The Bolsheviks did not simply spring into being fully formed. The party was built painstakingly over the course of many years, chiefly by Lenin, to serve as an instrument for the revolutionary workers and peasants when the time was right. 

As Antonio Balmer, one of our leading comrades from the USA explains, the history of Bolshevism was one of unrelenting ideological struggle against different political tendencies in Russia: from the terrorist methods of the Narodniks, to the reformist opportunism of Bernstein and the Economists.

The Party had to clarify itself internally as well, with Lenin patiently winning his comrades to the correct course, eventually building a revolutionary party worthy of the tasks of history.