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Columbia Encyclopedia entry: soviet
Soviet, primary unit in the political organization of the former USSR. The term is the Russian word for council. The first soviets were revolutionary committees organized by Russian socialists in the Revolution of 1905 among striking factory workers. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, workers', peasants', and soldiers' soviets sprang up all over Russia. They were led by a central executive committee, which included not only Bolsheviks, but also Mensheviks (see Bolshevism and Menshevism) and members of the Socialist Revolutionary party. At the first all-Russian soviet congress (June, 1917), the Socialist Revolutionaries had 285 deputies, the Mensheviks 248, the Bolsheviks only 105. Since the soviets represented the real power in Russia, when the Bolsheviks under Lenin captured the most important soviets in Petrograd, in Moscow, and in the armed forces, their success was assured. Imitations by leftist revolutionists in other countries met with less success, notably in Germany and Hungary, where, from 1918 to 1920, workers', peasants', and soldiers' councils were formed. A soviet republic in Bavaria was short-lived, and the regime of Béla Kun in Hungary was put down. Soviets in the Baltic republics met a similar fate. In Russia the soviets remained the basic political units, forming a hierarchy from rural councils to the Supreme Soviet, the highest legislative body in the USSR. Under the first Soviet constitution only the local soviets were elected by direct suffrage. The constitution of 1936 abolished the division of the electorate into occupational classes and instituted elections of all soviets by direct universal suffrage, but all levels were dominated by the Communist party's parallel hierarchy. In Russia the soviets survived the disintegration (1991) of the USSR, but in 1993 Yeltsin called for them to dissolve and reorganize as smaller dumas, or assemblies.

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Wikipedia search results for: Soviet Union
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (redirected from soviet) was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from, Sovetskiy Soyuz. A soviet is a council, the theoretical basis for the socialist society of the USSR. Emerging from the Russian Empire after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War of 1918–1921, the USSR was a union of several Soviet republics, but the synecdoche Russia—after the Russian SFSR, its largest and most populous constituent state—continued to be commonly used...more »
Columbia Encyclopedia search results: soviet
Results 1 - 10  of 698
  • Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

    Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Rus. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, former republic. It was established in 1922 and dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union was the fir...

  • Communist party, in Russia and the Soviet Union

    Communist party, in Russia and the Soviet Union, political party that until 1991 exercised all effective power within the Soviet Union, and, as the oldest and for a long time the only ruling C...

  • Russian and Soviet Rulers since 1462 (table)

    Russian and Soviet Rulers since 1462(including dates of rule)House of RurikIvan III (the Great), 1462–1505Vasily III, 1505–33Ivan IV (the Terrible), 1533–84Feodor I, 1584–98House of GodunovBor...

  • socialist realism

    Socialist realism, Soviet artistic and literary doctrine. The role of literature and art in Soviet society was redefined in 1932 when the newly created Union of Soviet Writers proclaimed socia...

  • U-2 incident

    U-2 incident, in U.S. and Soviet history, the events following the Soviet downing of an American U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960. The incident le...

  • Korolev, Sergei Pavlovich

    Korolev, Sergei Pavlovich, 1907–66, Soviet rocket designer. His role as chief designer of the Soviet space program was revealed only after his death. After he successfully launched two interco...

  • Gromyko, Andrei Andreyevich

    Gromyko, Andrei Andreyevich, 1909–89, Soviet diplomat. A member of the Communist party from 1931, he entered (1939) the diplomatic service, rising rapidly to become Soviet ambassador to the Un...

  • Timoshenko, Semyon Konstantinovich

    Timoshenko, Semyon Konstantinovich, 1895–1970, Soviet marshal. He served in the civil war of 1918–20 as a cavalry commander and subsequently rose in the Soviet army. He commanded the Soviet tr...

  • August Coup

    August Coup, attempted coup (Aug. 18–22, 1991) against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. On the eve of the signing ceremony for a new union treaty for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...

  • Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna

    Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna, 1937–, Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first woman to orbit the earth, in Vostok 6 on June 16–19, 1963. She left the Soviet space program soon after and marri...

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