Bolsheviks
Bolshevik is a redirect to this article. For other meanings, see Bolshevik (disambiguation).
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The Bolsheviks (Russian: Большевики, coll. transliteration Bol'ševiki, IPA: [bəlʲʂɨvʲɪˈki]; also Bolsheviks; literally "majorityists") were a radical faction led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (SDAPR). They sought not only social reform but also the overthrow of the tsar and socialism and communism through a "democratic dictatorship of the workers and peasants" and, from August 1917, a dictatorship of the proletariat based on workers' councils, also called soviets in Russia. Lenin's April Theses played a decisive role in the conversion of their policy. In contrast to the moderate Menshevik faction, they organized themselves as a tight cadre party (party of a new type), a squad of professional revolutionaries.
The Bolshevik , oil painting by Boris Kustodiev, 1920
Party Congress of the Bolsheviks, with Lenin on the right. The remaining participants (from left): Yenukidze, Kalinin, Bukharin, Tomsky, Lashevich, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov and Rykov in front.
Origin of the term
The term Bolshevik (from Russian bolshinstvo/большинство for "majority") does not reflect the general balance of votes within the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAPR). Only at the 2nd Party Congress in Brussels and London in 1903, where Lenin called for the overthrow of tsarist rule in Russia and for this purpose proposed the transformation of the SDAPR into a revolutionary cadre party, did his faction manage to win a narrow majority, partly because delegates from the General Jewish Workers' League had previously left the meeting over disputes about the status of the organization. The term Bolshevik (Russian for "majority leader") thus became the proper name of the radical wing of the party around Lenin, but the actual majority was held by the moderate Mensheviks, led by Julius Martov in 1903, until the final de facto breakup of the party as a result of the 6th Party Conference in Prague in 1912.
World War I and October Revolution
At the outbreak of World War I, the Bolsheviks condemned Russia's participation as imperialist aggression. As the tsarist army suffered more and more setbacks during the war, the party gained strong support. When, after the end of tsarist rule as a result of the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government led by the social revolutionary Alexander Kerensky also failed to end participation in the war, the Bolsheviks also gained more and more influence in the Petrograd Soviet and, from the summer of the same year, finally provided the strongest faction there and, after some time, the chairman (Leon Trotsky). They also gained a majority in the Revolutionary Military Committee, which later organized the October Revolution. With the dissolution of the Provisional Government by Red Guards on 25 October-Jul. / 7 November 1917greg. and the crushing of the Constituent Assembly soon after, the Bolsheviks became the de facto sole ruling power in all of Russia.
