates was pre*pared for the Congress delegates to vote on is made clear by the totals of individual votes announced after the ballot. Lenin was everyone's choice, with 479 votes. But nearly unanimous votes were received by numerous other people, tapering down to 351 for the twenty-fourth member, the newcomer I. Ia. Tuntul, ... far ahead of the next contender, the deposed Trotskyist party secretary Krestinsky with 161.”

[Ismail]

It doesn't directly answer your question, but from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia:

Commenting on the Mensheviks’ refusal to submit to the authority of the central organs elected at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903, Lenin declared that “refusal to accept the direction of the central bodies is tantamount to refusing to remain in the Party, it is tantamount to disrupting the Party” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 8, p. 351). “The Congress elects the Central Committee, thereby expressing its supreme confidence and vesting leadership in those whom it elects” (ibid., vol. 43, p. 108)....

The Russian Bureau of the CC of the RSDLP and the Central Committee Bureau Abroad of the RSDLP functioned, with interruptions, until 1917—that is, during the party’s underground period. It was practically impossible and extremely dangerous for all the members of the CC to meet regularly; thus, on Feb. 9 (22), 1905, nine CC members were arrested during a meeting, and only two members, who were absent, were spared. As a rule, questions were discussed without the full membership being present; the opinion of the other members was subsequently ascertained by correspondence, and CC resolutions were adopted in the same manner. Because of the strict secrecy imposed by circumstances, only partial documentation remains with respect to the CC’s activities before 1917. The materials that have been preserved show that the first CC meeting to be referred to as a plenum of the CC was the one held in Geneva in August 1908. Discussions at this meeting included the question of the structure of the CC and the functions and rights of its subdivisions...

Before the Revolution of 1917, the party Rules gave the CC the right of co-optation, or self-replacement; in view of the party’s illegal status, this provision made it possible—in spite of savage police persecution—to maintain the viability of the party’s governing body, even though the turnover in CC membership was considerable.