Condition of the Bolshevik Party
Iakov Sverdlov, Condition of the Bolshevik Party: Report to the Seventh Party Congress. March 6, 1918
Original Source: Protokoly s"ezdov i konferentsii vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi Partii (b). Sed'moi s"ezd (Moscow: Gozizdat, 1927), pp. 4-7.
... At the Sixth Party Congress' about 180,000 members were represented During the last seven or eight months the party has grown enormously. Many organizations have increased their membership two or three times ... In Petrograd there are 36,000 members ... In Moscow membership increased from 14,000 to 20,000 . in the Urals from 18,000 to 40,000 ...
Altogether there are at least 300,000 members.
There were times, particularly in July and August, when the Central Committee ... suffered many hardships. Then we had only one paper [Pravda] in Petrograd, and that did not appear regularly. It was very difficult to send it by mail. At times we had to conceal it in bourgeois papers. The circulation of the Pravda during October rose to 220,000 Lately it has fallen to 85,000 ... owing to the disorganization of transport ... The treasury of the Central Committee contained about 650,000 rubles made up exclusively of receipts from the undertakings [newspapers] and membership dues ... As yet the Soviet Government has given nothing to the party. It is true that the Soviet of People's Commissars had approved the appropriation of 250,000 rubles, but there was no money in the [state] treasury and the appropriation could not be realized ...
Source: James Bunyan and H.H. Fisher, ed., Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918; Documents and Materials (Stanford: Stanford University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 543-544.