Bolsheviks

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Bolsheviks (Rus. ‘majority’) Marxist revolutionaries, led by Lenin, who seized power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. They narrowly defeated the Mensheviks at the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in London (1903). The split, on tactics as much as doctrine, centred on the means of achieving revolution. The Bolsheviks believed it could be obtained only by professional revolutionaries leading the proletariat. The Bolsheviks were able to overthrow the Provisional government of Kerensky through their support in the soviets of Moscow and Petrograd. See also Marxism

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