A
soviet ' onMouseout='HidePop("42024")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Rada">rada
Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages.Normally it is translated as "council"...
); ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ) originally was a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia.
A
soviet ' onMouseout='HidePop("42024")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Rada">rada
Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages.Normally it is translated as "council"...
); ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ) originally was a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia. According to the official
historiographyHistoriography is the history of history, the aspect of history and of semiotics that considers how knowledge of the past, either recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted...
of the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, the first Soviet (in this sense) was organized during the 1905 Russian Revolution in
IvanovoIvanovo is a city and the administrative center of Ivanovo Oblast, Russia. Population: 406,465 ; Ivanovo has traditionally been called the textile capital of Russia. Since most textile workers are women, it has also been known as the "City of Brides"...
(Ivanovo region) in May 1905. However in his memoirs
VolinVsevolod Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum , known in later life as Volin or Voline , was a leading Russian anarchist....
claims that he witnessed the creation of the St Petersburg Soviet in
Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city's other names were Petrograd and Leningrad...
in January 1905. The councils later evolved under
BolshevikThe Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903...
rule, as the main representative units of the state.
Originally the soviets were a
grassrootsA grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it is natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
effort to practice
direct democracyDirect democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate...
. Russian Marxists made them a medium for organizing against the state, and between the
FebruaryThe February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. It occurred March 8–12 and its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the collapse of Imperial Russia and the end of the Romanov dynasty. The non-Communist Russian Provisional Government under...
and
October RevolutionTheOctober Revolution , also known as the Soviet Revolution or Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution. It began with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 Julian calendar...
s, the
Petrograd SovietThe Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies , usually called the Petrograd Soviet , was the soviet in Petrograd , Russia, established in March 1917 after the February Revolution as the representative body of the city's workers.The Petrograd Soviet became important during the Russian...
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 used by the Bolsheviks to oppose the
Provisional GovernmentThe Russian Provisional Government was the short-lived administrative body which sought to govern Russia immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917. In September 14, the State Duma of the Russian Empire officially dissolved the newly created Directorate, and the...
led by Kerensky.
The term also came to be used outside the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
by some Marxist-Leninist movements, for example, the
Communist Party of ChinaThe Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China and the world's largest political party...
's efforts in the "Chinese Soviet Republic" immediately prior to the
Long MarchThe Long March was a massive military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang army. There was not one Long March, but several, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the...
.
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, Communist government bodies at local and
republicThe Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union...
levels (but in the
Russian federated republicRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, local, republic, and federated republic levels) were called "soviets", and at the top of the hierarchy, the
Congress of SovietsThe Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union in two periods, from 1917 to 1936 and from 1989 to 1991...
was the nominal core of the Union government of the
Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, officially formed in December 1922. However, the Communist Party officially played the "leading role" in society and the soviets were in practice subordinate to it.
Later, in the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
local governmental bodies were named "soviet" (
sovet: "
councilWiktionary is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages...
") with the adjective indicating of the administrative level, customarily abbreviated :
gorsovet (
gorodskoy sovet: city council),
raysovet/raisovet (
rayonny sovet:
raionA raion is a type of administrative unit of some post-Soviet states. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is almost always translated as "district"...
council), selsovet: rural council,
possovet (
poselkovy sovet: settlement council).
Further reading
- Edward Acton Rethinking the Russian Revolution 1990 Oxford University Press ISBN 0713165308
- Tony Cliff
Tony Cliff was a Trotskyist revolutionary activist. Born Yigael Gluckstein to a Jewish Zionist family in Palestine, Cliff moved to Britain, becoming a Trotskyist and rejecting Zionism from a Marxist perspective...
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 0521841550
See also
- Congress of Soviets
The Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union in two periods, from 1917 to 1936 and from 1989 to 1991...
- Workers' council
A workers' council is the phenomenon where a single place of work, such as a factory, school, or farm, is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace, through the core principle of temporary and instantly revocable delegates....
- Soviet democracy
Soviet democracy or sometimes council democracy is a form of democracy in which workers' councils called "soviets", consisting of worker-elected delegates, form organs of power possessing both legislative and executive power. The soviets begin at the local level and onto a national parliament-like...
- Council communism
Council communism is a far-left movement originating in Germany and the Netherlands in the 1920s. Its primary organization was the Communist Workers Party of Germany...
- Participatory democracy
Participatory democracy, with subtype direct democracy, is a process emphasizing the broad participation of constituents in the direction and operation of political systems. Etymological roots of democracy imply that the people are in power and thus that all democracies are participatory...
- Workers' control
Workers' control is a term meaning participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, Communists and Christian Democrats, and has been combined with various socialist and mixed...
- Rada
Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages.Normally it is translated as "council"...
(Ukrainian equivalent)