- published: 15 Feb 2016
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Soviets (singular: soviet; Russian: сове́т, Russian pronunciation: [sɐˈvʲɛt], literally "council" in English) were political organizations and governmental bodies, primarily associated with the Russian Revolutions and the history of the Soviet Union, and which gave the name to the latter state.
“Soviet” is derived from a Russian word signifying council, assembly, advice, harmony, concord, ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic verbal stem of *větiti "to talk, speak". The word "sovietnik" means councillor.
A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council" (Russian: сове́т). For example, in Imperial Russia, the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905.
According to the official historiography of the Soviet Union, the first worker's council (soviet) was formed in May 1905 in Ivanovo (north-east of Moscow) during the 1905 Russian Revolution (Ivanovsky Soviet). However, in his memoirs, the Russian Anarchist Volin claims that he witnessed the beginnings of the St Petersburg Soviet in January 1905. The Russian workers were largely organized at the turn of the 20th century, leading to a government-sponsored trade union leadership. In 1905, as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) increased the strain on Russian industrial production, the workers began to strike and rebel. The soviets represented an autonomous workers' movement, one that broke free from the government's oversight of workers' unions. Soviets sprang up throughout the industrial centers of Russia, usually organized at the factory level. The soviets disappeared after the Revolution of 1905, but re-emerged under socialist leadership during the revolutions of 1917.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲɛtskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪsˈtʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪˈspublʲɪk]) abbreviated to USSR (Russian: СССР, tr. SSSR) or shortened to the Soviet Union (Russian: Сове́тский Сою́з, tr. Sovetskij Soyuz; IPA: [sɐ'vʲetskʲɪj sɐˈjʉs]), was a Marxist–Leninist state on the Eurasian continent that existed between 1922 and 1991. A union of multiple subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized. The Soviet Union was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital.
A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county level, but most legislative bodies at the state or national level are not considered councils. At such levels, there may be no separate executive branch, and the council may effectively represent the entire government. A board of directors might also be denoted as a council. A committee might also be denoted as a council, though a committee is generally a subordinate body composed of members of a larger body, while a council may not be. Because many schools have a student council, the council is the form of governance with which many people are likely to have their first experience as electors or participants.
A member of a council may be referred to as a councillor, or by the gender-specific titles of councilman and councilwoman.
Notable examples of types of councils encountered in politics include: