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politics and government of
the Soviet Union
Soviet democracy (sometimes council democracy) is a form of democracy in which workers' councils called "soviets" (Russian for "council"), consisting of worker-elected delegates, form organs of power possessing both legislative and executive power. The soviets begin at the local level and onto a national parliament-like assembly. According to Vladimir Lenin and other Marxist theorists, the soviets represent the democratic will of the working class and are thus the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Critics of Lenin's rule and Soviet democracy such as the council communists claim that workers' councils/soviets were subverted and not truly sovereign in the Soviet Union. Trotskyists agree that this was the case after Joseph Stalin's takeover, but not completely so during Lenin's time. Maoists and Hoxhaists argue that flaws in the system under Lenin and Joseph Stalin were due to a lack of the party's faith in the masses and that this resulted in the party disconnecting itself to the needs of the people, which was then exploited by Marxist revisionists who turned the Soviet Union away from Marxism-Leninism after Lenin's death.
The process begins when the workers of a city elect their local soviet. This body holds both legislative and executive power for that city. The idea is identical to the Paris Commune. The local soviets choose their delegates for their district soviet. These district soviets in turn elect their provincial soviet. Lastly, the provincial soviets then choose their delegates for the regional soviet. Each soviet has legislative-executive power over the territory it governs.
This elective process of a group of soviets electing the council above it continues until the national soviet, which is the supreme governing body of the nation. Until 1936 the national soviet (at that time the Congress of Soviets) was not elected by the regional soviets, but rather by the district soviets. Each district soviet will elect and send a number of delegates to the national soviet that is appropriate to accurately represent its population. But following passage of the 1936 Soviet Constitution the Supreme Soviets became directly-elective as well.
Each large soviet (including some larger locals) elects a small executive committee. This assembly deals with the day-to-day affairs of the territory that its soviet governs. The executive committee is subservient to its soviet, its actions must be in accordance with the soviet's legislation, and it only operates during times when the soviet is not in session. This method is likely borrowed from Athenian democracy.
Proponents argue that this form of government is a method through which the dictatorship of the proletariat can be exercised in large populations. Soviet democracy is democracy by proxy[clarification needed]. The theory being that members of the soviets, being close to those workers or lower soviet members that they represent, can thereby accurately translate the people's decisions into legislation, and be more responsive than a centralized parliamentary democracy. Ultimately soviet democracy is based on direct democracy, especially with its advocacy of recallable delegates[clarification needed].
History in the Soviet Union
The first soviets, also called workers' councils, were formed after the Russian Revolution of 1905. Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw the soviet as the basic organizing unit of society in a communist system and supported this form of democracy. The soviets also played a considerable role in the February and October Revolutions. At that time, they represented a variety of socialist parties in addition to Bolsheviks.
In post-revolutionary Russia local workers' soviets would elect representatives that go on to form regional soviets, which in turn elect representatives that form higher soviets, and so on up to the Congress of Soviets. Later the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union would become the highest legislative body of the entire country.
After Lenin's party, the Bolsheviks, only got a minority of the votes in the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly, he illegally disbanded it by force after its first meeting, arguing that parliamentary democracy could not fairly represent the workers since it was in practice dominated by the bourgeoisie, that the proportional representation did not take into account the SR split, and that the Soviets (where the Bolsheviks did get a majority) more accurately represented the opinion of the people, which had changed as shown in the elections to the Soviets between the time of the elections to the Assembly and the first meeting of the Assembly. He also explicitly stated that democracy did not include those considered bourgeois. Critics argued that the elections to the Soviets were not free and fair, unlike the elections to the Assembly.
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks had to defend the newly formed government in World War I and the Russian Civil War. Many of the effects of the wars on the new Soviet government may be part of what led to the decline of soviet democracy in Russia (due to the authority the state took on in war time) and to the emergence of the bureaucratic structure that maintained much control throughout the history of the Soviet Union. However, one key blow against soviet democracy occurred when other revolutionary socialist soviets other than Bolshevik soviets were disbanded in a series of coups d'état because workers returned non-Bolshevik majorities as early as March 1918. Lenin argued that the Soviets and the principle of democratic centralism within the Bolshevik party still assured democracy. However, Lenin also issued a "temporary" ban on factions in the Russian Communist Party. This ban remained until the revolutions of 1989 and according to critics made the democratic procedures within the party an empty formality.
When Stalin came to power he consolidated much more authority under the party. Soviets were transformed into the bureaucratic structure that existed for the rest of the history of the Soviet Union and were completely under the control of party officials and the politburo.
Elections in the Soviet Union
In theory, citizens selected the candidates for election to local soviets. In practice, at least before the June 1987 elections, these candidates had been selected by the local Communist party, Komsomol, and trade union officials under the direction of the district (raion) party organization. Voting took place after six weeks of campaigning. Though voters formally had the right to vote for or against the unopposed candidate, until 1987 all candidates usually received about 99 percent of the vote.
Despite the party's historic control over local elections, from the nomination of candidates to their unopposed elections, the citizens used the elections to make public their concerns. They sometimes used the furnished paper ballots to write requests for particular public services. For example, the 1985 elections to an Omsk soviet included instructions to move the airfield farther from the city center, construct a new music center, and build parking facilities for invalids. Subsequently, the Omsk soviet took steps to provide these services, all of which had the approval of the relevant party authorities.
As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin found several problems with the Marxism of his day. Contrary to what Marx had predicted, capitalism had strengthened itself over the last third of the 19th century. The working class in western Europe had not become impoverished; rather, its prosperity had risen. Hence, the workers and their unions, although continuing to press for better wages and working conditions, failed to develop the revolutionary class consciousness that Marx had expected. Lenin also argued that the division of labor in capitalist society prevented the emergence of proletarian class consciousness. Lenin wrote that because workers had to labor ten or twelve hours each workday in a factory, they had no time to learn the complexities of Marxist theory.
Based on his observations, It has been argued that Lenin shifted the engine of proletarian revolution from the working class to a tightly knit party of intellectuals. Lenin wrote in What is to be Done (1902) that the "history of all countries bears out the fact that through their own powers alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness." That is, history had demonstrated that the working class could engage in local, spontaneous rebellions to improve its position within the capitalist system but that it lacked the understanding of its interests necessary to overthrow that system. Pessimistic about the proletariat's ability to acquire class consciousness, Lenin argued that the bearers of this consciousness were déclassé intellectuals who made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist system and prepare for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin also held that because Marx's thought was set forth in a sophisticated body of philosophical, economic, and social analysis, a high level of intellectual training was required to comprehend it. Hence, for Lenin in 'What is to be done', those who would bring about the revolution must devote all their energies and resources to understanding the range of Marx's thought. They must be professional activists having no other duties that might interfere with their efforts to promote revolution. However, Lenin never repeated the arguments in 'What is to be Done' and most of his writings bear out his belief that the working class, supported by its party, could bring about revolution and then rule, as the majority of society, in a socialist system.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union continued to regard itself as the institutionalization of Marxist-Leninist consciousness in the Soviet Union, and therein lay the justification for the controls it exercised over Soviet society. Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution referred to the party as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations." The party, precisely because it was the bearer of Marxist-Leninist ideology, determined the general development of society, directed domestic and foreign policy, and "imparts a planned, systematic, and theoretically substantiated character" to the struggle of the Soviet people for the victory of communism.
The nomenklatura referred to the Communist party's authority to make appointments to key positions throughout the governmental system, as well as throughout the party's own hierarchy. Coextensive with the nomenklatura were patron-client relations. Officials who had the authority to appoint individuals to certain positions cultivated loyalties among those whom they appointed. The patron (the official making the appointment) promoted the interests of clients in return for their support. Powerful patrons, such as the members of the Politburo, had many clients. Moreover, an official could be both a client (in relation to a higher-level patron) and a patron (to other, lower-level officials).
Because a client was beholden to his patron for his position, the client was eager to please his patron by carrying out his policies. The Soviet power structure essentially consisted of groups of vassals (clients) who had an overlord (the patron). The higher the patron, the more clients the patron had. Patrons protected their clients and tried to promote their careers. In return for the patron's efforts to promote their careers, the clients remained loyal to their patron. Thus, by promoting his clients' careers, the patron could advance his own power.
Milovan Djilas wrote of the nomenklatura in his book The New class, and that it was widely seen (and resented) by ordinary citizens as a bureaucratic élite that enjoyed special privileges and had simply supplanted the earlier wealthy capitalist élites.
Constitutions which implemented soviets
The first constitution, the 1918 Soviet Constitution, described the regime that assumed power in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This constitution gave broad guarantees of equal rights to workers and peasants. It denied, however, the right of social groups that opposed the new government or supported the White armies in the Civil War (1918–21) to participate in elections to the soviets or to hold political power.
Supreme power rested with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, made up of deputies from local soviets across Russia. The steering committee of the Congress of Soviets—known as the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets—acted as the "supreme organ of power" between sessions of the congress and as the collective presidency of the state.
The congress recognized the Council of People's Commissars (Sovet narodnykh kommissarov, or Sovnarkom) as the administrative arm of the young government. The Sovnarkom had exercised governmental authority from November 1917 until the adoption of the 1918 constitution. The constitution made the Sovnarkom responsible to the Congress of Soviets for the "general administration of the affairs of the state." The constitution enabled the Sovnarkom to issue decrees carrying the full force of law when the congress was not in session. The congress then routinely approved these decrees at its next session.
The 1924 Soviet Constitution legitimated the December 1922 union of the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This constitution also altered the structure of the central government. The constitution divided the Central Executive Committee into the Soviet of the Union, which would represent the constituent republics, and the Soviet of Nationalities, which would represent the interests of nationality groups. The Presidium of the Central Executive Committee served as the collective presidency. Between sessions of the Central Executive Committee, the Presidium supervised the government administration. The Central Executive Committee also elected the Sovnarkom, which served as the executive arm of the government.
The 1936 Soviet Constitution, adopted on December 5, 1936, and also known as the "Stalin Constitution," redesigned the government. The constitution repealed restrictions on voting and added universal direct suffrage and the right to work to rights guaranteed by the previous constitution. The constitution also provided for the direct election of all government bodies and their reorganization into a single, uniform system.
The 1936 constitution changed the name of the Central Executive Committee to the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Like its predecessor, the Supreme Soviet contained two chambers: the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities. The constitution empowered the Supreme Soviet to elect commissions, which performed most of the Supreme Soviet's work. As under the former constitution, the Presidium exercised the full powers of the Supreme Soviet between sessions and had the right to interpret laws. The chairman of the Presidium became the titular head of state. The Sovnarkom (after 1946 known as the Council of Ministers) continued to act as the executive arm of the government.
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Like the 1936 constitution, the 1977 Soviet Constitution used direct election of all government bodies and used the name "Soviet" for certain of these bodies.
- See note regarding Library of Congress Country Studies. Chapter 7 - The Communist Party. Democratic Centralism
- See note regarding Library of Congress Country Studies. Chapter 8 - Government Structure and Functions
- See note regarding Library of Congress Country Studies. Chapter 7 - The Communist Party
- "A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former).". Retrieved December 4, 2006.