After a period of intermittent collaboration and schism with Mensheviks, the Bolshevik Party was formally constituted in 1912. During the February Revolution of 1917, the majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee and the editorial board of the Bolshevik journal Pravda (meaning Truth), headed by Joseph Stalin and Matvei Muranov, gave conditional support to the Provisional Government and entered unity discussions with the Mensheviks. Party membership soared and many exiles returned, but there were problems of loss of direction.
After the outbreak of the February Revolution of 1917, Lenin returned, from self imposed exile, to Russia. Lenin published the April Theses, in which he called for opposition to the Provisional Government. He advocated immediate revolution but the Party was divided as to the efficacy of a revolution at that time. In July, the Bolsheviks staged a revolution but if failed and Lenin fled to Finland. He returned to Russia in October to lead the October Revolution.
On the night of October 24th, 1917 the Bolsheviks staged a coup, engineered by Trotsky and assisted by the workers’ Red Guard and the sailors of Kronstadt; they captured the government buildings and the Winter Palace in Petrograd. The Provisional Government was overthrown. A second all-Russian congress of soviets met and approved the coup after the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries walked out of the meeting. The Council of People’s Commissars, was set up with Lenin as chairman and Trotsky as foreign commissar. The second congress immediately called for cessation of hostilities, gave private and church lands to village soviets, and abolished private property.
Lenin, as Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars, abolished all private ownership of land in Russia and began distributing it to the peasants. Banks were nationalized – and factories were given over to the control of the workers. Lenin closed the Constituent Assembly – taking complete control of Russia. He also began banning other political parties, including the Mensheviks. The Russian Civil War broke out which lasted from 1917 – 1920.
For the Jews who had very little rights or opportunities for progress in Russia, up to that time, Lenin’s Bolshevism had offered an opportunity undreamt of before. The Bolsheviks recognized the ethnic and cultural differences of the peoples of Russia (including Jews which they defined as an ethnic cultural group.) The Bolsheviks prosecuted anti-Semitism –and anti–ethnic prejudice. They opened the doors to opportunities throughout the Bolshevik government and the Socialist system. Anyone of merit could rise irrespective of their ethnic background.
However, to the core, the Bolsheviks were Atheist. They banned all religions including The Russian Orthodox Church and Judaism. To progress in Russia you had to give up all religious beliefs and all non nationalistic affiliations – which included Zionism. The Hebrew (Zionist) language was banned -yet Yiddish, which was the “ethnic” language of the Jews of Russia, was permitted. Bolshevism demanded total loyalty to its Socialist, Atheist ideology.