Soviet
Soviet ( Russian совет , Council ' ) was the name given to certain administrative bodies in the Soviet Union . Originally, soviets were the grassroots workers 'and soldiers' councils that emerged from the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 , but were dominated and ousted by the Bolsheviks soon after the October 1917 revolution . The equally powerless parliamentary governing bodies introduced by Josef Stalin in 1936 were also called soviets - despite the contradiction to the basic idea of the council system .
The term the Soviets was and is generally used to describe the Soviet Union.
Self-administration in workers' committees
Historians have different views on the origins of the Soviets. Based on Oskar Anweiler, Manfred Hildermeier gives the hour of birth the labor dispute in the Russian city of Ivanovo-Voznesensk , which is characterized by a young textile industry , in which around 40,000 workers went on strike for ten weeks from May to July 1905. A council of deputies was set up to coordinate and conduct negotiations, which had a decisive influence on the strike and gave it an extraordinary unity. The historian Isaac Deutscher, on the other hand, sees the emergence of the Soviet as the unwanted consequence of a commission convened by the Tsar to investigate the events of the January unrest in St. Petersburg in 1905. “The commission had ordered workers in the factories to elect their representatives so that they could bring their claims. The strikers came back to this precedent in October ”when the Petersburg Soviet first met on October 13, 1905.
1905-1922
The term Soviet was coined in the Russian Revolution from 1905 to 1907 , when workers' committees in factories and in districts that exercised functions of political and military power called themselves Soviets. They formed spontaneously. Nossary Khrustalyev was elected first chairman of the most famous, the Petrograd Soviet. Leon Trotsky , who became chairman after Khrustalev's arrest, stated that they would form soviets throughout the Russian Empire .
In the course of the Russian February Revolution of 1917 , according to Trotsky's statement, workers' soviets formed everywhere. These soviets were set up on the same model as the earlier councils of 1905. This time, however, nationwide and also as part of the executive branch . The Petrograd Soviet shared power in the capital with the Provisional Government of Kerensky , which was set up after the overthrow and abdication of the Romanovs, and the Duma that supported it . In the meantime, their deputies had gained considerably more decision-making power than in the days of the Tsar. This began the period of dual rule . With the escalation of social conflicts and the development of the revolutionary fermentation processes, the Soviets , who initially strongly sympathized with the Mensheviks , swung almost linearly to the left until the Communist Party of Russia ( Bolsheviks ) around Lenin and Trotsky finally had the greatest influence on the workers organized in the Soviets . In the October Revolution , which conformed to the theory of permanent revolution , the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets, dominated by Bolshevik workers' delegates , declared itself to be the new Supreme Instance of Russia, for the time being until the decision-making of the Russian Constituent Assembly for the future form of government. After the revolution, the council system was further consolidated to become the basic framework of Soviet Russia and later the Soviet Union . With its founding in 1922, after the end of the civil war , the first Soviet republic came into being in Russia. According to some historians, the assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918 only served the Bolsheviks as a pretext to restrict the rights of the councils and the opposition: the background of the assassination had nothing to do with the council system with which the left social revolutionaries were completely satisfied, but rather the The reason was the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany; shortly after its conclusion, the civil war broke out. The Social Revolutionaries and anarchists chalked up the conclusion of this treaty on Lenin (like many Bolsheviks before the treaty).
The original organizational principle was the factories, villages, army units, which is why one spoke of a council democracy that was superior to parliamentarism . As a result of the civil war , the Soviet system was only able to work to a limited extent. Contrary to prevailing representations, it was possible to have free discussions, plan peaceful demonstrations and set up workers' organizations, and at the local level power could be exercised directly by the workers and peasants, but the Bolshevik revolutionary leadership could not fully accept fundamental opposition movements or anti-Bolshevik currents. However, it should be noted that at that time there was relatively great freedom of movement in Soviet society; for example, movements declaring themselves to be " workers 'opposition", in fact deadly in the case of the assumption of leadership for the workers' state, were by no means persecuted as long as they did not call for uprisings or Used violence, such as the Social Revolutionaries or various anarchist circles. The years up to 1923 were marked by the need for tight organization with regard to the military situation and economic hardship, which constricted the original hegemony of the Soviets.
From 1923, i.e. at a time of economic boom, the calls among the workers for the restoration of Soviet democracy began to get louder, but this was due to the bureaucracy, which was increasingly concerned with its own privileges, whose power was partly due to temporary measures such as the Prohibition of parties and factions and, on the other hand, from basically illegal processes, such as that which took place in the civil war and the merging of the party and state apparatus, which was strongly attacked by revolutionary Bolsheviks, supporters of Lenin, who was paralyzed by a stroke, and Trotsky, who was employed at the front. After Lenin's death, the bureaucracy, first embodied by the triumvirate Stalin - Zinoviev - Kamenev , began to massively expand its monopoly of power and its social advantages, while politically expropriating ("dispossessing") the working class. The Left Opposition , to which Zinoviev and Kamenev joined Trotsky, tried until 1927 to achieve first a large-scale reform, then a second revolution with the aim of restoring full Soviet democracy , the multi-party system , the abolition of the bureaucracy itself, etc. . This organization basically articulated the workers' demands, with the result that the Left Opposition became a semi-legal underground party secretly celebrated by the proletariat . The longed-for second revolution, however, was bloodily crushed mainly during the Great Terror , its activists shot or deported, and the working class forcibly completely demoralized.
Kronstadt uprising in March 1921
One of the main demands made by SRs and anarchists in the years following the October Revolution and the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty were councils without the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his party then severely restricted the powers of the councils in order to retain power, and the Kronstadt sailors' uprising followed . Trotsky , who suppressed this insurrection and wanted to combat the influence of the anarchists, accused the insurgents of counterrevolutionary intentions. For the Bolsheviks they were a huge disruptive factor because the Kronstadt sailors 'demand for independent councils was diametrically opposed to the Bolsheviks' intention to stabilize the young Soviet Russia and secure the power of their party . After Lenin's death in 1924 and Stalin's takeover of power, the importance of the councils continued to decline.
Ukraine scene
The peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk , which was unfavorable for Russia in relation to Ukraine - Ukraine came under the military sphere of influence of the German Reich - contributed to the anarchist revolution that raged there between 1918 and 1922 under Nestor Machno and his Makhnovshchina . He installed an anarchist- oriented council system that worked on the principle of rotation, as described above; the councils were available at any time.
But anarchism in Ukraine came to an abrupt end in 1922: no sooner had the former allies, the Bolsheviks , triumphed over the counterrevolutionaries in their own country , than they attacked and defeated Makhnotschina.
From 1936: "Parliament"
The year 1936 marked the end of the Soviet idea, because in the new Stalinist constitution the grassroots democratic council system was also formally abolished and replaced by powerless conventional parliaments (Trotsky: “A caricature of a parliament!”).
The USSR Constitution of 1936 introduced universal and equal suffrage for all citizens of the USSR. From then on, Soviets of the working people's deputies were directly elected by secret ballot at all administrative levels . Its name was changed to Soviets of People's Deputies with the 1977 constitution .
“The Soviets of People's Deputies - the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics, the Supreme Soviets of the Autonomous Republics, the Regional and Territorial Soviets of the People's Deputies, the Soviets of the People's Deputies of the autonomous territories and autonomous counties, the district, city - and city district, settlement and village soviets of People's Deputies - form the unified system of organs of state power. "
The candidates were nominated by the CPSU , its youth organization Komsomol and the union under the control of the party organs. Until 1987 there were no opposing candidates. The former principle of independence of party (s) and trade union was hereby abolished, in that in addition to the previous deputies, representatives of “public organizations” including the Komsomol could be elected to the new bodies, a kind of parliament, and given permanent seats there. Furthermore, the tasks of the previously ruling Soviet were divided between two different chambers, the nationality and the Union Soviet. This de facto also weakened the power of the representatives of the nationalities of the multi-ethnic state. The Congress of Councils (Soviet Congress) became the Supreme Soviet , the (all-Soviet) Central Executive Committee of the USSR , which had previously been the supreme power of the Soviet Union, was transformed into an associated committee in 1938. The Supreme Soviet thus lost power to a large extent. A council democracy was no longer possible through these reforms. But even after the end of the USSR, no council democracy was rebuilt in the successor states.
Supreme Soviet of the USSR
The highest state organ of the USSR, the Supreme Soviet, comprised two chambers with equal rights, the Union Soviet and the Nationality Soviet , which were elected every five years by the citizens of the USSR at the same session.
- The election of the nationality soviet took place according to union republics (32 deputies each), autonomous republics (11 deputies each), autonomous regions (five deputies each) and autonomous districts (one deputy each). The Nationality Soviet thus had 750 members from the 1960s.
- According to the constitution of 1936, the Union Soviet was elected to constituencies with 300,000 inhabitants each. The resulting slightly varying number of members was set in the constitution of 1977 on the number of seats in the nationality soviet, so in the Union soviet there were 750 deputies elected from constituencies with the same number of inhabitants.
The Supreme Soviet met twice a year. He elected 24 members from among his own ranks to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet , which also included ex officio the chairmen of the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was the permanent legislative body, its chairman the head of state . In addition, the Supreme Soviet elected the Council of Ministers (until March 16, 1946 called the Council of People's Commissars ), which formed the executive and administrative sector of the government.
Supreme Soviet of the Union Republics
Similarly, there were the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics at the republic level, which elected the Council of Ministers of the respective republic as the highest state organ . However, they only consisted of one chamber. The chairmen of the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics belonged ex officio to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the chairmen of the Councils of Ministers of the Union Republics also belonged to the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The parliaments of the successor states of the Soviet Union carry z. Partly still the name today, so the name for the parliament of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada , is only the Ukrainian form of "Supreme Soviet" or fully translated "Supreme Council".
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duden . Vol. 1: The German spelling. 24th edition, Dudenverlag, Mannheim 2006, p. 947; The Random House College Dictionary. Revised Edition. Random House, New York 1988, p. 1285.
- ^ Oskar Anweiler: The Council Movement in Russia 1905-1921, Leiden 1958, p. 48ff.
- ↑ Manfred Hildermeier: The Russian Revolution 1905-1921 . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-518-11534-0 , pp. 54 .
- ↑ Isaac Deutscher: Trotsky. The armed prophet 1879-1921, Stuttgart 1962, p. 128f.
- ↑ Leon Trotsky: My Life . Chapter "1905".
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from June 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated November 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
literature
- Valentine Rothe : Russian anarchism and the council movement in 1905. A historical and historical didactic investigation . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 3-593-32326-5 ( Campus Research 45).