- Soviet (council)
A soviet ( _ru. сове́т, IPA-ru|sɐˈvʲɛt, "council" [ _uk. рада ("
rada "); _be. савет; _uz. совет; _kk. совет/кеңес; _az. совет; _lt. taryba; _mo. совиет; _lv. padome; _ky. совет; _et. nõukogu] ) originally was a workers' local council in lateImperial Russia . According to the officialhistoriography of theSoviet Union , the first Soviet (in this sense) was organized during the1905 Russian Revolution inIvanovo (Ivanovo region) in May 1905. However in his memoirsVolin claims that he witnessed the creation of theSt Petersburg Soviet inSaint Petersburg in January 1905. The councils were later adopted by theBolshevik s, as the basic organizing unit of society.Originally the soviets were a
grassroots effort to practicedirect democracy . Russian Marxists made them a medium for organizing against the state, and between the February andOctober Revolution s, thePetrograd Soviet was a powerful force. The slogan Вся власть советам ("Vsya vlast sovyetam"; "All power to the soviets" or "All power to the workers' councils") was popular in opposing the Provisional Government led by Kerensky.Shortly after the
October Revolution , the soviets, as organized into a larger body, formed the new basis for governing the post-revolutionary society throughsoviet democracy . All parties were united in anticipation of a Constituent Assembly. However, a year of debate and discussion within the Bolshevik party resulted in a significant change in party policy. The Bolsheviks adopted the position that the Constituent Assembly was a bourgeois-democratic institution, and counterpoised to it the direct mode of workers' democracy represented by the Soviets. Thus, the post-October Constituent Assembly was dissolved with the mass support of the urban working class (the restoration of the Constituent Assembly soon became the slogan of some of the more liberal Whites in theRussian Civil War ). The Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries together held a majority of seats in the Congress of Soviets and formed a coalition government, which lasted until the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the coalition in the summer 1918. Over time, the independence of the soviets was supplanted by the top-down authority of the increasingly bureaucratized ruling regime, based on the strict hierarchy of power within theCPSU .Fact|date=June 2008 Despite this, the claim was still made after the rise ofStalinism that Bolshevik power rested on the collective will of these soviets.The term also came to be used outside the
Soviet Union by someMarxist-Leninist movements, for example, theCommunist Party of China 's efforts in the "Chinese Soviet Republic " immediately prior to theLong March .Based on the view of the state implicit in the Bolshevik use of the term, the word "soviet" naturally extended, or consciously was extended, to mean in effect any body formed by a group of soviets to delegate, up a hierarchy of soviets, the authority to express and effect their will. In this sense, post-Kerensky government bodies at local and republic levels (but in the Russian federated republic, local, republic, and federated republic levels) were called "soviets", and at the top of the hierarchy, the
Congress of Soviets was the nominal core of the Union government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, officially formed in December 1922.Later, in the
Soviet Union local governmental bodies were named "soviet" ("sovet": "council ") with the adjective indicating of the administrative level, customarily abbreviated : gorsovet ("gorodskoy sovet": city council), raysovet/raisovet ("rayonny sovet":raion council),selsovet : rural council, possovet ("poselkovy sovet": settlement council).Footnotes
Further reading
* Edward Acton "Rethinking the Russian Revolution" 1990 Oxford University Press ISBN 0713165308
*Tony Cliff " [http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1976/lenin2/index.htm Lenin: All Power to the Soviets] " 1976 Pluto Press
*Voline "The Unknown Revolution" Black Rose Books
* Rex A. Wade "The Russian Revolution, 1917" 2005 Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521841550ee also
*
Congress of Soviets
*Workers' council
*Soviet democracy
*Council communism
*Participatory democracy
*Workers' control
*Rada (Ukrainian equivalent)
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.