# Bolsheviks The revolutionary Marxist faction led by [[Vladimir Lenin]] that seized power in the October 1917 [[Russian Revolution]] and established the [[Soviet Union]]. The Bolsheviks — meaning "majority" (from a contested 1903 party congress vote) — built the organizational model of a disciplined vanguard party that would control every subsequent communist state: democratic centralism, ruthless suppression of internal dissent, and the conviction that a small revolutionary elite could and should act on behalf of a working class that didn't yet know what it wanted. The Bolsheviks created the [[Cheka]] as their enforcement arm, defeated the White Army in the Russian Civil War, and evolved into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Their organizational template — the idea that a committed ideological minority can capture and transform state institutions from within — resonates in the vault beyond the Soviet context, as a structural parallel invoked (by both admirers and critics) when analyzing vanguard strategies on the American right. ## See Also - [[Vladimir Lenin]] — founder and leader - [[Russian Revolution]] — the seizure of power - [[Cheka]] — the secret police they created - [[Joseph Stalin]] — Lenin's successor who consolidated Bolshevik power - [[Soviet Union]] — the state they built