Bolsheviks vs. Soviets — What's the Difference?

The Bolsheviks (Russian: Большевики, from большинство bolshinstvo, 'majority'), also known in English as the Bolshevists, were a radical, far-left, and revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov that split from the Menshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898, at its Second Party Congress in 1903.After forming their own party in 1912, the Bolsheviks took power during the October Revolution in the Russian Republic in November 1917, overthrowing the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky, and became the only ruling party in the subsequent Soviet Russia and later the Soviet Union. They considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia.

One of the popularly elected legislative assemblies that were created after the Russian Revolution (1917) and existed at local, regional, and national levels in the former Soviet Union.

A member of the left-wing majority group of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party that adopted Lenin's theses on party organization in 1903.

Soviet A native or inhabitant of the former Soviet Union.

A member of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party that seized power in that country in November 1917.

Of or relating to a soviet.

A member of a Marxist-Leninist party or a supporter of one; a Communist.

Often Soviet Of or relating to the former Soviet Union.

Often bolshevik An extreme radical

Plural of soviet

Plural of bolshevik

The government of the Soviet Union;