Who were the Bolsheviks?radical Russian Marxist revolutionariesmembers of the Duma, Russia's parliamentfollowers of Rasputinsoldiers in the White Army

The Bolsheviks were radical Russian Marxist revolutionaries who played a pivotal role in the Russian Revolution of 1917. They were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), led by figures such as Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The Bolsheviks advocated for a proletarian revolution, aiming to overthrow the existing government and establish a socialist state.

They successfully seized power in October 1917, leading to the establishment of a government based on Marxist principles. Their ideology was grounded in the belief that the working class should lead the revolution to achieve a dictatorship of the proletariat, ultimately leading to a classless society.

The term “Bolshevik” itself means “majority” in Russian, reflecting their claim of being the majority faction at the time of their split from the Mensheviks, the moderate wing of the party. In contrast, the White Army represented anti-Bolshevik forces during the subsequent Russian Civil War, while the Duma was the legislative body that included various political factions, and Rasputin was a mystic closely associated with the last Tsar, Nicholas II, but not directly linked to the Bolsheviks.