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Bolsheviks

The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Bolshevik party, formally established in 1912, seized power in Russia in the October Revolution of 1917 and was later renamed the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party, and ultimately the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Its ideology, based on Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist principles, became known as Bolshevism.

AI overview

The Bolsheviks were a radical communist faction led by Vladimir Lenin that broke away from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 and seized power during the October Revolution of 1917, establishing the Soviet Union. Their ideology and approach to revolution, known as Bolshevism, became the foundation for communist parties and communist movements worldwide throughout the twentieth century.

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Key facts

Political party.name: Bolsheviks
Political party.country: Soviet Union
Political party.founder: Vladimir Lenin
Political party.position: Far-left
Political party.national: Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
Political party.native_name: Большевики
Political party.logo: Presidium of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).jpg
Political party.logo_size: 260px
Political party.caption: Bolshevik Party meeting, 1920: sitting (from left to right) are Yenukidze, Kalinin, Bukharin, Tomsky, Lashevich, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov, Lenin, and Rykov in front.
Political party.successor: Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Political party.newspaper: Pravda

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Wikidata facts

Image: Kustodiev The Bolshevik.jpg

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Commons category: Bolsheviks
inception: 1903-00-00

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~22 min read

Article

17 sections

Contents

History of the split
Vladimir Lenin's ideology in ''What Is to Be Done?''
Second Party Congress
Etymology of ''Bolshevik'' and ''Menshevik''
Demographics of the two factions
Beginning of the 1905 Revolution (1903–05)
Mensheviks (1906–07)
Split between Lenin and Bogdanov (1908–10)
Final attempt at party unity (1910)
Forming a separate party (1912)
Non-Russian / Soviet political groups having used the name "Bolshevik"
Derogatory usage of "Bolshevik"
See also
Notes
References
Sources
External links

The origin of the RSDLP split was Lenin's support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries, as opposed to the Menshevik desire for a broad party membership. The influence of the factions fluctuated in the years up to 1912, when the RSDLP formally split in two. The political philosophy of the Bolsheviks was based on the Leninist principles of vanguardism and democratic centralism. Lenin was also more willing to use illegal means such as robbery to fund the party's activities. By 1917, influenced by the experiences of World War I, he reached the conclusion that the chain of world capitalism could "break at its weakest link" in Russia before it assumed the level of the advanced countries, opposing theorists such as Georgi Plekhanov. Lenin had also come to view poorer peasants as potential allies of the relatively small Russian proletariat.