The party started in 1898 as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1903 that party split into a Menshevik (minority) and Bolshevik (majority) faction; the latter, led by Vladimir Lenin, is the direct ancestor of the CPSU and is the party that seized power in the October Revolution of 1917. Its activities were suspended on Soviet territory 74 years later, on 29 August 1991, soon after a failed coup d'état by old-line CPSU leaders against the reforming Soviet president and party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It was outlawed entirely three months later on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory.