The
Bolsheviks, originally also
Bolshevists or
Bolsheviki (; derived from большинство
bol'shinstvo, "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority") were a
faction of the
Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split apart from the
Menshevik faction at the
Second Party Congress in 1903. The RSDLP was revolutionary
socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party.