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The word "Bolshevik" is sometimes used as a synonym of Communist. It was often used by right-wingers outside the Soviet Union as a derogatory term for left-wingers, not all of whom were necessarily Communists. The Bolshevik political platform has often been referred to as Bolshevism.
At the Second Congress of the RSDLP , held in Belgium in 1903, Lenin put forward his ideas on the question of organising the party on a democratic centralist model as a small party of "professional revolutionaries" who actively worked to overthrow the Czarist government. (Lenin's arguments are expressed in the essay One Step Forward, Two Steps Back .) His opponents, notably Julius Martov, favored a more open membership policy, where anyone in agreement with the party's goals could join, even if they did not actively work for revolution. Lenin lost, by a vote of 28 to 23, and the party split over the issue. The faction supporting Lenin became the Bolsheviks, and those who opposed Lenin's model became the Mensheviks. Lenin's faction took the name Bolshevik (derived from the Russian word bol'she (больше) meaning "more" or "bigger") despite losing the vote and actually being the numerically smaller faction. It can be explained from the fact that they had won a vote at the congress on the composition of the Iskra editorial board. Though the term Bolshevik originated due to a procedural vote, it acquired an additional connotation as Lenin's faction "wanted more", i.e. were more radical than Mensheviks, who "wanted less". This was the way the terms were generally understood abroad. In English, for instance, the press for a number of years translated "Bolsheviks" as "Maximalists" and "Mensheviks" as "Minimalists".
The two factions of the RSDLP attempted to reunify in 1907, and maintained the fiction that they were one party for several more years. The factions permanently broke off relations after the Bolsheviks failed in an attempt to take over the RSDLP in 1912. As a result they ceased to be a faction in the RSDLP and instead declared themselves an independent party though they retained the name RSDLP (Bolshevik).
Bolsheviks believed in organizing the party in a strongly centralised hierarchy which sought to overthrow the Czar 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 labelled " bourgeois") or even eventually other socialist organizations, although Lenin sometimes made tactical alliances.
Left to right Trotsky, Lenin, and Kamenev at the 1919 Party Congress.
Leon TrotskyLeon Davidovich Trotsky ( Russian: ; also transliterated Trotskii Trotski Trotzky ( October 26 ( O. November 7 ( N. 1879 August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist intellectual. He was an influential politi was initially a Menshevik in 1903 but soon became an independent and was not a member of either faction until 1917 he lined up behind Lenin and became a Bolshevik after the February Revolution, as he came to believe that events were confirming Lenin's analysis.The Bolsheviks played a minor role in the 1905 revolution, and were a minority in the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies led by Leon 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.
During the First World War, the Bolsheviks took an internationalist stance that emphasized solidarity between the workers of Russia, Germany, and the rest of the world, and broke with the Second International when its leading parties ended up supporting their own nations in the conflict.
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