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“Bolshevik” means “majority” and were a faction of The Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which was formed after the Second Congress in 1903 when it split from the Mensheviks. The Congress agreed that Russia needed a revolution in order to establish Socialism. The Bolsheviks became the leading party during the Russian Revolution’s October Revolution phase in 1917. They founded the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which later became the Soviet Union.

Bolsheviks

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Bolsheviks: Its Founders

Alexander Bogdanov and Vladimir Lenin founded the Bolsheviks and it became a major organization by 1905. Supporters of the party were mostly workers who believed in democratic centralism and saw themselves as the leaders of the Russian revolutionary working class. The practices and beliefs of this party were often referred to as “Bolshevism.”

According to WSWS:

The central task of the Bolsheviks and its revolutionary party was to saturate the workers’ movement with Marxist theory. “Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement,” Lenin wrote, “the only choice is—either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for mankind has not created a ‘third’ ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.”  Lenin opposed all tendencies that adapted their work to the spontaneous forms of working-class activity and detached the daily practical struggles from the historical goal of social revolution. Lenin recognized more clearly than any other socialist of his time that the development of Marxism within the working class required a persistent struggle against the political and ideological pressure exerted by bourgeois and middle-class tendencies. Herein lay the significance of the fight—conducted over issues of theory, political strategy and party organization—against diverse forms of revisionism and opportunism. This was at the heart of the agenda of the Bolsheviks.

This article is part of our larger collection of resources on the Cold War. For a comprehensive outline of the origins, key events, and conclusion of the Cold War, click here. 

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"Who Were the Bolsheviks and What Was Their Influence?" History on the Net
© 2000-2024, Salem Media.
March 27, 2024 <https://www.historyonthenet.com/who-were-the-bolsheviks>
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