soviets

Soviets were elected councils of workers, peasants, and soldiers that emerged in late Imperial Russia and became central to the political order of the Soviet Union. The word soviet means council in Russian. They began during the 1905 Revolution as grassroots bodies organized at factories, towns, and military units, and later expanded to regional and national levels. Delegates were typically chosen from workplaces and neighborhoods and were intended to be recallable by their constituents, presenting a model of workers’ and peasants’ participation in governance.

Soviets functioned as forums for local administration, labor organizing, and political coordination. They could issue declarations, coordinate strikes, oversee local security, and, in some places, wield substantial influence over police and municipal affairs. At their peak in 1917, soviets in major cities, most notably the Petrograd Soviet, became powerful symbols of popular sovereignty and served as alternative centers of authority during the collapse of the Tsarist regime.

In 1917, the Soviet movement played a decisive role in the February Revolution and the ensuing discussions of governance. The concept of dual power described the coexistence of the Provisional Government and the soviets, with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee acting as the nominal supreme authority. After the October Revolution, Bolshevik leadership used soviets to legitimize and implement their policy, while creating a centralized state apparatus headed by the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Over time, the authority of independent soviets diminished as the one-party system consolidated power. Local and regional soviets continued as administrative bodies within the Soviet state, but real political authority came to be exercised within the party and centralized state institutions.