Soviets, often called Soviets of Workers' Deputies, were worker councils first formed during the Russian Revolution of 1905 when a general strike was called against the Tsarist regime. Factory and other types of workers across the newly industrialised Russian Empire elected some of their number to manage the strikes and represent worker interests, such as improving working conditions and pay. Soviets ensured a minimum level of services during the strike, but they also harboured political ambitions to better represent the working classes in government.

Although the tsar survived the 1905 revolution, in the Russian Revolution of 1917, soviets were reformed as workers once again conducted strikes and agitated for social and political change. The soviets came to be dominated by radical socialists such as the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin (1870 to 1924), who ultimately seized power by force in November 1917. The name 'soviet' was given to the former Russian Empire when it was renamed The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.

As Russia industrialised in the latter part of the 19th century, a new class of workers was created; they were particularly numerous in the metal and textile industries. Other industries where this class was becoming increasingly conscious of itself included coal mining, printing, docks, and tool manufacturing. By the early 20th century, the working class, often called the proletariat, had become an identifiable part of Russian society.

There was an economic slump in Russia between 1901 and 1905, and this had particular consequences for the working classes. Indeed, workers had many grievances: hated foremen, unpopular factory rule books with their myriad of potential fines, unsafe machinery, 12-hour (or even 17-hour) working days, and low wages caused by high inflation. Workers wanted the right to form trade unions without restrictions and to gain insurance against accidents. There were also calls for wider freedoms, such as rights of assembly and association, and a greater freedom of the press. Workers wanted to remove interference from the tsar's secret police in their affairs. Finally, workers' housing areas were often little better than slums in the bigger cities. The imperial regime headed by Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894 to 1917) was blamed for these problems, or at least for not doing anything in particular to solve them. In addition, Russia's loss in the Russo-Japanese War (1904 to 5) added to the woes of those who called for change and further dented the tsar's prestige.

Workers pushed for change. "Long experience of industrial militancy had imbued them with a strong sense of class unity and a deep antagonism to the tsarist state and the propertied classes" (Shukman, 19). Socialist political parties and trade unions – both of which were variously restricted or prohibited – could not adequately represent the labour, political, and social demands of the new working class, and so they turned to an entirely new model of representation which could bring changes from business owners, local government, and the Tsarist regime.

Worker unrest, although simmering away for years, rose to boiling point following the events of Bloody Sunday in 1905. In Saint Petersburg on 22 January, a crowd of workers and their families, led by Father Georgy Gapon (1870 to 1906), wanted to present to the tsar a petition for reforms. Gapon's petition carried an impressive 150,000 signatures. The Sunday crowd was unarmed, but when it would not disperse, imperial soldiers fired on them as they approached the Winter Palace, residence of the tsar. The demonstrators were then charged down by Cossack cavalry. Over 1,000 people were killed, and many more were wounded in the incident, which immediately became known as 'Bloody Sunday'.

A general strike was called in response to Bloody Sunday, and "by the end of 1905 over 2.7 million workers were on strike" (Bunce, 16). The strikes were ultimately organised by new committees or worker councils called soviets. The St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies, like many other soviets, was founded in October 1905 as a general strike committee. It was led by Georgy Stepanovich Khurstalev-Nosar (1877 to 1919) as chairman and with Leon Trotsky (1879 to 1940) as deputy. The soviet represented 200,000 workers from 147 factories. It also printed its own newspaper, Izvestiya ('News'). The Moscow Soviet was another powerful body, but the soviets in other towns tended to have influence only over local affairs.

The idea of the soviets was that a worker assembly in a particular factory voted for deputies to represent their interests during the strike. These deputies then attended meetings of the local soviet, where other factories were also represented. The system of election varied: "In St. Petersburg 500 workers elected one deputy, in Moscow – 400, in Odessa – 100, in Kostroma – 50" (Shukman, 134). Soviets were not organised along any party lines but rather by profession and factory. The soviet negotiated with employers, the local political authorities, and the police. The soviet's leadership, the executive committee, also ensured that a minimum of services continued to be provided for the public despite the strike. Direct democracy and cooperation were regarded as the key means of the soviets in achieving their aims. These were the strengths of the organisation, but "their very spontaneity, the impetus which gave them birth, prevented them becoming stable institutions" capable of daily administrative tasks (Hoskins, 412). Nevertheless, "the soviet form of labour organization a uniquely Russian contribution to labour history" (Shukman, 55), and they became "organs of mass self-expression" (Read, 144).

The idea of soviets soon spread across the Russian Empire (and to other countries). During the 1905 Revolution, between 45 and 50 Russian soviets were formed. In short, the soviets "were essentially non-party, non-doctrinal, general representative bodies of the working class of a city" (Shukman, 55). The Statute of the Kostroma Soviet indicates the initial purpose of these organisations: "An organization of the local proletariat for the successful struggle for the betterment of its economic and legal position" (Shukman, 135). The St. Petersburg Soviet and some others then went further during the 1905 Revolution and took upon themselves limited government authority through such declarations as the eight-hour working day. More radical members of the soviets pushed for the formation of a Constituent Assembly to replace the tsar.

Some soviets did gain real power during the revolution, notably in Novorossiysk, Chita, Baku, and Krasnoyarsk, and to a lesser extent in St. Petersburg, Samara, Taganrog, and Rostov. Some soviets also managed to block the tsar's pogroms. However, the tsar ultimately held on to power in 1905 by promising reforms. Once unrest had died down, Nicholas proceeded to ruthlessly quash any dissent to his rule, including from the soviets. A meeting of the St. Petersburg (later Petrograd) Soviet was broken up by the army in December, and some delegates were imprisoned or exiled. The same tactic was used against other soviets. Workers in Moscow protested violently, but they, too, were beaten into submission as the tsar reasserted his grip on power. The soviets were wiped away, but they would return a decade later.

In 1917, the right of Tsar Nicholas to rule was once again challenged by his own people. Since 1905, the working classes had grown significantly. By 1917, there were around 18.5 million workers, some 10% of the population. Perhaps more importantly, these workers were concentrated in the larger cities and certain regions. "This concentration of the industrial labour force was critical in facilitating its mobilization in 1917, and gave the working class a political weight out of proportion to its rather small numbers" (Shukman, 19). From 1914, when the First World War (1914 to 18) had caused the Tsarist regime to conscript many male workers into the armed forces, more peasants and women began to work in factories, widening the support base even further for the about to be revived soviets.

The Petrograd (St. Petersburg's new name from 1914) Soviet was reformed in February 1917, once again with the principal aim of coordinating strikes. Soviets suddenly popped up everywhere. By May 1917, there were 400 worker soviets across Russia, and by October that year, the number had risen to around 950. The number of soviets of all types was around 1,400. These new soviets

…saw themselves as representing the 'revolutionary democracy', a bloc of social groups comprising workers, soldiers and peasants, often stretching to include white-collar employees and professionals, such as teachers, journalists, lawyers or doctors, and in some cases representatives of ethnic minorities.

(Suny, 118)

Members directly voted for their delegates and could immediately recall them if they desired. Although the soviets did not usually regard themselves as rivals to branches of local government, they did often concern "themselves with everything from fuel supply, to education, to policing" (Suny, 118).

The soviets, besides gaining in number, were also becoming more harmonised, notably when over 150 soviets sent delegates to a conference in Petrograd in March 1917 and then in June at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets. The congress involved over 1,000 delegates from over 400 soviets who collectively represented some 20 million workers and soldiers. This latter group was a new element compared to the soviets of 1905. Each army battalion of 250 men sent one delegate to their soviet (for workers, the typical number was anywhere from 300 to 1,000 workers per delegate, depending on the city). The soviets, as in 1905, conducted strikes which called for better working conditions and greater political representation for the working classes.

Through 1917, the leadership of the soviets came to be dominated by the socialist intelligentsia and not ordinary workers. These intellectuals, who were often members of underground political 'parties', were split into different factions, notably the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks (factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), and each tried to control as many soviets as they could, even if they were unsure how to best use these organisations in the revolution they hoped would soon be coming.

The Mensheviks wanted soviets to agitate against the bourgeois regime that would replace the tsar, presenting an extreme 'revolutionary opposition' but not promoting outright revolution. The Bolsheviks and other socialist groups, although wary of the spontaneous and sometimes unpredictable nature of the worker soviets, went a step further and revived the idea of forming a national workers' Constituent Assembly. The Provisional Government replaced Tsar Nicholas following his abdication in March 1917 (when the army refused to support him in the face of popular unrest), but it had failed to fulfil its promise to form such an assembly. A political vacuum followed the end of Tsarist rule at a local level, where the tsar's old bureaucracy was replaced by "a bewildering collection and variety of people's councils, soviets, factory committees, peasants' collectives and other organs of popular control" (Alan Wood, 48).

The Petrograd Soviet remained the most influential soviet; even before the abdication, it had declared (Order No. 1 and 2) that within the armed forces in Petrograd, soldier committees should take over decision-making, casting aside the traditional hierarchy of officer ranks. The soviet had also insisted that they approve all general orders given to these armed forces. When these orders were extended to the Russian army as a whole, the result was that discipline plummeted and desertions rocketed.

Although the soviets largely supported the Provisional Government in continuing Russia's involvement in WWI, many workers were increasingly frustrated by the worsening economic conditions through the summer of 1917, a crisis which saw bread shortages and Russian paper money halve in value. A worker demonstration in Petrograd against certain capitalist ministers in the Provisional Government on 16 to 20 July ended in bloodshed and the death or injury of 400 of the demonstrators, an infamous incident known as "the July Days". As the soviets became more militant so the number of strikes greatly increased. The events of 1905 seemed to be repeating themselves, only this time there was no longer a tsar in power for reactionary and right-wing forces to rally around. The summer of 1917 "witnessed 1,019 strikes involving 2,441,850 workers and employees" (Freeze, 284). Nevertheless, the soviets did not call for a revolution as such but rather change from within the government itself. Most workers, above all, feared a damaging civil war. The socialist intelligentsia, in contrast, was willing to take just such a risk since the prize was a proletarian revolution that might establish the world's first communist state.

The more radical Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, believed that only a socialist government would make a people's assembly a reality, and they gradually gained control of the soviets from the more moderate intelligentsia, like the Mensheviks. Bolshevik slogans like "All power to the soviets!" helped win support from workers, but a more dramatic action was required than words, votes, and congresses could ever provide. Lenin himself declared that his slogan had, by August 1917, "ceased to be correct" (Anthony Wood, 68) since most workers had understood it to mean power should reside in a coalition of all socialist parties, not just the Bolsheviks. Lenin, however, was expressly aiming for a Bolshevik revolution. The problem for the Petrograd Soviet was that it remained "a ramshackle, chaotic assembly…with no set procedures, no constitution, and of course with no experience of government" (Alan Wood, 48). While others dithered, the Bolsheviks seized the initiative.

Lenin, using his Red Guards militia, actually formed from the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet (MRC), led by Trotsky, effectively seized power in November 1917 by arresting key members of the Provisional Government, occupying telegraph offices and railway stations, and attacking the Winter Palace. All this bypassed the soviets, who were holding their Second Congress at the time. The Bolshevik delegates were in a minority at this conference, but the Mensheviks, the largest other group, walked out in protest at the coup. A national election was then held for a Constituent Assembly, but the results revealed that the Bolsheviks were not as popular as they hoped to be; they received less than a quarter of the votes.

In January 1918, Lenin's Red Guards closed down the Constituent Assembly. Lenin was able to keep the soviets at least nominally on board with his revolution since they had already voted to create the Sovnarkom, the Council of People's Commissars. Lenin was the head of this council, and he greatly increased his popularity by declaring the long-sought-for 8-hour maximum working day. Lenin also shrewdly issued a decree that workers would henceforth control all aspects of production, and, more concretely, he promised to withdraw Russia from WWI, which would save lives and revive the economy. The Bolsheviks had to win the Russian Civil War against reactionary forces aided by foreign powers, but they did this by 1922. Lenin's new state was given the name the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but this had little to do with the workers' soviets, organisations which were turned into local agents of Lenin's central and largely authoritarian government, where the Bolsheviks, now called the Communist Party, were the only party. Lenin nationalised all heavy industry, mines, and the railways. The working classes, who had pinned their hopes on the soviets, soon discovered life would be as challenging in this new Russia as it had been in the old one.