Bolshevik

• bolshevik

Borrowed from Russian большеви́к (bolʹševík), from большинство́ (bolʹšinstvó, “majority”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbɒlʃəvɪk/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈboʊ̯lʃəvɪk/, /ˈbɑl-/, /ˈbol-/, /ˈbɔl-/

Bolshevik (plural Bolsheviks or Bolsheviki)

1. (historical) A Russian communist revolutionary, member of the Bolshevik Party in the 1917 Communist Revolution of Russia.
   • 1968, Robert Conquest, “The Problem of Confession”, in The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties‎, Macmillan Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 124:

     But such points were on the whole lost in the picture as it appeared in gross: everyone had confessed, the Old Bolsheviks had publicly avowed disgraceful plans and actions. The whole business almost passed belief. Were the confessions true? How had they been obtained? What did it all signify? We are told that the confessions were as little believed in Russia as abroad, ‘or even less’, but that the average Soviet citizen who had not been in jail found them as puzzling as foreigners did.

2. (historical) A member of the Communist Party that ruled the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

• Bolshevism

• Menshevik