Soviet

Meaning and etymology

The word soviet derives from a Russian word meaning council, assembly, advice, harmony or concord. The same word served for pre-revolutionary state bodies such as the State Council (1810-1917) and survived after 1991 in institutions like the Federation Council. Within the Soviet republics it was often left untranslated (Вярхоўны Савет in Belarus, Ali Soveti in Azerbaijan, Олий Совети in Uzbekistan, Sovietul Suprem in Moldova) or rendered by local equivalents such as рада in Ukrainian and rada in Polish.

English-language accounts define the soviet as a representative workers' council following a socialist ideology, particularly in the context of the Russian Revolution, while Russian-language accounts describe Советы as collegial representative organs of popular power elected by the population for a fixed term. The term may also refer to any socialist workers' council, such as the Irish soviets, and soviets elsewhere did not inherently adhere to the ideology of the Soviet Union. The Paris Commune of 1871, a council of recallable delegates, is treated as the model for later workers' councils and was named by Engels as the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

History

First soviets were established during the 1905 Revolution. According to official Soviet historiography the first workers' council formed in May 1905 in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Soviets sprang up in industrial centres, usually organized at factory level, as autonomous organs of strike leadership and direct action breaking free of government-supervised unions, and they disappeared after the 1905 revolution.

The 'first soviet' attribution is contested. On 8 March 1905 an Alapayevsk soviet of workers' deputies was created but operated within a single enterprise; the better-known Council of Authorized Delegates (Совет уполномоченных) was organized on 15 May 1905 by striking textile workers in Ivanovo-Voznesensk and acted city-wide as a strike committee. It elected 151 deputies, one per 500 workers, including 25 women, chaired by A. E. Nozdrin, sat 15 (28) May to 19 July (1 August) 1905 and created workers' militia and a commission system, and is considered the first soviet in Russia. The article itself also notes the view that this assembly was not a new form of state administration and was branded the 'first soviet' in the 1920s-30s for ideological reasons.

Accounts of the Petersburg Soviet's genesis also diverge. The anarchist Volin claimed in his memoirs to have witnessed the beginnings of the St Petersburg Soviet in January 1905, and its first chairman Khrustalev-Nosar publicly asserted that he and a group of workers had created a workers' deputies' council from a strike committee formed on 9 January 1905. The Soviet-era memoirist Sverbkov rejected this as fabrication, while Milyukov's memoirs also traced the council's genesis to early 1905 and the Shidlovsky commission. The Petersburg Soviet as a city-wide body was constituted on 13 October 1905 with 40 delegates, reaching 562 deputies from 147 enterprises, 34 workshops and 16 unions by mid-November, with Trotsky elected chairman on 26 November 1905 after Khrustalev-Nosar's arrest.

In the course of the first Russian revolution 62 soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies arose, 47 headed or influenced by Bolsheviks and 10 by Mensheviks. During the December uprising in Moscow the Bolshevik-led Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies and outlying soviets led the armed uprising and acted as revolutionary organs of power. After the defeat of the 1905-07 revolution the government liquidated the soviets and persecuted their deputies.

After the February Revolution soviets emerged nationwide and a state of dual power arose between the Provisional Government and the soviets. Two Petrograd soviets, of workers' and of soldiers' deputies, merged on 1 March 1917 into the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which exercised power in the capital alongside and against the Provisional Government. About 600 soviets of workers' and soldiers' deputies existed in cities and provinces by March 1917. The Petrograd Soviet's Executive Committee formed commissions parallel to ministries and issued acts such as the eight-hour-day decree, and a Contact Commission, set up on 8 (21) March 1917, exercised soviet control over the government.

At the outset the soviets were dominated by Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, with the Bolsheviks a minority; the Petrograd Soviet of 4,000 members was the most important. As the war continued the Bolsheviks grew and demanded 'all power to the soviets'. The July Days ended dual power and the party withdrew that slogan, but after the Kornilov affair the soviets were 'Bolshevized', the slogan was restored in September and Military Revolutionary Committees were created. On the eve of October 1,429 soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies were in existence.

The October Revolution ended dual power when the Second Congress of Soviets proclaimed itself the supreme governing body of the country. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opened in Petrograd on 25 October (7 November) 1917 and transferred power to the soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' deputies. Lenin described soviet rule in 1918 as 'nothing else than the organized form of the dictatorship of the proletariat', and argued that the disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie was not a planned feature but emerged in the struggle.

The 1918 RSFSR Constitution, adopted on 10 July 1918 by the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, made the soviets the political foundation of the RSFSR and unified a previously chaotic soviet system. Elections remained indirect and unequal, giving urban workers an advantage. Article 65 disqualified from voting and office those employing hired labour for profit, persons living on unearned income, private traders and commercial middlemen, monks and clergy, former police and gendarme officials and members of the Romanov dynasty, the mentally ill, and those convicted of acquisitive offences. Four days after the constitution's adoption the VTsIK annulled the mandates of non-Bolshevik deputies at all levels.

While the soviets were initially multi-party in places, the Bolsheviks claimed a monopoly of leadership through party fractions. On 14 June 1918 the VTsIK excluded Mensheviks and Right SRs from the soviets, and after the Left SR uprising their party was banned and they too were excluded, after which soviets became de facto purely Bolshevik bodies guided by Central Committee instructions. Soviets that elected non-Bolshevik majorities were dissolved, for example Izhevsk in 1918, and in Odessa Bolsheviks used revkom organs to expel elected deputies. Peasant resistance in the early 1920s, including the West Siberian uprising, was fought under the slogan 'Soviets without communists', with rebels forming non-party soviets, and during the Kronstadt uprising of March 1921 the rebels demanded 'Soviets without communists', 'Power to the soviets, not parties' and new soviet elections. After crushing the revolt the Bolsheviks introduced the NEP.

The USSR was formed on 30 December 1922 and the Congress of Soviets of the USSR became the supreme organ of state power. It met once a year, composed of 1 deputy per 25,000 urban residents and 1 per 125,000 residents from provincial congresses; between congresses the Central Executive Committee, with a Presidium of 21, governed, its two equal chambers being the Union Council and the Council of Nationalities, and the CEC formed the Council of People's Commissars. Delegates were directly elected by open vote at electoral assemblies from communist and non-party candidates, with a category of disenfranchised persons (lishentsy) analogous to the 1918 constitution; the share of the disenfranchised fell from 8.2% of urban voters in 1923 to 2.4% in 1934.

The 1936 Constitution replaced the All-Union Congress of Soviets with the Supreme Soviet. The Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of November-December 1936 ratified the constitution, dissolved itself permanently and transferred its powers to the newly established Supreme Soviet, which met for its first session in January 1938. Under the 1936 and 1977 constitutions the Supreme Soviet was defined as the highest organ of state power with extensive formal lawmaking powers, but in practice functioned as a rubber-stamp parliament that ratified decisions already taken by party and executive organs, usually unanimously; deputies were elected through single-candidate ballots organized by party-controlled organizations, and between 1938 and February 1990 only 80 laws were passed by the Supreme Soviet, less than 1% of total legislative acts.

By the mid-1930s soviets were formed on a non-alternative basis, one candidate per seat, with candidate lists drawn up by the corresponding Communist Party body (raikom, obkom, republican CC) and candidates not agreed by the party organ not admitted to the elections. The Russian-language article presents this as the definitive break with the earlier elective principle and notes that democratization and alternative elections, including a 1987 experiment with multicandidate contests covering only 5% of soviets, returned only with perestroika.

Some researchers hold that soviets at all levels in the USSR had no real power and served as decoration concealing the uncontrolled rule of the nomenklatura. Voslensky argued decisions were taken by party committees from the Central Committee down to raikoms rather than by the soviets, and Pavlyuchenkov dates the transformation into an ideological decoration to spring 1918, when decrees of 13 and 27 May 1918 subordinated local food organs directly to the commissar of food rather than to local soviets, moves opponents called 'the bankruptcy of the idea of the soviets'. By contrast other historians, among them Thurston and Kazuko Kawamoto, argue local soviets retained meaningful participatory elements, and disputes continue over whether the participatory character survived.

Alternative elections to the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR were held on 26 March 1989 and the Congress opened on 28 May 1989; in 1990 alternative elections renewed local soviets and increased deputy activism. The V Extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies of September 1991 declared the former USSR no longer existed, dissolved the Congress of People's Deputies and Supreme Soviet of the USSR and abolished the office of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. The last session of the Supreme Soviet was held in December 1991, the Soviet of Republics terminated its activity from 2 January 1992, and on 26 December 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the declaration ending the existence of the USSR in connection with the creation of the CIS.

The Belovezha Accords were signed on 8 December 1991 and ratified by the RSFSR Supreme Soviet on 12 December 1991. The Soviet of Republics on 24 December 1991 adopted resolution 140-N terminating the activity of the USSR Supreme Soviet and its organs from 2 January 1992; Gorbachev resigned as President of the USSR on 25 December 1991; on 26 December 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted declaration No. 142-N on the cessation of the existence of the USSR. In Russia the system of soviets was finally liquidated by President Yeltsin in autumn 1993, when the Supreme Soviet and Congress of People's Deputies were dissolved and then soviets at all levels, while the term survived in bodies such as the Federation Council and municipal 'Soviet of Deputies'.

Examples

The term spread outside the former Russian Empire after 1917. In Ireland the Limerick Soviet of 1919 was one of a number of Irish soviets, and 'A Constitution for British Soviets' appeared in the Workers' Dreadnought in 1920. Polish workers' councils (rady robotnicze) appeared during 1905-07 in Congress Poland, and in 1918-19 over 100 councils assembled around 500,000 workers and peasants before being dismantled by July 1919, recurring in 1944-47, 1956, 1970 and 1980-81. The Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919 was overthrown on 1 May 1919 by the German Army and Freikorps with several hundred killed. The Chinese Soviet Republic was declared in 1931 and dissolved on 22 September 1937, and Makhnovist free soviets existed in Ukraine in 1918-1921.

Comparable workers' councils appeared in Congress Poland and Latvia in 1905, in the German revolution of 1918-19 (Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte), in the Irish revolutionary period of 1919-23, in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, in Hungary in 1956, in the Shanghai People's Commune of January 1967, in France in May 1968, in Iran in 1978-79 (shoras), in Poland in 1980-81 and in Rojava from 2012 onward.

Distinctions

The soviet form differed from classical parliaments in several features: the imperative mandate, with voter instructions binding on deputies, regular reporting back and the right of recall; 'working corporations' combining legislative and executive functions and rejecting separation of powers; non-professional composition, with deputies remaining production workers and salaried officials cut off from production paid no more than the average worker's wage; democratic centralism; a surrounding network of public organizations and initiative groups; multi-stage formation, abolished by the 1936 constitution; and the leading role of the Communist Party from 1918 until 1989.

The supreme soviets of the union and autonomous republics had presidiums but only one chamber, and after the dissolution of the USSR successor parliaments either reverted to historic names or adopted bicameral assemblies. The word soviet was rendered in other republics through local equivalents such as Verkhovna Rada in Ukraine, Joqargy Kenes in Kazakhstan, Sejm in Poland and Staatsrat in the GDR.

Some scholars and socialists dispute how committed Lenin and Trotsky were to workers' councils after 1917, noting the councils 'were never meant to become a permanent political form of self-governance' and were therefore sidelined by the Communist Party; council communists criticized the Bolsheviks for superseding soviet democracy and creating a bureaucratic system of state capitalism; Rosa Luxemburg criticized Lenin and Trotsky for neglecting the political education of the masses and substituting councils for representative institutions of the whole population; Trotsky in exile condemned the Stalinist bureaucracy and called for a revival of soviet democracy. Thurston argues local levels of the soviet system remained largely participatory.