Soviet (governmental body)

Photo of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917, a major formation of revolutionary workers.

A soviet is a council comprised of revolutionary members of the working class and peasantry. In the context of socialist countries such as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, soviets were critical in their role as the elected representative bodies of state power and mechanisms for democratic governance.

By country

Pre-revolutionary Russia

The soviets emerged from the revolutionary ferment of the masses in the Revolution of 1905 in Tsarist Russia, springing up as bodies for the leadership of the workers’ strike movement and functioning as the rudimentary organs of a new, revolutionary power which go later develop into the dictatorship of the proletariat. At the height of the revolution, certain soviets assumed the leadership of the armed uprising.

One of the first soviets was the Soviet of Deputies (Sovet upolnomochennykh), formed in May 1905 by striking workers in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. In the fall of 1905, soviets of workers’ deputies sprang up in many cities and workers’ settlements. In Moscow a soviet of soldiers’ deputies was organized alongside the soviet of workers. In Chita, soviets of soldiers’ and cossacks' deputies sprang up, and in Sevastopol’, soviets of sailors’, soldiers’, and workers’ deputies.

The St. Petersburg soviet included representatives of the Bolsheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), and Mensheviks. It was initially dominated by the petit bourgeois parties, who viewed the soviets not as militant revolutionary organizations of the masses but as bodies of local self-government. As a result, the St. Petersburg soviet was in no position to stand at the head of an armed uprising. The Moscow soviet of workers’ deputies was dominated by the Bolsheviks and was thus able to lead the workers of Moscow, whose struggle touched off the December armed uprising.

The experience of the soviets during the 1905 revolution was of enormous significance in the February Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution of 1917 and the Great October Socialist Revolution. During the February Revolution of 1917, the soviets, which sprang up everywhere, were the bodies of the new revolutionary proletarian dictatorship.

See also

• Dictatorship of the proletariat
• Dual power