Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The Bolsheviks were merely one among several tendencies in and around Russian social democracy (which was in turn distinct from other national based socialist parties of the empire). They did not, in effect, become a separate party until 1912, about the time when they almost certainly became the majority force among the organized working class. Thirdly, from the point of view of foreign socialists, and probably of ordinary Russian workers, the distinctions between different kinds of socialists were incomprehensible or seemed secondary, all being equally deserving of support an sympathy as enemies of tsarism. The main difference between the Bolsheviks and others was that Lenin's comrades were better organized, and efficient and more reliable." [Hobsbawm: Empire, p. 296]