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[[Image:Leninsfinalfight.jpg|thumb|none|300px|right|Leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the [[Communist International]], a painting by [[Malcolm McAllister]] on the [[Pathfinder Mural]] in [[New York City]] and on the cover of the book ''Lenin’s Final Fight'' published by Pathfinder. From left: [[Grigory Zinoviev | Zinoviev]], [[Bukharin]], [[Trotsky]], [[Lenin]], [[Karl Radek | Radek]] ]]
'''Bolsheviks''' ({{lang-ru | Большеви́к}} [[international phonetic alphabet | IPA]] {{IPA | [bəlʲʂɨˈvʲik]}}, derived from ''bolshinstvo'', "majority") were members of the Bolshevik faction of the [[Marxist]] [[Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party]]. Bolsheviks had an extreme socialist and internationalist outlook, and were opponents of the [[Imperial Russia | Russian traditional statehood]] and the [[Russian Orthodox Church]]. The other faction of the RSDLP was known as the [[Mensheviks]], derived from the word ''men'shinstvo'' ("minority"). The split into two factions occurred at the Second [[Congress of the CPSU | Party Congress]] in 1903. After the split, the Bolshevik party was designated as RSDLP(b) (Russian: РСДРП(б)), where "b" stands for "Bolsheviks".
Bolsheviks led by [[Vladimir Lenin]] seized power in Russia in 1917 in an event known as the [[October Revolution]]. Shortly after seizing power, the party changed its name to the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (РКП(б)) in 1918 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.)
The Bolshevik political platform has often been referred to as [[Bolshevism]]. [[Leon Trotsky]] frequently used the terms "Bolshevism" and "Bolshevist" after his exile from the Soviet Union to differentiate between what he saw as true [[Leninism]] and the regime within the state and the party which arose under [[Joseph Stalin | Stalin]]. However, "Bolshevism" today is commonly associated with the Stalinist regime which existed in the [[Soviet Union]].
