Bolsheviks

The revolutionary faction led by Lenin that seized power in Russia in October 1917 and became the Communist Party.

Overview

The Bolsheviks emerged from the 1903 split of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the hard line faction of Lenin against the Mensheviks of Martov over party membership rules. They fought the 1905 revolution, endured Tsarist repression, opposed the First World War, and after the February 1917 fall of the Tsar won the soviets with peace, land, and bread. The October Revolution dissolved the Constituent Assembly and founded Soviet power, the Cheka, and one party rule, winning civil war by 1921. The party renamed itself Communist in 1918. Its inner battles between Stalin and Trotsky over world revolution versus socialism in one country set the century course.