A soviet (Russian: сове́т, IPA: literally co-voice) originally was a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia. The first soviet (in this sense), St Petersburg Soviet, was created by Volin in Saint Petersburg in January 1905. The councils were later adopted by the Bolsheviks, as the basic organizing unit of society.

Originally the soviets were a grassroots effort to practice direct democracy. Russian Marxists made them a medium for organizing against the state, and between the February and October Revolutions, the Petrograd Soviet was a powerful force. The slogan Вся власть советам ("All power to the soviets" or "All power to the workers' councils") was popular in opposing the Provisional Government led by Kerensky.

Shortly after the October Revolution, the soviets as organized into a larger body formed the new basis for governing the post-revolutionary society through soviet democracy. All parties were united in anticipation of a Constituent Assembly. However, these soviets, rather than the Constituent Assembly, were seen by Lenin as the fulfillment of the slogan, and he, therefore, in opposition to the will of the soviets and all parties dissolved the Constituent Assembly, which led to the Russian Civil War. The Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries together held a majority of seats in the Congress of Soviets and formed a coalition government, which lasted until the Left Socialist Revolutionaries left the coalition in 1918. Over time, the independence of the soviets was supplanted by the top-down authority of the increasingly bureacratized ruling regime, based on the strict hierarchy of power within the CPSU. Despite this, the claim was still made after the rise of Stalinism that Bolshevik power rested on the collective will of these soviets.

The term also came to be used outside the Soviet Union by some Marxist-Leninist movements, for example, the Communist Party of China's efforts in the "Chinese Soviet Republic" immediately prior to the Long March.

Based on and in support of view of the state implicit in the Bolshevik use of the term, the word "soviet" naturally extended, or consciously was extended, to mean in effect any body formed by a group of soviets to delegate, up a hierarchy of soviets, the authority to express and effect their will. In this sense, post-Kerensky government bodies at local and republic levels (but in the Russian federated republic, local, republic, and federated republic levels) were called "soviets", and at the top of the hierarchy, the Supreme Soviet was the nominal core of the Union government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, officially formed in December 1922.

Soviet phraseology | History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia | History of Russia | Russian loanwords

Sowjet | Sóviet | Soviet | Sovjet | Sovjet | ソビエト | Soviet | Советы | Sovjet | 苏维埃