Bolshevism (from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Marxist–

Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a
rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused
on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and
establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".[1][2]

Bolshevism originated at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and was
associated with the activities of the Bolshevik faction within the Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party – and first of all, the founder of the faction, Vladimir
Lenin. Remaining on the soil of Marxism, Bolshevism at the same time absorbed
elements of the ideology and practice of the revolutionaries of the second half of
the 19th century (Sergey Nechaev, Pyotr Tkachev, Nikolay Chernyshevsky) and had
many points of contact with such domestic left–wing radical movements as populism.
[3][4] The main theorist of Bolshevism was Vladimir Lenin; besides him, the
theoreticians of Bolshevism include Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni
Preobrazhensky.[2]

In October 1917, the Bolshevik faction organized an armed uprising against the
Provisional Government, formed by other (including socialist) parties and seized
power (see the October Revolution).

Some researchers[5] attribute to Bolshevik theory the program of Joseph Stalin, who
headed the All–Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and at the same time possessed
full state power in the Soviet Union. However, others (both Stalin's contemporaries
and later) do not confuse "Bolshevism" and "Stalinism" proper, considering them to
be multidirectional (revolutionary and thermidorian) phenomena.[6]