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.