The Bolshevik Centre was a select group of Bolsheviks that led the organization in secret. The Centre conducted its activities in secret in part so as to avoid the prohibition by the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ("RSDLP") on separate committees outside of the RSDLP. The Bolshevik Centre emerged from the group that ran the newspaper Proletarian. It was initially charged with the collection and disbursement of the funds for revolutionary propaganda. It operated illegally after the RSDLP dissolved it through a Central Committee joint plenum decision made in February 1910.