Bolsheviks
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Le Sec et l'Humide (2008) is a book-length essay by Jonathan Littell, a corpus analysis of the prose of Léon Degrelle in Campaign in Russia: The Waffen SS on the Eastern Front (1949) which makes a clear distinction between the dry (the fascists) and the humid (the Bolsheviks)."--Sholem Stein |
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The Bolsheviks; derived from bol'shinstvo (большинство), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority", were a radical, far-left, and revolutionary Marxist faction founded by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov that split from the Menshevik faction (from men'shinstvo (меньшинство), "minority", which comes from men'she (меньше), "less") 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 its successor state, the Soviet Union. They considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary proletariat of Russia. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism.
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Derogatory usage of "Bolshevik"
"Bolo" was used as derogatory expression for Bolsheviks used by British service personnel in the North Russian Expeditionary Force which intervened against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and other Nazi leaders used it in reference to the worldwide political movement coordinated by the Comintern. During the days of the Cold War in the United Kingdom, labour union leaders and other leftists were sometimes derisively described as "Bolshies". The usage is roughly equivalent to the term "Commie", "Red" or "pinko" in the United States during the same period. The term "Bolshie" later became a slang term for anyone who was rebellious, aggressive or truculent.
See also
- Democratic centralism
- Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks
- Leninism
- October Revolution
- Old Bolshevik
- Soviet Revolutionary Communists (Bolsheviks)
- Vladimir Lenin
Related terms
Non-Russian/Soviet groups having used the name "Bolshevik"
- Bangladesh: Maoist Bolshevik Reorganisation Movement of the Purba Banglar Sarbahara Party
- India: Bolshevik Party of India
- India/Sri Lanka: Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma
- India: Revolutionary Socialist Party (Bolshevik)
- Mexico: Bolshevik Communist Party
- Senegal: Bolshevik Nuclei
- Sri Lanka: Bolshevik Samasamaja Party
