Soviet
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A soviet (совет, lit. 'council') was a council of deputies elected by workers, soldiers, or peasants in their workplace or unit, subject to immediate recall by their electorate. Invented spontaneously by Russian workers as strike leadership organs during the 1905 Revolution, soviets became one pole of the dual power alongside the Provisional Government after February 1917, and, following the October Revolution, were institutionalized as the formal basis of the Soviet state. Organized on a production rather than territorial franchise, with deputies recallable at any time, soviets embodied an alternative model of representation to parliamentarism, though from the mid-1930s they were hollowed out by single-candidate elections and de facto party control.
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Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) comprehensive article on soviets as workers' councils: etymology, origins in 1905, role in 1917, institutional structure within USSR
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian-language article on Soviets: emergence in Ivanovo-Voznesensk May 1905, 62 soviets during 1905 revolution, development into state form, hollowing out in 1930s
- en.internationalism.org International Communist Current analysis drawing on Oskar Anweiler's classic study: spontaneous origins of soviets in 1905 strike struggles, Ivanovo-Voznesensk as first city-wide soviet, relationship to party organizations