The Bolsheviks

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The Bolsheviks were a professional wrestling tag team in the World Wrestling Federation from late 1987 until the spring of 1990.

The team was comprised of Nikolai Volkoff and Boris Zhukov portraying a pair of Russian Communist bad guys. Volkoff was born Josip Peruzovic in October 14, 1947. Although he portrayed a Russian as a wrestler, he was, in fact, from Croatia. Zhukov was an American named Jim Darrel, who had spent the previous few years of his wrestling career portraying a Russian.

[edit] Career

Zhukov was brought in as Volkoff's partner in 1987 after Volkoff's regular partner Iron Sheik was fired for drug use.

The pair made their first PPV appearance together in the 10 team elimination match at the innagural Survivor Series in 1987. The pair had little success and were the first team eliminated from the match.

They then made an appearance in the 20 man battle royal held at WrestleMania IV in Atlantic City. The duo lost to the Powers of Pain at SummerSlam '88. They were once again apart of the the 10 team elimination match held at Survivor Series '88 but were eliminated early once again.

They spent much of 1989 on the low end of the card, fueding with The Bushwackers and despite being on the active roster the entire year they never made to a PPV card, missing out on events like the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania V and SummerSlam '89, Survivor Series '89 and Royal Rumble '90.

The duo never held any titles together, and made their last notable PPV appearance as a team at WrestleMania VI, where they were defeated in 19 seconds by The Hart Foundation.

After WrestleMania, the duo split up. Volkoff became a flag-waving American face and Zhukov remained the Russian heel. The duo fueded throughout 1990 and ultimately culminated at Survivor Series 1990 in an eight man elimination match when Volkoff's team of Tito Santana and The Bushwackers, called The Alliance defeated The Mercanaries, a team consisting of Sgt. Slaughter, The Orient Express and Zhukov. Santana was the sole survivor.

By the end of 1990 both Volkoff and Zhukov had left the World Wrestling Federation.