What were the Bolsheviks main ideas?

Answer 1

The Bolsheviks believed in a strong central hierarchy with full adherence to a central committee, a style of leadership called "democratic centralism." Lenin and others were ready to push their ideas in 1917, and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II provided them the opportunity. While the Mensheviks wanted to follow the protype Marxist plan of an intermittant liberal capitalism before socialism, Lenin did not think this was necessary. His slogan of "Bread, Peace and Land" was used to counter the current provisional government in hopes of bringing the peasant and working classes in support of the Bolsheviks. It worked and during this time, several other notable leaders joined: Iosif Stalin and Trotsky. The Kerensky provisional government reciprocated by ordering the arrest of top Bolshevik leaders. Lenin was forced to go into hiding and during this time, he wrote "State and Revolution" about his ideas of a socialist government. The repression was lifted only when General Kornilov attempted to attack Petrograd. The Bolsheviks enlisted 25,000 militia men to counter them and eventually a compromise was reached with Kornilov being taken into custody.

A dual power occurred for a while. The legislature and provisional governments were under Kerensky and the Mensheviks while the workers and soldiers were under the Bolsheviks. Lenin along with most Bolsheviks simply wanted an insurrection but Kerensky preempted them on October 22 by ordering the arrest of their Military Revolutionary Council, banning their newspaper and cutting their telephone wires. On October 24, the Bolshevik Red Guard was sent to occupy important locations in the city as well as the Winter Palace which housed the Provisional Government. Power was handed over on October 26 to the "Soviet Council of People's Commissars" with Lenin as chairman, Trotsky as commissar of the Red Army and minister of foreign affairs (odd that the head of the army is the minister of foreign affairs…talk about diplomacy…). It was later renamed as "All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)" in 1918.

Answer 2

The Bolsheviks were Marxists who believed that the socialist revolution that Marx predicted did not have to await the creation of the proletariat class in an industrialized country as Marx did, but that it could be accomplished by a small group of professional revolutionaries who could then impose a socialist system on the country.

Answer 3

The Bolsheviks main belief was to seize state power and to establish Dictatorship of the proletariat's.