Who is behind the Bolsheviks?
Shows documented founders, leaders, board members, funders and owners.
Not who made decisions, or why.
A connection is not evidence of wrongdoing.
On the record
Sourced links that no one presents as their own account, as recorded so far. Others may exist.
Led by
- Vladimir Lenin leads Primary record 1
Money in
-
Imperial German government
funded
1917
money for propaganda and the party press
Primary record
2
Recorded in the German Foreign Ministry's own files. How much money reached the Bolsheviks, and how much it mattered, is debated by historians.
Each account
One account recorded. Others may exist.
According to Russian Provisional Government
-
Imperial German government
funded
Jul 1917
Scholarship & press
3
The Provisional Government's charge of July 1917. Semion Lyandres (1995) re-examines the evidence it relied on.
Disputed
Listed apart, each with the reason, and never counted.
-
William Boyce Thompson
funded
1917
$1M
According to Antony C. Sutton
Disputed
Scholarship & press
4
Disputed: A US embassy cable of December 1917 relays a Bolshevik newspaper's account that American Red Cross money went to anti-Bolshevik publications.
Sutton bases this on Thompson's own statement as reported in 1918.
Proof 4 sources
-
Revelations from the Russian Archives: Internal Workings of the Soviet Union, Library of Congress.
Primary record
Having come to power in October 1917 by means of a coup d'état, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks spent the next few years struggling to maintain their rule against widespread popular opposition.
-
Germany and the Revolution in Russia, 1915-1918: Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry, Oxford University Press, 1958.
Primary record
It was not until the Bolsheviks had received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels and under different labels that they were in a position to be able to build up their main organ, Pravda
-
The Bolsheviks' 'German Gold' Revisited: An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1995.
Scholarship & press
The report published the next day alleged that Lenin had been sent to Russia by the German government to rally support for a separate peace with Germany
-
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Arlington House, 1974.
Scholarship & press
that he (Thompson) contributed $1 million to the Bolshevik Revolution for propaganda purposes.
How this answer is built
Lines on the record come first: sourced links that no one presents as their own account, each with its strongest source. Then every account recorded here gets its own column, A to Z, none ranked above another. A column quotes only that account's own words and shows the strength of its own sources. Disputed lines are listed apart, with the reason, and lines still being verified come last. Neither is counted. Withdrawn lines are never shown.
When a list is longer than the page shows, the links the public methodology ranks strongest stay (methodology 0.3), and the rest open in the explorer.
Know a source we are missing? Propose it with a pull request to content/entities/org/bo/bolsheviks.md.