Question

what is the difference between Bolshevik and manshevik

Answer 1

Bolsheviks comes from “bol’she”, the Russian word for more and Mensheviks comes from “men’she”, the word for less, so these are the “Majority” and the “Minority” faction of the Russian Social-Democrats. Ironically they were actually reversed. The naming comes from a session of the “Iskra” editing staff (their official newspaper) held in Switzerland (where the party leaders lived in exile). After a heated argument about the general Party policy lines most of the Martov faction left the meeting, but Lenin and his followers stayed and continued. So from that moment on he did not miss a chance to rub that in their faces and boasting how “You see, we’re the majority, we set the Party guidelines!”. The Mensheviks were more of idealists, they did adhere to the ideas of Marx and he was sure that a workers revolution is only possible when the society and the economy have reached a certain level. Lenin’s Bolsheviks on the other hand were much more pragmatic. They were Marx’ revisionists, who believed, that the required environment for a revolution is such as they set it, so instead of waiting for the right moment to ripe they were determined to work with what they had at hand. It is believed that the Mensheviks were much more democratic, but this is pure speculation and no one could say with certainty if they would have stayed that way, had they come to power. The Bolsheviks considered themselves to be the working class’ vanguard, the “army of the proletariat”. They organized themselves along military discipline and “democratic centralism”, the latter being the operative word. It is their small number and military hierarchy which allowed them to make quick decisions and act rapidly on them, which brought their success in the October revolution, the Russian Civil War and their purge of Mensheviks.