Soviet

A council of deputies, in Russian a soviet, was an assembly of representatives elected in factories and regiments, and later in the villages too. In revolutionary Russia in 1917 the most important was the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, which from March shared power with the Provisional Government. After the October coup the Bolsheviks ruled in the name of the soviets, from which the Soviet state took its name.

Born in February 1917

The first soviets appeared during the revolution of 1905. In St Petersburg the young Leon Trotsky was then the soviet’s real leader, but the authorities crushed it. The soviets revived on 12 March 1917, when the capital’s garrison went over to the strikers. In the Tauride Palace socialists, mainly Mensheviks, called on factories and regiments to elect deputies, and that same evening the Soviet held its first session. The Menshevik Nikolay Chkheidze became chairman and Alexander Kerensky, who also sat on the Duma committee, one of his deputies. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries predominated, and in the spring Irakli Tsereteli became the Soviet’s informal leader.

Order No. 1 and dual power

On 14 March the Soviet issued Order No. 1. It ordered committees to be elected in all companies, regiments and ships, placed weapons under their control and laid down that in political matters the soldiers obeyed the Soviet. Orders of the Duma’s military commission were to be obeyed only when they did not conflict with the Soviet’s decisions. The order applied to the Petrograd garrison, but it quickly reached the front and undermined obedience to officers.

The Provisional Government came out of an agreement between the Duma Committee and the Soviet, which promised to support it “insofar as” it carried out the agreed programme. Without the Soviet’s consent no government could have held on in the capital. This arrangement was called dual power. The British historian Christopher Read points out, however, that the Soviet itself recognised the cabinet as the government and saw itself rather as a pressure group. In May its leaders entered the first coalition government. Meanwhile soviets were springing up across the country: according to Poland’s Integrated Educational Platform, there were 67 in Siberia alone.

The Soviet also had a policy of its own. It demanded peace without annexations or indemnities, and on 27 March 1917, in the appeal “To the Polish Nation”, it recognised Poland’s right to complete independence. It was the first such act in Russia.

The Bolsheviks and October

After the collapse of the Kornilov putsch, on the night of 13–14 September, the Petrograd Soviet for the first time adopted a resolution of the Bolsheviks. Within a few weeks they won majorities in the soviets of both capitals, and at the beginning of October Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. The slogan “All power to the soviets” became the programme of the coup. Its instrument was the Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee, set up formally to defend the city. On 7 November it announced that the Provisional Government had been overthrown. According to Read, the seizure of power was largely carried out by the Soviet through this committee, bypassing the Bolshevik Central Committee.

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets declared itself the supreme authority and set up the Council of People’s Commissars. The soviets became the formal basis of the new state, but real power passed to the Bolshevik party. In 1918 workers’ and soldiers’ councils also appeared in Austria-Hungary and Germany, where in December their all-German congress met in Berlin.