soviet, council that was the primary unit of government in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that officially performed both legislative and executive functions at the all-union, republic, province, city, district, and village levels.
The soviet first appeared during the St. Petersburg disorders of 1905, when representatives of striking workers acting under socialist leadership formed the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies to coordinate revolutionary activities. It was suppressed by the government. Shortly before the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917 and the creation of a Provisional Government, socialist leaders established the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, composed of one deputy for every 1,000 workers and one for each military company. A majority of the 2,500 deputies were Socialist Revolutionary Party members, claiming to represent peasant interests. This Petrograd Soviet stood as a “second government” opposite the Provisional Government and often challenged the latter’s authority. Soviets sprang up in cities and towns across the Russian Empire. Much of their authority and legitimacy in the public eye came from the soviets’ role as accurate reflectors of popular will: delegates had no set terms of office, and frequent by-elections gave ample opportunity for quick exertion of influence by the voters.
In June 1917 the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets, composed of delegations from local soviets, convened in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). It elected a central executive committee to be in permanent session, with this committee’s presidium at the head of the congress. The second congress met right after the radical Bolshevik faction of the Petrograd Soviet, having gained a majority in this body, had engineered the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Red Guards and some supporting troops. In protest of this coup (the Russian Revolution of October 1917), most of the non-Bolshevik members of the congress walked out, leaving the Bolsheviks in control; an all-Bolshevik Council of People’s Commissars was established as Russia’s new government. Soviets across the empire assumed local power, though it took some time for the Bolsheviks to achieve a dominant position in every soviet.
At the fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in 1918, a constitution was drawn up that established the soviet as the formal unit of local and regional government and affirmed the All-Russian Congress of Soviets as the highest body of the state. Later, the 1936 constitution provided for the direct election of a two-chamber Supreme Soviet—the Soviet of the Union, in which membership was based on population, and the Soviet of Nationalities, in which members were elected on a regional basis. Nominally, the deputies and presiding officers of the soviets at all levels were elected by the citizenry, but there was only one candidate for any office in these elections, and the selection of candidates was controlled by the Communist Party.