Marxist revolutionary party that preceded the Communist Party of the Soviet Union .
Founded in Minsk in 1898, it held that Russia could achieve socialism only after developing a bourgeois society with an urban proletariat. The party split in 1903 because of the argument between the Bolshevik wing, led by Vladimir Ilich Lenin , and the Menshevik wing, led by L. Martov , over Lenin's proposals for a party composed of professional revolutionaries. Party members were active in the Russian Revolution of 1905 . In the turmoil of the Russian Revolution of 1917 , the Bolsheviks broke completely with the Mensheviks and changed their name to "Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)."