Soviet

Soviet is a term derived from the Russian word sovet, meaning council. It originated with workers’ and soldiers’ councils formed during the 1905-07 revolutions and became central to the governance ideas of the Bolsheviks after 1917. In the early Soviet period, soviets were elected bodies at local, regional, and national levels that, in theory, connected the population to the new political authority.

The Soviet Union, formally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was established in 1922 as a federation of socialist republics. At its height it consisted of 15 constituent republics, including the Russian SFSR, Ukrainian SSR, and Byelorussian SSR, among others. The state described itself as a socialist democracy, with power concentrated in the one-party system led by the Communist Party and formal legislative bodies such as the Supreme Soviet. Executive power was exercised by the Council of Ministers and, in practice, by the party leadership through organs like the Politburo and Central Committee. The economy was centrally planned, with most means of production state-owned and allocation guided by five-year plans coordinated by Gosplan.

Societal and cultural life under the Soviet regime featured substantial gains in literacy, education, and science, as well as extensive social welfare programs. These achievements occurred alongside political repression, censorship, and periods of forced collectivization and purges. By the 1980s, economic stagnation and calls for reform contributed to significant political changes under perestroika and glasnost, culminating in the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Today, the term soviet survives in historical contexts and as a general Russian word meaning council, while the Soviet Union remains a distinct historical entity.