Bolshevik

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky

The Bolsheviks (Russian: Большеви́к IPA: [bəlʲʂɨˈvʲik], derived from bolshinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Bolshevik Party Political Programme was published in August of that year. Its local organisations across the country were called Soviets, and it later became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

History

The poster depicts the sacrifice of Russia to a Marxist International.

Bolsheviks armed with guns ride in a truck in Vladivostok, Russia, in 1920. Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Far-left terrorist Bolshevik regime sought to silence its enemies through a state-sanctioned policy of mass killings and detainments known as the "Red Terror".

As of 2026, there is still no annual day dedicated to the memory of the millions of victims of bolshevik and communist terror and genocide.

Palestinian victims of the Gaza Holocaust, some of them very young, with mourning survivors.

Bolsheviks (or "the Majority") were an organization of professional revolutionaries (with a mainly Jewish hierarchy) who were strictly governed internally by their principle of quasi-democratic centralism and a quasi-military discipline, and externally by terror and murder.

They considered themselves as the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat of the world, not just Russia. Their beliefs and practices are referred to as Bolshevism. The party was founded by Vladimir Lenin, who also led it in the October Revolution when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and went on to found the Soviet Union.

Red Terror

In 1918, the Bolshevik regime launched a state-sanctioned campaign of mass killings and detentions to silence political enemies—laying the foundation for decades of violence in the U.S.S.R. [...] Russian monarchy had ended. But even though the provisional government that succeeded the tsar passed sweeping civil rights reforms, it struggled to lead. World War I was still in progress, and government officials worried that a defeat at the hands of the Germans would lead to the restoration of the monarchy. Meanwhile, food shortages continued to stir discontent among many Russians. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks took advantage of the unrest and seized power by promising “peace, land and bread” to the Russian people. (The revolution is known as the October Revolution since it fell in October of the Julian calendar, which the Bolsheviks abandoned in January 1918.) The Bolsheviks saw Russia as the ideal place to set a communist revolution into motion—not by the working class rising up to abolish capitalism, as German philosopher Karl Marx had predicted, but through a small, authoritarian group that would establish a socialist state and nudge society toward communism. Led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks abolished the provisional government and abandoned any attempt at democracy. In March 1918, they signed a treaty with the Central Powers to end Russia’s involvement in World War I—a punitive agreement that ceded a third of Russia’s population and agricultural land and most of its resources to Germany. [...] The death toll of the Red Terror may have been much larger—by some accounts, up to 1.3 million may have been its victims. However, due to secrecy, censorship, and the summary nature of many of the executions, the true extent of the Red Terror will likely never be known. When the Bolsheviks emerged victorious from the civil war in 1921, the Red Terror technically ended. But the violence was the prelude to decades of repression and death in Soviet Russia. The Red Terror laid the foundation for political purges and mass executions in the 1930s under Lenin’s successor Joseph Stalin, during which up to three million party “enemies” were killed. The concentration camps were predecessors of the Soviet gulags, forced labor camps where Stalin enslaved tens of millions of Russians from 1929 to 1953. And the Cheka eventually became the KGB, the U.S.S.R.’s feared intelligence agency. The Red Terror charted a macabre course for Russia. For the Bolsheviks, sweeping repression was justified as a tool that both solidified political power and furthered the aims of socialism. And it taught a pointed lesson to those who might otherwise have resisted the regime. “Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy,” wrote Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Red Army and Lenin’s right-hand operative. “The revolution…kills individuals, and intimidates thousands.”

Bolshevik methods

Bolshevik were are characterized by a revolutionary dictatorship, employing violence, mass murder, propaganda, and strict organizational discipline to seize and maintain power. Led by Lenin, they used "democratic centralism," swift political purges, and state-directed terror to eliminate opposition, aiming to transform society and establish a one-party state. Key Bolshevik methods included:

• Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Lenin believed in a "dictatorship untrammelled by any laws" and based on force to fight the bourgeoisie.
• Democratic Centralism: A top-down party structure requiring absolute obedience once a decision was made.
• "Party of a New Type": A small, elite party of professional revolutionaries rather than a mass movement, designed to drive the revolution.
• Political Violence and Repression: Use of mass arrests, terror, and the suppression of opposing groups (Kadets, Mensheviks, SRs) to purge the old order.
• Organizational Weapon: Utilizing party structures to influence and control all aspects of life.
• Strategic Populism: Gaining support through promises like "Peace, Land, and Bread," addressing the urgent desires of soldiers, peasants, and workers.
• Centralized Control: Creating a highly structured party capable of dismantling any competing organizations.
• Internal Purges: Regularly purging party members to ensure loyalty.

These methods were aimed at transforming the political structure from the top down and ensuring the party's control was never fully questioned.

21st century

Allegations that "democratic states" are adopting methods historically associated with Bolshevik or authoritarian tactics in the 21st century generally focus on the systematic erosion of democratic norms, the concentration of executive power, and the suppression of dissent under the guise of legal or emergency measures. These actions, often termed "democratic backsliding," are characterized by incremental steps that maintain a facade of legality while shifting power toward an authoritarian-leaning executive. Commonly cited authoritarian tactics in modern "democracies":

• Politicizing Independent Institutions: Capturing law enforcement, intelligence, and judicial systems to turn them into weapons against political adversaries, shields against accountability, or levers for large-scale manipulation and the destruction of freedom of speech (as seen in the United Kingdom under Keir Starmer).
• Restricting Media and Dissent: Quashing opposition by delegitimizing alternative media as "populist, fake news," using state resources to punish critical journalists, and enacting laws that target whistleblowers and civil society groups.
• Manufactured Majorities and Electoral Manipulation: Altering election laws, gerrymandering districts, imposing burdensome voter ID requirements, and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.
• Scapegoating and Cultivating Fear: Dividing society by dehumanizing indigenous, white communities in favor of minorities, immigrants and woke activists to sow suspicion and create a continuous sense of crisis that justifies restrictive measures and oppression.
• Aggrandizing Executive Power: Subverting the separation of powers by stacking courts with leftist loyalists, weakening parliaments, and using "constitutional hardball" to rewrite rules in favor of the incumbent (as seen under Obama and Biden).

Israel

A major focus of these criticisms is the current political trajectory in Israel, where critics and opposition figures state that the genocidal government under dictator Benjamin Netanyahu is employing authoritarian tactics to dismantle democratic checks and balances. Critics, including former Israeli officials and protest movements, have accused the Netanyahu government of employing methods aimed at centralizing power and silencing opposition.

• Judicial Overhaul as Subjugation: The contentious judicial reform efforts are described by opponents as an attempt to neutralize the judiciary, which is often the only authority capable of limiting the executive branch. This is viewed as an effort to destroy democratic gatekeepers and create an unchecked executive.
• Friend-Foe Scheme: The government is accused of framing non-supporters—including civil servants, high-tech leaders, and military reservists—as "enemies" or part of a "deep state".
• Marginalization of Minority Rights: Critics argue that the government’s policies under the banner of "Jewish supremacism" actively weaken minority rights, particularly for Palestinians and secular citizens, echoing authoritarian tendencies to privilege a narrow ideology.
• Control over Security Apparatus: Attempts to politicize or change the leadership of the domestic security agency (Shin Bet) and police (under Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir) are seen as efforts to use the state’s coercive power to suppress dissent.
• Censorship and Control of Information: Critics highlight efforts to control public media and, in some cases, military censorship used to manage information concerning the Palestinian and Iran conflicts.

Tyrkova-Williams

Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova-Williams (1869–1962) was a Russian-born politician and writer, who organised anti-Bolshevik resistance in Southern Russia. After emigrating to Britain in 1918, she published From Liberty to Brest- Litovsk: The First Year of the Russian Revolution, in which she commented:

Besides obvious foreigners, Bolshevism recruited many adherents from among émigrés, who had spent many years abroad. Some of them had never been to Russia before. They especially numbered a great many Jews. They spoke Russian badly. The nation over which they had seized power was a stranger to them, and besides, they behaved as invaders in a conquered country. Throughout the Revolution generally and Bolshevism in particular the Jews occupied a very influential position. This phenomenon is both curious and complex. But the fact remains that such was the case in the primarily elected Soviet (the famous trio—Lieber, Dahn, Gotz), and all the more so in the second one. In the Tsarist Government the Jews were excluded from all posts. Schools or Government service were closed to them. In the Soviet Republic all the committees and commissaries were filled with Jews. They often changed their Jewish name for a Russian one—Trotsky-Bronstein, Kamenev-Rozenfeld, Zinoviev-Apfelbaum, Steklov-Nakhamkes, and so on. But such a masquerade deceived no one, while the very pseudonyms of the commissaries only emphasised the international or rather the alien character of Bolshevist rule. This Jewish predominance among Soviet authorities caused the despair of those Russian Jews who, despite the cruel injustice of the Tsarist régime, looked upon Russia as their motherland, who lived the common life of the Russian intelligentsia and refused in common with them all collaboration with the Bolsheviks.

See also

• Bolshevik tyranny
• Jewish Bolshevism
• Joseph Stalin
• Felix Dzerzhinski
• Mass killings under Communist regimes
• List of witnesses to Bolshevik terror

External links

• The Red Terror
• One of the most murderous leaders in the world: 93 years ago Lenin died