Summary

The Bolsheviks are the radical wing (faction) of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party after its split at the Second Congress of the RSDLP into factions of Lenin's supporters and the Mensheviks (a half-joking nickname that was popular in the early 20th century - Becky).

"Bolsheviks" began to be called after the Second Congress of the RSDLP the group that gained a majority in the elections to the Central Committee of the party. The Bolsheviks sought to create a party of professional revolutionaries, while the Mensheviks feared the criminalization of the party and tended toward legitimate methods of struggle against autocracy (reformism). Remaining on the basis of Marxism, Bolshevism at the same time absorbed elements of ideology and practice of the revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century (S. G. Nechaev, P. N. Tkachev, N. G. Chernyshevsky) and had much in common with such domestic leftist radical currents as Narodnikism and anarchism. The Bolsheviks used the experience of the French Revolution, especially the period of the Jacobin dictatorship, and their leader Vladimir Lenin contrasted the Bolsheviks-"Jacobins" with the Mensheviks-"Girondists.

The actual split occurred in 1912, when Lenin refused to seek compromise with other currents in the RSDLP and went to break with them. At the Prague conference in January 1912 (its delegates were mostly Bolsheviks), the exclusion from the party of the "liquidators," who were oriented toward building a legal party, was proclaimed. The Bolsheviks actually became an independent party. In 1913, Bolshevik deputies to the State Duma withdrew from the merged Social Democratic faction and formed an independent Duma faction. Finally, the Bolsheviks became a separate party, the RSDLP(b) (the name of the party was not officially adopted at the congress or conference) in the spring of 1917. In contrast to the Bolsheviks, who called themselves by that name from the spring of 1917 until the 19th congress of the VKP(b) ((b) in the names of the RCP(b), VKP(b) - meant "Bolsheviks"), the word "Mensheviks," first used by Lenin in articles of 1905, was always informal - the party called itself RSDLP, and from August 1917 to April 1918, the RSDLP (united).

A number of researchers characterize the Bolsheviks as a radical-extremist political current.

The split of the RSDLP into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks occurred at the Second Congress of the RSDLP (July 1903, Brussels-London). At that congress two main groups of delegates stood out: Lenin's supporters and those of U. O. Martov. The ideological differences between Lenin's supporters and Martov's supporters concerned four questions. The first was the question of including the demand for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the program of the party. Lenin's supporters were for the inclusion of this demand, Martov's supporters were against it (Akimov (V. P. Makhnovets), Pikker (A. S. Martynov) and the Bundovian Liber referred to the fact that this point was missing in the programs of the West European social-democratic parties). The second issue was the inclusion in the party program of demands on the agrarian question. Lenin's supporters were for the inclusion of these demands in the program; Martov's supporters were against their inclusion. Some of Martov's supporters (the Polish Social-Democrats and the Bund), moreover, wanted to exclude from the program the demand for the right of nations to self-determination, because they believed that it was impossible to fairly divide Russia into national states, and that Russians, Poles and Jews would be discriminated in all states. In addition, the Martovtsy opposed that every member of the party should permanently work in one of its organizations. They wanted a less rigid organization, whose members could participate in party work at will. In the questions concerning the program of the party, Lenin's supporters won; in the question of membership in organizations, Martov's supporters won.

Lenin wanted a cohesive, militant, clearly organized, disciplined proletarian party. The Martovians stood for a looser association, which allows an increase in the number of party supporters, which was in accordance with the resolution of the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP: "social democracy must support the bourgeoisie as it is revolutionary or only oppositional in its struggle against tsarism." They opposed strict centralism in the work of the party and the granting of greater powers to the Central Committee.

In the elections to the governing organs of the Party (the Central Committee and the editorial board of Iskra), Lenin's supporters gained a majority, while Martov's supporters gained a minority. What helped Lenin's supporters to gain a majority was that some delegates left the congress. These were representatives of the Bund, who did so in protest against the fact that the Bund was not recognized as the sole representative of the Jewish workers in Russia. Two more delegates left the congress because of disagreement over the recognition of the foreign union of "economists" (a movement that believed that workers should limit themselves to trade union, economic struggles against capitalists) as the party's representative abroad.

Martov refused to work in the Iskra editorial board (Plekhanov, Lenin, Martov) elected at the congress at Lenin's suggestion because of the failure to include members of the Labor Liberation group. After six issues, Lenin also left the editorial board, after which Plekhanov restored the editorial board of Iskra to its former, pre-election composition, but without Lenin (G. V. Plekhanov, Yu. O. Martov, P. B. Axelrod, V. I. Zasulich, A. N. Potresov). Then the Mensheviks also gained a majority on the Central Committee because of Plekhanov and the Bolsheviks Krasin and Noskov siding with them.

Lenin reacted to this by issuing "Step Forward, Two Steps Backward," in which he criticized the Mensheviks' views on the organizational structure of the party and developed the doctrine of the party as the advanced, most conscious unit of the working class, and the Bolshevik faction as a whole by preparing for the 3rd Congress of the RSDLP (at which it hoped to overthrow the pro-Menshevik Central Committee). At the end of 1904, the Bolsheviks established their factional center, the Bureau of the Majority Committees, and began publishing their first factional newspaper, Vpered, which opposed the newspaper Iskra, which had become Menshevik in 1903.

At the beginning of the revolution of 1905-1907 were held in January 1905 III Congress of the RSDLP (which was attended only by the Bolsheviks because of the departure of nine Menshevik delegates, who, being in the minority, declared a factional congress) and the Conference in Geneva (which was attended only by the Mensheviks).

The main differences in the lines of the Third Congress and the conference were two. The first difference was the view of who was the driving force behind the revolution in Russia. The Mensheviks believed that the revolutionary proletariat should act in coalition with the liberal bourgeoisie against the autocracy. According to the Bolsheviks, this force was the proletariat, the only class which benefited from the complete overthrow of the autocracy. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was interested in preserving the remnants of the autocracy in order to use it to suppress the workers' movement. From this some differences in tactics followed. First, the Bolsheviks stood for a strict separation of the labor movement from the bourgeois movement, because they believed that their unification under the leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie would facilitate its betrayal of the revolution. They considered its main goal to be the preparation of an armed uprising, which should bring to power a provisional revolutionary government, which would then convene a Constituent Assembly to establish a republic. Moreover, they considered a proletariat-led armed insurrection the only way to obtain such a government. The Mensheviks did not agree with this. They believed that the Constituent Assembly could also be convened peacefully, for example, by a decision of the legislative body (although they did not reject its convocation after an armed uprising). An armed uprising they considered appropriate only in the unlikely event of a revolution in Europe at that time.

The Mensheviks were ready to be satisfied as the best outcome of the usual bourgeois republic, the Bolsheviks put forward the slogan of a "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry," a particular highest type of parliamentary republic in which capitalist relations had not yet been eliminated, but in which the bourgeoisie was already pushed out of political power.

Since the Third Congress and Conference in Geneva, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks have operated separately, although belonging to the same party, and many organizations, up to the October Revolution, are united, especially in Siberia and Transcaucasia. In the Revolution of 1905 their divergences were not yet apparent. The Mensheviks took an active part in leading the mass workers' movement and the Soviets of workers' deputies. Although the Mensheviks were against the boycott of Bulygin's legislative Duma, and welcomed the legislative Duma, Wittev's, which they hoped to revolutionize and lead to the idea of a Constituent Assembly, but after the failure of this plan they actively participated in an armed struggle with the authorities. Members of the Menshevik Odessa Committee of the RSDLP K. I. Feldman, B. O. Bogdanov and A. P. Berezovsky tried to lead an uprising on the battleship "Potemkin", during the December 1905 uprising in Moscow, among 1.5-2 thousand insurgents there were about 250 Mensheviks - more than the number of the Bolsheviks. However, the failure of this uprising dramatically changed the mood of the Mensheviks; Plekhanov even stated that "it was not even necessary to take up arms," causing an explosion of indignation among the radical revolutionaries. Subsequently, the Mensheviks were rather skeptical about the prospect of a new uprising, and it became apparent that all the main radical revolutionary actions (in particular, the organization of several armed uprisings, although the Mensheviks also took part in them) were led and initiated by the Bolsheviks or the Social-Democrats of the national outskirts, while the Russian Mensheviks followed as if "in the trailer," being reluctant to accept new mass radical actions.

The split was not yet perceived as something natural, and the IV ("Unification") Congress (April 1906, Stockholm) eliminated it. At the congress the question of the agrarian program came up. The Bolsheviks advocated the transfer of land into the ownership of the state, which would give it to the peasants for free use (nationalization), the Mensheviks - for the transfer of land to the local authorities, which would rent it to the peasants (municipalization). The Mensheviks constituted a majority at this congress. On practically all questions the congress adopted resolutions which reflected their line (municipalization of land instead of nationalization, participation in the Duma instead of dictatorship of the proletariat, condemned the December uprising), but the Bolsheviks succeeded in passing a decision to replace the March wording of the first paragraph of the Party Charter with the Lenin wording.

The indecisive actions of the Menshevik Central Committee elected at the Fourth Congress allowed the Bolsheviks at the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP to take revenge, to gain predominance in the Central Committee, and to fail the Menshevik proposals for a "workers' congress" attended by Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries and anarchists, and for trade union neutrality, that is, that trade unions should not engage in political struggle.

Role in Revolutionary Terror in the First Russian Revolution

On February 7, 1905, closely associated with the Bolshevik A. E. Karelin, G. A. Gapon addressed an "Open Letter to the Socialist Parties of Russia", in which he urged them to unite in the fight against autocracy. The letter was sent to the International Socialist Bureau and sent to all interested organizations. To ensure representation of the revolutionary parties, Gapon held preliminary talks with their leaders. Gapon met with representatives of the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks (Plekhanov and Lenin), the Bund, the Liberation Union and various national parties and insisted on the use of terror and joint preparation of an armed uprising by all revolutionaries, which, given the mood of the workers, the leaders of the Social-Democrats were forced to agree to. Given the need to compete in terms of extremist revolutionary activity with the Social Revolutionary Party, "famous" for the activities of its Militant Organization, after some hesitation the Bolshevik leader Lenin, under Gapon's influence, developed his position on terror. The Bolsheviks refused to create a united militant organization with other parties, as Gapon had proposed, or, as Gershuni insisted, to supply militants to the above-party Combat Organization of the Social Revolutionaries, but, like the Social Revolutionaries, who widely practiced terror, the Leninists created their own militant organization (known as the "Combat Technical Group", "Technical Group at the Central Committee", "Military Technical Group"). As the researcher of the problem of revolutionary terrorism Anna Geifman notes, Lenin's protests against terrorism, formulated before 1905 and directed against the Social Revolutionaries, are in sharp contradiction with Lenin's own practical policy, which he developed after the beginning of the Russian revolution "in the light of new challenges of the day. Lenin called for "the most radical means and measures as the most expedient," for which purpose, Anna Geifman quotes documents, the Bolshevik leader proposed to create "detachments of revolutionary army... of all sizes, starting with two or three men, should arm themselves with whatever they can (rifle, revolver, bomb, knife, knuckles, stick, rag with kerosene to set fire to...)," and concludes that these Bolshevik detachments were essentially no different from the terrorist "combat brigades" of militant Social Revolutionaries.

Lenin, under the changed conditions, was now ready to go even further than the Social Revolutionaries, and, as Anna Geifman notes, even went to the apparent contradiction of Marx's teachings for the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that the fighting squads should take every opportunity to work actively, not delaying their actions until the general uprising began.

Lenin was essentially ordering the preparation of terrorist acts, which he himself had earlier condemned, calling on his supporters to attack townspeople and other civil servants; in the fall of 1905, he openly called for the murder of police and gendarmes, Black Hundreds and Cossacks, the bombing of police stations, pouring boiling water on soldiers and sulfuric acid on policemen. The Bolshevik leader's followers were not long in coming, for example, in Yekaterinburg terrorists under the personal leadership of Yakov Sverdlov constantly killed supporters of the Black Hundred, doing so at every opportunity.

As one of Lenin's closest colleagues, Elena Stasova, testifies, the Bolshevik leader, having formulated his new tactics, began to insist that they be put into practice immediately and became "an ardent supporter of terror.

To the credit of the Bolsheviks' terrorist acts there were also many "spontaneous" attacks on government officials, for example, Mikhail Frunze and Pavel Gusev murdered Uryadnik Nikita Perlov on February 21, 1907, without an official resolution. They also had high-profile political murders to their credit. It is even alleged that in 1907 the Bolsheviks murdered the "uncrowned king of Georgia", the famous poet Ilya Chavchavadze - probably one of the most famous national figures of Georgia of the early 20th century.

The Bolsheviks also planned high-profile assassinations: Governor General Dubasov in Moscow, Colonel Riman in St. Petersburg, and the prominent Bolshevik A. M. Ignatiev, close personally to Lenin, even proposed a plan to kidnap Nicholas II himself from Peterhof. A group of Bolshevik terrorists in Moscow planned to blow up the train carrying troops from St. Petersburg to Moscow to suppress the December revolutionary uprising. The plans of the Bolshevik terrorists included the capture of several grand dukes for subsequent bargaining with the authorities, who were already close at that time to the suppression of the December uprising in Moscow.

Some Bolshevik terrorist attacks were directed not against officials and police, but against workers with political views different from those of the Bolsheviks. Thus, on behalf of the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP, an armed attack was carried out on the "Tver" tea house, where workers of the Nevsky shipyard, who were members of the Union of the Russian People, were meeting. At first two bombs were thrown by Bolshevik fighters, and then those running out of the teahouse were shot with revolvers. The Bolsheviks killed two workers and wounded 15.

As Anna Geifman notes, many Bolshevik speeches, which at first could still be regarded as acts of "revolutionary struggle of the proletariat," in reality often turned into ordinary criminal acts of individual violence. Analyzing the terrorist activities of the Bolsheviks during the first Russian Revolution, historian and researcher Anna Geifman concludes that for the Bolsheviks terror was an effective and often used at different levels of the revolutionary hierarchy tool.

In addition to individuals specializing in political assassinations in the name of the revolution, there were people in social-democratic organizations who carried out tasks of armed robbery and confiscation of private and state property. Officially, such a position was never encouraged by the leaders of social-democratic organizations, with the exception of one of their factions - the Bolsheviks - whose leader Lenin publicly declared plunder to be an acceptable means of revolutionary struggle. According to A. Geifman, the Bolsheviks were the only social-democratic faction in Russia that resorted to expropriations (so-called "ecce") in an organized and systematic manner.

Lenin was not limited to slogans or simply acknowledging the Bolsheviks' involvement in militant activities. Already in October 1905, he declared the necessity of confiscating state funds and soon began to resort to "ecce" in practice. Together with two of his then closest associates, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky), he secretly organized a small group within the Central Committee of the RSDLP (which was dominated by the Mensheviks), which became known as the "Bolshevik Center," specifically to obtain money for the Leninist faction. The existence of this group "was hidden not only from the eyes of the tsarist police, but also from the other members of the Party." In practice, this meant that the Bolshevik Center was an underground organ within the Party, organizing and controlling expropriations and various forms of extortion.

In February 1906 Latvian Social Democrats, close to the Bolsheviks, carried out a major robbery of the State Bank branch in Helsingfors, and in July 1907 the Bolsheviks carried out the famous Tiflis expropriation.

Bolsheviks close to Leonid Krasin in 1905-1907 played an important role in acquiring explosives and weapons abroad for all the Social Democrat terrorists.

Between 1906 and 1910, the Bolshevik Center led the execution of a large number of "exos," recruiting performers from uncultured and uneducated, but eager to fight young men. The results of the Bolshevik Center activities were robberies of post offices, train station cash desks, etc. Terrorist acts were organized in the form of derailing trains and then robbing them. The Bolshevik Center received a constant inflow of money from the Caucasus from Kamo, who organized a series of "exes" in Baku, Tiflis and Kutaisi since 1905 and was in fact the head of the militant "technical" group of the Bolsheviks. Formally, the head of the militant organization was Stalin, who did not personally take part in terrorist acts, but was in full control of the activities of the organization, in the practical plane led by Kamo.

Kamo's fame was brought by the so-called "Tiflis expropriation" on June 12, 1907, when the Bolsheviks threw bombs at two postal carriages carrying money from the Tiflis City Bank on the central square of the Georgian capital. As a result, the militants stole 250,000 rubles. At the same time the Bolsheviks killed and wounded dozens of passers-by.

Kamo's Caucasian organization was not the only militant group of the Bolsheviks; several combat units operated in the Urals, where since the beginning of the 1905 revolution the Bolsheviks had carried out over a hundred expropriations, attacking postal and factory offices, public and private foundations, artels and liquor stores. The largest action was on August 26, 1909, a raid on a mail train at the Miass station. During the action, the Bolsheviks killed 7 guards and policemen, stole bags of about 60,000 rubles and 24 kg of gold. The work of Kerensky's lawyer, who later defended several of the participants in the raid of the militants, was paid for by the same stolen money.

The actions of the militant Bolsheviks did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the RSDLP. Martov proposed that the Bolsheviks be expelled from the Party for their illegal expropriations. Plekhanov called for fighting "Bolshevik Bakuninism," many Party members considered Lenin and Co. to be common crooks, and Fyodor Dan called the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP a company of criminals.

The irritation of the Menshevik leaders toward the Bolshevik Center, already ready to strike at it, increased manifold after the tremendous scandal that proved extremely unpleasant for the entire RSDLP when the Bolsheviks attempted to swap the money expropriated in Tiflis by Kamo in Europe. The scandal turned the entire RSDLP into a criminal organization in the eyes of Europeans. On the other hand, when the Russian Mensheviks tried to expropriate money from Georgian manganese industrialists, the Bolshevik-affiliated Georgian Social Democrat Stalin and his group actually served as a police department guard during the 1905-1907 revolution, returning money to the robbed and deporting the Mensheviks to Russia. Among the radicals of all strands of the RSDLP, embezzlement of party money was practiced, but especially among the Bolsheviks, who were more often involved in successful acts of expropriation. The money went not only into party coffers, but also into the personal purses of the militants.

In 1906-1907 the money expropriated by the Bolsheviks was used by them to create and fund a school of combat instructors in Kiev and a school of bombers in Lviv.

Radicals attracted minors to terrorist activities. This phenomenon intensified after the 1905 violence. Extremists used children to perform a variety of combat tasks. Children helped militants to make and hide explosive devices, and also participated directly in the attacks themselves. Many militant groups, especially the Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries, trained and recruited minors, uniting future juvenile terrorists in special youth cells. The involvement of minors (in the Russian Empire, the age of majority was 21) was also due to the fact that it was easier to convince them to commit political murder (because they could not be sentenced to death).

The terrorists passed on their experience to their fourteen-year-old brothers and other children, giving them dangerous clandestine assignments. The youngest terrorist helper was a four-year-old girl, Liza, daughter of F. I. Drabkina, known as "Comrade Natasha. This Bolshevik took her child for cover when she was transporting rattlesnake mercury.

On the morning of February 13, 1907, the manufacturer and revolutionary Nikolai Schmit was found dead in solitary confinement in Butyr prison, where he was held.

According to the authorities, Schmit suffered from a mental disorder and committed suicide by opening his veins with a hidden piece of glass. The Bolsheviks, however, claimed that Schmit was killed in prison by criminals on the orders of the authorities.

According to a third version, Schmit's murder was organized by the Bolsheviks in order to get his inheritance - Schmit in March 1906 bequeathed to the Bolsheviks most of the inheritance received from his grandfather, estimated at 280 thousand rubles.

Nikolai's sisters and brother became the administrators of the inheritance. By the time of his death, the youngest of the sisters, Elizaveta Schmit was the mistress of Viktor Taratuta, treasurer of the Moscow Bolshevik organization. Taratuta, who was wanted, arranged Yelizaveta's fictitious marriage in the spring of 1907 to the Bolshevik Alexander Ignatyev. This marriage allowed Yelizaveta to enter into inheritance rights.

But the youngest heir to the Shmitov fortune, the 18-year-old Alexei, had guardians who reminded the Bolsheviks of Alexei's rights to a third of the inheritance. After threats from the Bolsheviks, an agreement was made in June 1908 under which Alexey Shmit received only 17,000 rubles and both of his sisters gave up their shares of the total sum of 130,000 rubles in favor of the Bolshevik party.

The Bolshevik Nikolai Adrikanis married Catherine Schmit, the eldest of Nikolai Schmit's sisters, but, having received the right to dispose of his wife's inheritance, Adrikanis refused to share it with the Party. After threats, however, he was forced to give half of his inheritance to the Party.

1907-1912

After the defeat of the revolution, the underground structures of the RSDLP suffered heavy losses as a result of constant failures, as well as the departure from the revolutionary movement of thousands of underground workers. Part of the Mensheviks wanted to break with underground work forever, and they proposed to transfer their work to legal organizations - the State Duma faction, trade unions, health insurance funds, etc. Proponents of this current were called "liquidators," that is, people ready to liquidate the old illegal Social-Democratic Party. They included A. N. Potresov, P. B. Axelrod, V. O. Levitsky (Martov's brother), F. A. Cherevanin, P. A. Garvey. The "liquidators" were opposed by groups of Mensheviks, called "Menshevik-partisans," who demanded to preserve the illegal Social-Democratic Party at all costs (Plekhanov became their leader).

A breakaway wing of the Bolsheviks (the so-called "otzovists") demanded only illegal methods of work and the recall of the Social-Democratic faction in the State Duma (the leader of this group was A.A. Bogdanov). They were joined by "ultimatists," who demanded an ultimatum to the faction and its dissolution in the event of failure to fulfill this ultimatum (their leader was G. A. Aleksinsky). Gradually these factions rallied into the group "Forward". The dissociation of the Bolsheviks from the Ozovists ended on June 17, 1909, at a meeting of the expanded editorial board of the newspaper Proletarian.

The Bolshevik opponents dealt them the most painful blow in 1910, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. Because of the conciliatory position of Zinoviev and Kamenev, who represented the Bolsheviks at the plenum, and also because of the diplomatic efforts of Trotsky, who received a subsidy for them to publish his "non-faction" newspaper Pravda, which had been published since 1908 (not to be confused with the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, whose first issue came out on April 22 (May 5), 1912) the plenum took an extremely unfavorable decision for the Bolsheviks. It ruled that the Bolsheviks should dissolve the Bolshevik Center, that all factional periodicals should be closed, and that the Bolsheviks should pay the sum of several hundred thousand rubles allegedly stolen by them from the party. The Bolsheviks and Menshevik Party members have, for the most part, complied with the decisions of the plenum. As for the liquidators, their organs, under various pretexts, continued to come out.

In the spring of 1911, a Bolshevik Party school was organized in Longuyumeau, a suburb of Paris.

Lenin realized that a full-fledged struggle against the liquidators within one party was impossible, and decided to transfer the struggle against them into the form of an open struggle between the parties. He organizes a series of purely Bolshevik meetings which decide to organize a party-wide conference. On May 27, 1911, Lenin's supporter Nikolai Semashko, who was a member and treasurer of the Overseas Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, "destroyed" this body - he left it, taking with him both the cash and cash books and documents, including those relating to illegal transport of party publications in the Russian Empire. From June 10 to 17, Lenin, together with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, held a "meeting of the Central Committee members" in Paris, which effectively completed the split of the all-party centers. At this meeting, with the votes of three Bolsheviks (Lenin, G. E. Zinoviev and A. I. Rykov) and two Poles (J. Tyszka and F. Dzerzhinsky), an Organizing Commission was established, whose purpose was to prepare a Party (in fact, "purely Bolshevik") conference.

Such a conference was held in January 1912 in Prague. All but two Menshevik Party delegates were Bolsheviks. Opponents of the Bolsheviks later claimed that this was the result of a special selection of delegates by Bolshevik agents and the security section of the police department, which believed that it would be better to control organized Bolsheviks with agents of the security section embedded in their leadership than motley and poorly disciplined Mensheviks. The conference expelled the Menshevik liquidators from the party and stressed that foreign groups not subordinate to the Central Committee could not use the name of the RSDLP. The conference also withdrew support from L. D. Trotsky's newspaper Pravda, published in Vienna.

The Mensheviks organized a conference in Vienna in August of that year to counterbalance the Prague conference. The Vienna conference condemned the Prague conference and created a rather patchwork formation, referred to in Soviet sources as the August Bloc. But they considered themselves simply the former RSDLP. They did not add the letter (m) to the name.

1912-1917

After the formation of the RSDLP(b) as a separate party, the Bolsheviks continue both legal and illegal work, and do so quite successfully. They manage to create a network of illegal organizations in Russia, which, despite the huge number of provocateurs sent by the government (even the provocateur Roman Malinovsky was elected to the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b)), carried out propaganda and propaganda work and introduced Bolshevik agents into legal workers' organizations.

In the elections to the IV State Duma the Bolsheviks won 6 out of 9 seats from the workers' curia. In 1913 Bolshevik deputies to the State Duma withdrew from the united Social Democratic faction and formed an independent Duma faction led by Roman Malinovsky. After Malinovsky, fearing exposure, resigned as a deputy in May 1914, the faction was headed by Grigory Petrovsky.

On July 26, 1914, six Menshevik and five Bolshevik deputies to the State Duma condemned the outbreak of World War I as imperialist and aggressive on both sides. However, a "defensive" current (Plekhanov, Potresov and others) soon emerged among the Mensheviks, whose supporters recognized the war on the part of Russia as defensive, and considered Russia's loss of the war not only a national tragedy, but also a blow to the entire Russian labor movement. Plekhanov called for a vote in the Duma in favor of war credits. But a greater number of Mensheviks called for an early conclusion of a democratic world without annexations and contributions as a prologue to the European revolution, and put forward the slogan "neither victory nor defeat", thus taking the path of "hidden defeatism". This position was called "internationalist" and its adherents were called "internationalists". At the same time, the Menshevik internationalists, unlike the Bolshevik-Leninists, did not call for "turning the world war into a civil war.

With the outbreak of World War II, government repression of the Bolsheviks pursuing a defeatist policy intensified: in July 1914 Pravda was closed, in November of that year the members of the Bolshevik faction in the State Duma were exiled to Siberia. Illegal organizations were also closed down.

The ban on the legal activities of the RSDLP(b) during World War I was caused by its defeatist position, that is, open agitation for the defeat of the Russian government in World War I, the propaganda of the priority of the class struggle over the international one (the slogan "turning the imperialist war into a civil war").

As a result, the RSDLP(b) had little influence in Russia until the spring of 1917. In Russia they carried out revolutionary propaganda among soldiers and workers, and issued more than 2 million copies of anti-war leaflets. Abroad, the Bolsheviks took part in the Zimmerwald and Quintal Conferences, which in their adopted resolutions called for a struggle for peace "without annexations and contributions," recognized the war as imperialist on the part of all belligerent countries, and condemned the socialists who voted for war budgets and participated in the governments of the belligerent countries. At these conferences the Bolsheviks led the group of the most consistent internationalists, the Zimmerwald Left.

Legal publishing activities of the Bolsheviks

From December 1910 to April 1912 the Bolsheviks published in St. Petersburg newspaper "The Star", published first weekly, then 3 times a week. On April 22 (May 5), 1912 the daily workers' newspaper Pravda began publication.

From December 1910 to April 1911 a monthly philosophical and socio-economic magazine "Thought" was published in Moscow, five issues were published. The last, fifth issue was confiscated, and the magazine was closed.

On Lenin's initiative instead of the closed journal "Thought" in St. Petersburg from December 1911 to June 1914 was published a monthly socio-political and literary journal "Education", 27 issues were published. The circulation of some issues reached 5,000 copies. Foreign editorial board headed by Lenin was in charge. The practical work on publishing was carried out by the editorial board in Russia. Since 1913 fiction department was headed by M. Gorky. The magazine was closed by the government.

From October 26, 1913 to July 12, 1914, and from February 20, 1915 to March 1918, a weekly magazine "Questions of Insurance" was published in St. Petersburg. It came out 80 issues. During the First World War the only legal Bolshevik publication in Petrograd. The magazine was issued under the guidance of the Central Committee and fought for the development of the insurance movement and health insurance funds. It also highlighted issues of insurance abroad. Circulation 3-5 thousand copies.

On February 23 (March 8), 1914, to "protect the interests of the women's workers' movement" and to promote the views of the Bolsheviks among women workers, the magazine Rabotnitsa was launched. It came out 7 issues before it was banned by the authorities on June 26 (July 9), 1914.

Class composition of the Bolsheviks by the time of the revolution

With the outbreak of World War I in Russia, the percentage of women employed in production, including industry, rose sharply. Even in such non-feminine industries as machine building and metalworking, the proportion of women in the total number of those employed rose from 3% on the eve of the war to 18% by 1917. At the same time, the share of women in the Bolshevik party, who belonged to the working class in their social status, remained almost unchanged: from 43 % before the revolution their share had grown to 45.7 % by 1917. This was not much higher than the share of female Communists who belonged to the middle class and even the aristocracy: their aggregate share, which had been 40 % before the revolution, rose to 52.5 % by 1917, with a simultaneous decrease from 12 % to zero of those whose class affiliation before the revolution was shown as "others".

Jane McDermid and Anna Hilliard cite the following data:

Before Lenin's arrival

In February 1917, the Party numbered about 25,000 people (according to revised data - about 10,000). In the period up to October of that year, its numbers grew to about 300,000.

The February Revolution came as much of a surprise to the Bolsheviks as it did to other Russian revolutionary parties. Local party organizations were either very weak or not formed at all, and most Bolshevik leaders were in emigration, prison, or exile. Thus, V. I. Lenin and G. E. Zinoviev were in Zurich, N. I. Bukharin and L. D. Trotsky in New York, and I. V. Stalin, Y. M. Sverdlov and L. B. Kamenev in Siberian exile. In Petrograd, the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b), which included A. G. Shlyapnikov, V. M. Molotov and P. A. Zalutsky, was in charge of the small party organization in Petrograd. The Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks was almost completely defeated on February 26, when five of its members were arrested by the police, so that the leadership was forced to take over by the Vyborg District Party Committee.

On the day of February 27 (March 12), 1917, when the Provisional Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies was formed, there were no Bolsheviks on it. Concentrating their main forces in the streets, the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee and other Bolshevik organizations underestimated other forms of influence on the developing movement and, in particular, missed the Taurida Palace, where the petty-bourgeois party activists had concentrated and who took over the organization of the Soviet. Only two Bolsheviks, A. G. Shlyapnikov and P. A. Zalutsky, were included in the initial 15-member executive committee of Petrosoviet. On March 9 (22), 1917 Bolshevik fraction of Petrosoviet was organizationally formed (about 40 men, by the end of March - 65 men, by the beginning of July - about 400). Direct links between Lenin, who was in Zurich, and the party organizations in Russia were virtually non-existent, so effective coordination of party politics was out of the question. If on the question of the war the Bolshevik leadership in the capital generally agreed with Lenin (the resolution of the Russian Bureau of the CC RSDLP(b) of March 7 (20), 1917, stated that "the main task of revolutionary social-democracy is still the struggle for the transformation of this anti-people imperialist war into a civil war of the peoples against their oppressors - the ruling classes", with which the Petersburg committee agreed), on the question of the government there was no such unity among the Petrograd Bolsheviks. In the most general terms, the position of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee was almost identical with Lenin's categorical rejection of the Provisional Government, while the approach of most members of the St. Petersburg Committee differed almost nothing from that of the SR-Menshevik majority in the Petrograd Soviet leadership. At the same time, the Vyborgsky District Committee of the Bolsheviks took an even more leftist position than Lenin and the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee - on its own initiative, it began to call for an immediate seizure of power by the workers.

Immediately after the revolution, the Petrograd Bolshevik organization concentrated its efforts on practical questions - legalization of its activity and organization of a party newspaper (March 2 (15), 1917, at the meeting of the Russian bureau of the Central Committee it was entrusted to V. M. Molotov). Soon after, the city committee of the Bolshevik party occupied the Kshesinskaya mansion; several district party organizations were established. (March 5 (18), 1917 the first issue of Pravda newspaper, the joint organ of the Russian Bureau of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee, was published. (March 10 (23), 1917 the St. Petersburg Committee established the Military Committee, which became the core of the RSDLP(b) permanent military organization. In early March 1917 Stalin, L. B. Kamenev and M. K. Muranov, who were in exile in the Turukhan region, arrived in Petrograd. By right of the oldest members of the party they took over the leadership of the party and the Pravda newspaper until Lenin's arrival. Since March 14 (27), 1917, the newspaper "Pravda" began to be published under their leadership, immediately making a sharp turn to the right and taking up the position of "revolutionary defensiveness".

In early April, just before Lenin came to Russia from exile, a meeting of representatives of various currents of Social-Democracy was held in Petrograd on the question of unification. It was attended by members of the central bodies of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and national social-democratic parties, the editorial board of Pravda, Rabochaya Gazeta, Unity, the Duma fraction of Social-Democrats of all convocations, the executive committee of Petrosoviet, representatives of the All-Russian Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and others. By an overwhelming majority, with three abstentions from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, it was recognized as "essentially necessary" to convene a unifying congress of the social-democratic parties, which must be attended by all the social-democratic organizations in Russia.

The Return of Lenin

After Lenin returned from exile, the situation changed. Lenin sharply criticized the alliance with the "defenseists," calling it "a betrayal of socialism. Lenin expressed his considerations in his article "April Theses. Lenin's ideas seemed so extreme to the Russian Bolsheviks that the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda refused to print the article. In domestic policy, Lenin put forward the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" which implied that the party refused to support both the Provisional Government and any parliamentary system that might succeed it. In foreign policy, a complete renunciation of war with Germany and the dissolution of the tsarist army as well as the police and civil authorities. On April 8, 1917, the Petrograd Committee of the Bolsheviks rejected the "April Theses" by 13 votes to 2.

During the unfolding polemic on the possibility of socialism in Russia, Lenin rejected all the critical arguments of the Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and other political opponents about the unreadiness of the country for a socialist revolution because of its economic backwardness, weakness, lack of culture and organization of the working masses, including the proletariat, about the danger of a split in the revolutionary and democratic forces and the imminence of a civil war.

On April 22-29 (May 5-12), the "April Theses" were adopted by the VII (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(b). The conference declared that it was beginning the struggle for the realization of a socialist revolution in Russia. The April Conference set out to break with other socialist parties that did not support the policies of the Bolsheviks. The conference resolution, written by Lenin, stated that the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties had moved to a position of revolutionary defense, pursued a policy in the interests of the petty bourgeoisie and "corrupted the proletariat with bourgeois influence", suggesting to it the possibility of changing the Provisional Government policy by means of agreements, which was "the main obstacle to further development of the revolution". The conference decided "to recognize unification with the parties and groups pursuing this policy as unconditionally impossible. Convergence and unification was recognized as necessary only with those who stood "on the basis of internationalism" and "on the basis of a break with the policy of petty-bourgeois betrayal of socialism.

July Uprising

Kornilov's Rebellion (in Soviet historiography - Kornilov Mutiny, Kornilovschina) - an unsuccessful attempt to establish a military dictatorship, undertaken by the Supreme Commander of the Russian Army, Infanteanteante General L. G. Kornilov in August (September) 1917 to restore "firm power" in Russia and prevent by military force the arrival in power of the radical left (Bolsheviks). The speech occurred against the background of an acute socio-political crisis in Russia and the fall of the authority of the Provisional Government. Under these circumstances, Kornilov demanded the resignation of the government and the provision of emergency powers to it, putting forward a program of "saving the country" (militarization of the country, the elimination of revolutionary democratic organizations, the introduction of the death penalty, etc.), which was largely supported by Minister-chairman of the Provisional Government, A F. Kerensky, but its implementation was recognized as "untimely.

Seizure of power

Before the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Bolsheviks had spoken under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!" After October 25, 1917, however, power was in the hands of the Bolshevik government - the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), headed by Lenin. The Sovnarkom actually usurped the power of the VTsIK - the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in the name of which the October Revolution was committed. It is believed that in this way the transition was made from the power of the people, represented by the Soviets, to the power of party committees unaccountable to the broad masses of workers.

During the Civil War, all opponents of the Bolsheviks in the former Russian Empire were defeated (with the exception of Finland, Poland and the Baltic states, which had gained independence). The RCP(b) became the only legal party in the country. The word "Bolsheviks" remained in the name of the Communist Party until 1952, when the 19th Congress renamed the party, called by then the VKP(b), the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Trotsky and his supporters used the self-name "Bolsheviks-Leninists.

In the first half of the 20th century, the term "Bolsheviks" was sometimes interpreted broadly and used in propaganda to refer to the political regime in the RSFSR and, later, in the USSR (See propaganda poster from the Soviet-Polish War).

The term "Bolo" was used by British servicemen to refer to the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

Throughout the Cold War the terms "Bolshi" "Commie" and "Red" were also used.

In Nazi propaganda

Nazi German propaganda claimed that Bolshevism was closely tied to the Jews. The derogatory term "Judeo-Bolsheviks" was invented and widely used to describe the representatives of Soviet power. According to the recollections of S. A. Oleksenko, secretary of the Kamyanets-Podolsky underground regional committee:

"Bolshevism is a curse and a crime against all mankind... The most terrible example in this respect is Russia, where the Jews in their fanatical savagery murdered 30 million people (by 1924), ruthlessly slaughtering some and subjecting others to inhuman torments of starvation... The nearest bait for Bolshevism at the present time is precisely Germany. Hitler. Mein Kampf. 1924 г.

Sources

1. Bolsheviks
2. Большевики
3. Матильда Кшесинская, — прима-балерина Мариинского театра, — фаворитка Николая Романова, в бытность последнего наследником-цесаревичем (1892—1894). Накануне революции была гражданской женой великого князя Андрея Владимировича, двоюродного брата Николая II. Эти отношения стали причиной анонимных угроз, которые побудили Кшесинскую с сыном 27 февраля 1917 года (по старому стилю) бежать из дома. В скором времени нижние этажи особняка заняли солдаты мастерских запасного автомобильного броневого дивизиона («броневики»). Большевики, которые нуждались в помещении для своего партийного аппарата, каким-то образом нашли общий язык с солдатами. Петербургский и центральный комитеты РСДРП(б) переехали в здание 11 марта («Особняк Кшесинской: как балерина боролась с большевиками» Архивная копия от 18 августа 2017 на Wayback Machine).
4. Работой конференции руководил Ленин, который выступал с докладами, и более 20 раз в прениях. Он же составил все проекты резолюций.
5. ^ Russian: большевики́, большеви́к (singular), romanized: bol'shevikí, bol'shevík; derived from bol'shinstvó (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority".[2]
6. ^ Derived from men'shinstvó (меньшинство́), "minority", which comes from mén'she (ме́ньше), "less".
7. ^ After the split, the Bolshevik party was designated as RSDLP(b) (Russian: РСДРП(б)), where "b" stands for "Bolsheviks". Shortly after coming to power in November 1917, the party changed its name to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (РКП(б)) and was generally known as the Communist Party after that point. However, it was not until 1952 that the party formally dropped the word "Bolshevik" from its name. See Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union article for the timeline of name changes.
8. Prononciation en français de France retranscrite selon la norme API.
9. προέρχεται από τη λέξη меньшинство men'shinstvo, «μειονότητα», που με τη σειρά του προέρχεται από το меньшe men'she, που σημαίνει «λιγότερο». Η διάσπαση έγινε κατά τη διάρκεια του Δεύτερου Συνεδρίου του Ρωσικού Σοσιαλοδημοκρατικού Εργατικού Κόμματος το 1903.
10. After the split, the Bolshevik party was designated as RSDLP(b) (Russian: РСДРП(б)), where "b" stands for "Bolsheviks". Shortly after coming to power in November 1917 the party changed its name to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (РКП(б)) and was generally known as the Communist Party after that point, however, it was not until 1952 that the party formally dropped the word "Bolshevik" from its name. (See Congress of the CPSU article for the timeline of name changes.)
11. Δείτε Israel Getzler, Μάρτοφ: Πολιτική βιογραφία ενός Ρώσου σοσιαλοδημοκράτη, Cambridge University Press, 2003 (πρώτη έκδοση 1967), ISBN 0-521-52602-7 σελ.78