Bolshevik

Bolsheviks (Russian: Большеви́к IPA [bəlʲʂɨˈvʲik], derived from bolshinstvo, "majority") were members of the Bolshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split apart from the Menshevik faction[1] at the Second Party Congress in 1903 and ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[2] The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the Soviet Union.

Bolsheviks had a radical perspective on socialism in economics and "proletarian internationalism" with regard to geopolitics and national identity, expressed through their organization of professional revolutionaries into a democratic centralist cadre under a strict internal hierarchy and quasi-military discipline, their vanguardist governing philosophy, and their maximalist goal of world revolution. Their mixture of beliefs and practices was often referred to as Bolshevism, and opposed Russian traditional statehood and the Russian Orthodox Church.[3] The party was founded by Vladimir Lenin, who also led it in the October Revolution.

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