[pandaman]

>Weren't the Bolsheviks just a minor faction that ended up winning the civil war? Bolshevism became the party in the USSR.

Nope. It was a majority faction ("bolshevik" literally means "member of majority" as opposite to "menshevik", "member of minority") in the Russian Social-Democratic Worker Party (РСДРП). They took power during the October Revolution. Soon after the revolution the party was renamed into Russian Communist Party (of Bolsheviks). A year later the Communist International (Commintern) was created by Lenin's order and its first congress in 1919 was attended by delegates from 21 different countries.

So, it seems to me, it was not a minor faction in a single country but a member of the international Communist movement.

[aaron-lebo]

Minor is the wrong word. I was trying to get across that the Bolsheviks were but one political entity that existed as of about 1915 and ended up winning, and even as of 1904 they didn't exist separately within their own party (as you say). It was a relatively small group of men that ended up dominating Russia, partially due to how ruthless they were willing to be.

I'm still not sure how the OP knew any Bolsheviks, was anyone calling themselves that in 1970?

[pandaman]

My point is that it was the mainstream Left in 20th century. The fact that people insist on calling them "Bolsheviks" instead of "Communists" is, IMHO, an indication that Left still hope to salvage their ideology by implying that "it was not the true Communism!". There were plenty of them in 1970 (6M or so party members) and, even though, the CPSU was officially disbanded in 1991, a new CPSU has been established in 1993 as its successor and still has enough support to win seats in Duma.

[kmonsen]

I don't think Leninism, Bolsheviks or Communism are anything to do with what I understand leftism (or socialism) to be.

The former were all about a minority controlling the majority, while the latter is about the majority being in control (although that does not work out all that well always either).

Note that the it is almost impossible to discuss this due to overloaded terms like liberalism which means the opposite depending on who you ask. I define leftism like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics

[aaron-lebo]

I'm getting into semantics, but though I get that the Bolsheviks of 1920 transformed (officially) and eventually into the CPSU in 1952, with that "rebranding", did anyone in the USSR still call themselves Bolsheviks or were they communists or was there a more popular term?

It's just that I've never seen it in (historical) contexts outside of describing the pre 1920s revolutionaries.

[pandaman]

>anyone in the USSR still call themselves Bolsheviks or were they communists or was there a more popular term

They used "bolshevik" as a term of endearment especially in reference to the old party members.

[LoSboccacc]

> that Left still hope to salvage their ideology by implying that "it was not the true Communism!"

don't worry most of the left repackaged the old communism into moral relativism and is no longer trying to win that unwinnable battle to keep communism as an ideology detached from all communist implementations.

it's mostly the older guards that still try that line.

[anigbrowl]

OK, but so what? Most political parties in history started out as factions of other parties that then split off and coalesced around a new ideological tendency. The Republican party in the US was formed by members of the Whig and Free Soil parties, while the Democratic party (incidentally, the world's oldest political party) grew from the Anti-Federalist party in the late 18th century.

It was a relatively small group of men that ended up dominating Russia, partially due to how ruthless they were willing to be.

You mean like every other successful revolutionary party? Revolutionaries that aren't willing to be ruthless end up in prison or on the scaffold. To quote Ben Franklin as he was preparing to sign the Declaration of Independence, 'We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'

[aaron-lebo]

Requisitioning disincentivised peasants from producing more grain than they could personally consume, and thus production slumped.[247] A booming black market supplemented the official state-sanctioned economy,[248] and Lenin called on speculators, black marketeers and looters to be shot.[249] Both the Socialist Revolutionaries and Left Socialist Revolutionaries condemned the armed appropriations of grain at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in July 1918.[250] Realising that the Committees of the Poor Peasants were also persecuting peasants who were not kulaks and thus contributing to anti-government feeling among the peasantry, in December 1918 Lenin abolished them.[251]

Lenin repeatedly emphasised the need for terror and violence in overthrowing the old order and ensuring the success of the revolution.[252] Speaking to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in November 1917, he declared that "the state is an institution built up for the sake of exercising violence. Previously, this violence was exercised by a handful of moneybags over the entire people; now we want ... to organise violence in the interests of the people."[253] He strongly opposed suggestions to abolish capital punishment.[254] Fearing anti-Bolshevik forces would overthrow his administration, in December 1917 Lenin ordered the establishment of the Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Cheka, a political police force led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.[255]

In September 1918, Sovnarkom passed a decree that inaugurated the Red Terror, a system of repression orchestrated by the Cheka.[256] Although sometimes described as an attempt to eliminate the entire bourgeoisie,[257] Lenin did not want to exterminate all members of this class, merely those who sought to reinstate their rule.[258] The majority of the Terror's victims were well-to-do citizens or former members of the Tsarist administration;[259] others were non-bourgeois anti-Bolsheviks and perceived social undesirables such as prostitutes.[260] The Cheka claimed the right to both sentence and execute anyone whom it deemed to be an enemy of the government, without recourse to the Revolutionary Tribunals.[261] Accordingly, throughout Soviet Russia the Cheka carried out killings, often in large numbers.[262] For example, the Petrograd Cheka executed 512 people in a few days.[263] There are no surviving records to provide an accurate figure of how many perished in the Red Terror;[264] later estimates of historians have ranged between 10,000 and 15,000,[265] and 50,000 to 140,000.[266]

What did Ben Franklin do that was comparable to that?

[anigbrowl]

Wow - whataboutism, a Gish gallop, and cherry-picking all at once. Quite the rhetorical cocktail, but I'd have preferred a responsive answer in your own words.