Atlas / Organisations / Bolsheviks
Bolsheviks
RSDLP(b) · 1903–1924 · Russia · Communist · Electoral party · coding confidence high
Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →
Core principles
A disciplined vanguard party seizes power in the name of the working class and imposes socialism from above.
Economic model
Nationalisation of banks, land and large industry; war communism; then a partial market retreat under the NEP.
Organisation of powers
Soviets subordinated to the party, other parties banned, factions banned within the party, secret police from 1917.
Reading note
The pivotal case for separating economic content from institutional form: economics far left, authority far concentrated.
Check a claim about Bolsheviks. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.
Open in the atlasThe evidence for every score
All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.
EC · Economic organisation · scored −09
Banks, land and large industry were taken into state ownership within a year of the seizure of power.
- Documented act or statuteThe Decree on Land abolished private landownership in November 1917.
- Documented act or statuteBanks were nationalised in December 1917 and large-scale industry in June 1918.
- Documented act or statuteCoded −9 rather than −10 because the New Economic Policy from 1921 restored small private trade and farming.
CU · Social and cultural order · scored −05
Culturally radical in the first phase: the most permissive family and gender law then in existence anywhere.
- Documented act or statuteDivorce on demand, civil marriage and the legalisation of abortion were introduced between 1917 and 1920.
- Documented act or statuteThe criminalisation of homosexuality was removed with the tsarist code in 1922.
AU · Organisation of power · scored +08
Other parties, factions and the elected assembly were removed within four years.
- Documented act or statuteThe Constituent Assembly, in which the Socialist Revolutionaries held a majority, was dissolved by force after one sitting in January 1918.
- Documented act or statuteThe Cheka was established in December 1917, six weeks after the seizure of power.
- Documented act or statuteThe Tenth Party Congress banned organised factions inside the party in 1921.
SC · Scale of decision · scored +07
Formally federal, actually centralist, with the party structure overriding the republican one.
- Documented act or statuteThe 1922 union treaty created republics whose communist parties were branches of a single centralised party.
ID · Rule of membership · scored −07
Internationalist and class-based rather than national: membership was defined by relation to production, not descent.
- Programme textThe Comintern was founded in 1919 on the premise that the revolution was not national.
- Documented act or statuteCoded −7 rather than lower because 'former people' were disenfranchised by class origin in the 1918 constitution.
CH · Method and tempo · scored +10
An armed seizure of power against a provisional government, followed by civil war.
- Documented act or statutePower was taken by armed insurrection in October 1917 rather than through the election held the following month.
Where it came from, and what came after
- takes its doctrine fromClassical Marxism
The Bolsheviks took the programme and rejected the parliamentary strategy attached to it.
- takes its doctrine fromConspiracy of Equals
The insurrectionary vanguard seizing power on behalf of a class, a century before Lenin.
- split intoMensheviks
The 1903 congress split on party membership rules and never reunified.
- destroyedMensheviks
The Mensheviks were banned in 1921 and their leaders exiled or imprisoned.
- becameStalinism
The same party apparatus, with its founding generation largely executed by 1938.
- split intoTrotskyism
The Left Opposition was expelled in 1927 and its leader deported in 1929.
- gave doctrine toEurocommunism
The western communist parties were founded as Comintern sections and broke with Moscow from 1968.
- gave doctrine toCPI(M) and the Kerala Model
Founded in the Comintern tradition and now the longest-serving elected communist party anywhere.
- gave doctrine toCommunist Party of Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party and a Comintern agent.
- gave doctrine toMaoism
Founded with Comintern assistance in 1921 and doctrinally independent from the 1930s.
- gave doctrine toLao People's Revolutionary Party
Founded from the Indochinese Communist Party alongside the Vietnamese party.
Nearest organisations by measured distance
Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.
Countries
Arguments this entry is used in
Claims in circulation that turn on where this organisation sits. Each gives the strongest case for it, the strongest case against, and the measurement.
Cite this page
Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.
Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.