The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists ((singular) , derived from bolshe, "more") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903 and ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and founded the Soviet Union.
Bolsheviks (or "the Majority") were an organization of professional revolutionaries under a strict internal hierarchy governed by the principle of democratic centralism and quasi-military discipline, who considered themselves as a vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism. The party was founded by Vladimir Lenin, who also led it in the October Revolution.
History of the split
Bolshevism - Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system
In the Second Congress of the RSDLP
, held in Brussels
during August 1903, Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a small core of professional revolutionaries, leaving sympathizers outside the party, and instituting a system of centralized control known as the democratic centralist
model. Julius Martov
, until then a close friend and colleague of Lenin, agreed with him that the core of the party should consist of professional revolutionaries, but argued that party membership should be open to sympathizers, revolutionary workers and other fellow travellers
. The two had disagreed on the issue as early as March-May 1903, but it wasn't until the Congress that their differences became irreconcilable and split the party. Although at first the disagreement appeared to be minor and inspired by personal conflicts, e.g. Lenin's insistence on dropping less active editorial board members from Iskra
or Martov's support for the Organizing Committee of the Congress which Lenin opposed, the differences quickly grew and the split became irreparable.
Origins of the name
The two factions were originally known as "hard" (Lenin's supporters) and "soft" (Martov's supporters). Soon, however, the terminology changed to "Bolsheviks" and "Mensheviks", from the Russian "bolshinstvo" (majority) and "menshinstvo" (minority), based on the fact that Lenin's supporters narrowly defeated Martov's supporters on the question of party membership. Neither Lenin nor Martov had a firm majority throughout the Congress as delegates left or switched sides. At the end, the Congress was evenly split between the two factions.
From 1907 on, English language articles sometimes used the term "Maximalist" for "Bolshevik" and "Minimalist" for "Menshevik", which proved confusing since there was also a "Maximalist" faction within the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party in 1904–1906 (which after 1906 formed a separate Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists) and then again after 1917.
Beginning of the 1905 Revolution (1903–1905)
The two factions were in a state of flux in 1903–1904 with many members changing sides. The founder of Russian Marxism, Georgy Plekhanov
, who was at first allied with Lenin
and the Bolsheviks, parted ways with them by 1904. Leon Trotsky
at first supported the Mensheviks, but left them in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He remained a self-described "non-factional social democrat" to until August 1917 when he joined Lenin and the Bolsheviks as their positions converged and he came to believe that Lenin was right on the issue of the party.
The lines between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks hardened in April 1905 when the Bolsheviks held a Bolsheviks-only meeting in London, which they call the Third Party Congress. The Mensheviks organized a rival conference and the split was thus formalized.
The Bolsheviks played a relatively minor role in the 1905 revolution, and were a minority in the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies led by Trotsky. The less significant Moscow Soviet, however, was dominated by the Bolsheviks. These soviets became the model for the Soviets that were formed in 1917.
("The minority") (1906–1907)
As the Russian Revolution of 1905
progressed, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and smaller non-Russian social democratic parties operating within the Russian Empire attempted to reunify at the Fourth (Unification) Congress of the RSDLP
held at Folkets hus
, Norra Bantorget
, April 1906. With the Mensheviks ("The minority") striking an alliance with the Jewish Bund
, the Bolsheviks found themselves in a minority. However, all factions retained their respective factional structure and the Bolsheviks formed the Bolshevik Center
, the de-facto governing body of the Bolshevik faction within the RSDLP. At the next, Fifth Congress held in London in May 1907, the Bolsheviks were in the majority, but the two factions continued functioning mostly independently of each other.
Split between Lenin and Bogdanov (1908–1909)
With the defeat of the revolution in mid-1907 and the adoption of a new, highly restrictive election law, the Bolsheviks began debating whether to boycott the new parliament known as the Third Duma
. Lenin and his supporters Grigory Zinoviev
and Lev Kamenev
argued for participating in the Duma while Lenin's deputy philosopher Alexander Bogdanov
, Anatoly Lunacharsky
, Mikhail Pokrovsky
and others argued that the social democratic faction in the Duma should be recalled. The latter became known as recallists
("otzovists" in Russian). A smaller group within the Bolshevik faction demanded that the RSDLP central committee should give its sometimes unruly Duma faction an ultimatum, demanding complete subordination to all party decisions. This group became known as "ultimatists
" and was generally allied with the recallists.
With a majority of Bolshevik leaders either supporting Bogdanov or undecided by mid-1908 when the differences became irreconcilable, Lenin concentrated on undermining Bogdanov's reputation as a philosopher. In 1909 he published a scathing book of criticism entitled Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909), assaulting Bogdanov's position and accusing him of philosophical idealism. In June 1909, Bogdanov was defeated at a Bolshevik mini-conference in Paris organized by the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine Proletary and expelled from the Bolshevik faction.
Final attempt at party unity (1910)
With both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks weakened by splits within their ranks and by Tsarist
repression, they were tempted to try to re-unite the party. In January 1910, Leninists, recallists and various Menshevik factions held a meeting of the party's Central Committee in Paris. Kamenev and Zinoviev were dubious about the idea, but were willing to give it a try under pressure from "conciliator" Bolsheviks like Victor Nogin
. Lenin was adamantly opposed to any re-unification, but was outvoted within the Bolshevik leadership. The meeting reached a tentative agreement and one of its provisions made Trotsky's Vienna
a party-financed 'central organ'. Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, was added to the editorial board from the Bolsheviks, but the unification attempts failed in August 1910 when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations.
Forming a separate party (1912)
The factions permanently broke off relations in January 1912 after the Bolsheviks organized a Bolsheviks-only Prague Party Conference
and formally expelled Mensheviks and recallists from the party. As a result, they ceased to be a faction in the RSDLP and instead declared themselves an independent party, which they called RSDLP (Bolshevik)
Although the Bolshevik leadership decided to form a separate party, convincing pro-Bolshevik workers within Russia to follow suit proved difficult. When the first meeting of the Fourth Duma was convened in late 1912, only one out of six Bolshevik deputies, Matvei Muranov, (another one, Roman Malinovsky, was later exposed as a secret police agent) voted to break away from the Menshevik faction within the Duma on 15 December 1912. The Bolshevik leadership eventually prevailed and the Bolsheviks formed their own Duma faction in September 1913.
The Bolsheviks believed in organizing the party in a strongly centralized hierarchy that sought to overthrow the Tsar
and achieve power. Although the Bolsheviks were not completely monolithic, they were characterized by a rigid adherence to the leadership of the central committee
, based on the notion of democratic centralism
. The Mensheviks favored open party membership and espoused cooperation with the other socialist and some non-socialist groups in Russia. Bolsheviks generally refused to co-operate with liberal
or radical parties (which they labeled "bourgeois
") or even eventually other socialist
organisations, although Lenin sometimes made tactical alliances.
From Bolshevism to Communism
In 1952 at XIX Party Congress Stalin declared: "There are no more Mensheviks. Why should we call ourselves Bolsheviks? We are not the majority, but the whole party." According to his suggestion, the Communist party was renamed as the Communist Party of Soviet Union. Since that time, the term Bolshevik has been regarded as obsolete, and relevant only to the pre-Revolutionary times and the Russian Civil War.
Derogatory usage of "Bolshevik"
During the days of the Cold War
in the United Kingdom
, labour union leaders and other leftists were sometimes derisively described as "Bolshie". The usage is roughly equivalent to the term "Commie
" or "pinko
" in the United States
during the same period. However these days it is often used to describe a difficult or rebellious person e.g.:"Timothy, don't be so bolshie!" An alternative spelling is "bolshy". (Collins Mini Dictionary
- See also Jewish Bolshevism
Non-Russian/Soviet groups having used the name "Bolshevik"