Bolsheviks

The name comes from the Russian word for 'majority': at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903 Lenin's supporters won the key votes against the Mensheviks. Lenin wanted a party of professional revolutionaries. During the war the Bolsheviks called for turning the imperialist war into revolution, and after the February Revolution, under the slogan 'all power to the soviets', they won over soldiers and workers.

On 7 November 1917 they seized power in Petrograd, soon concluded an armistice with the Central Powers and, in March 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In January 1918 they dispersed the Constituent Assembly, and in March took the name Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Bolshevik rule meant one-party dictatorship, terror against opponents and civil war.