Bolshevik

A Bolshevik ("??????????", derived from a Russian word loosely translated as "majority") was a member of a faction of Bolsheviks of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), a Marxist political party. Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia in 1917, a world-historical event known as the October Revolution.

October Revolution

On October 10, the Bolshevik Central Committee established a smaller Politburo to run party affairs due to the increased demands on the party for day-to-day direction. Bubnov, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Lenin, Sokolnikov, Stalin and Trotsky were elected to the body which operated for two weeks and dissolved on October 25, 1917, once the Bolsheviks had taken power in the October Revolution.

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The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks had been debating whether to call for an insurrection. Lenin urged the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Provisional government. Zinoviev and Kamenev were the only members of the Central Committee to disagree. They took the unusual step of making their objections public in the pages of Pravda, an act that very nearly got them expelled from the party for breaching party discipline.

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When Kerensky moved against the Bolsheviks on October 22 by ordering the arrest of their Military Revolutionary Council, banning the Bolshevik newspaper and cutting off telephone lines to the Bolshevik headquarters in the Smolny Institute, Trotsky urged that the Bolsheviks' decision on overthrowing the government be put into action. Lenin concurred and on October 24, orders were issued for the Bolsheviks' Red Guards to occupy key locations in the city and surround the Winter Palace where the Provisional government had its headquarters.

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The Bolsheviks raised the slogan All power to the soviets meaning that the country should be run by the workers and soldiers councils and not the constituent assembly.

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On October 26, 1917 the All-Russian Congress of Soviets met and handed power over to a Soviet Council of People's Commissars with Lenin as chairman, Trotsky as commissar of the Red Army and minister of foreign affairs and Bolsheviks taking the other positions of what was the new government of the country.

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In March 1918, the Seventh Party Congress of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (Bolsheviks) met and, at Lenin's urging, changed the name of the party to the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the name change, however, the party was generally known as the Communist Party with the name Bolshevik referring to the party prior to 1918.

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