Definitions for "Bolsheviks"
members of Russian Majority Socialist Party, communist revolutionaries, “Reds
Having split from the Russian Socialist movement in 1903, the Bolsheviks ('Majority') developed into a small, tightly organised, revolutionary Marxist group led by Lenin, for whom violence was a legitimate instrument of power. In November 1917, they took control of a chaotic Russia, becoming the de facto rulers after the subsequent civil war. They then renamed themselves the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
"majority group," Lenin's camp of the Russian party of Marxian socialism. (p. 906)