Soviet Elections

[Lamanov]

Few questions about Soviets in Russia, after February, through October, all the way to NEP years:

- How were the elections held?
- Where did they take place, if elected by workers?
- How often did they repeat themselves?
- What happened to "recall" - did it happen to individual delegates?
- How did it happen that representatives were more often party spokesmen rather then people who were making votes - peasants, workers, soldiers?
- What happened to elections to Soviets after the establishment of Sovnarkom?
- When did the CPSU undermine the process, how (by what set of decrees)?

[syndicat]

the local soviets held eletions approximately quarterly between the Feb-Mar 1917 revolution and the October revolution. that is, elections were held in Feb-Mar, again in May-June, and then again in Aug-Sept. but local soviet elections were not held again til the spring of 1918...between April and June. this was a source of some complaint.

the nation-wide congress of soviets was first elected in June and then again in October. this only represented workers, soldiers and sailors. there was a separate peasant congress which held its second election in November and then it merged with the worke/soldier congress. the next nation-wide congress elections weren't held til June or July 1918.

the campaigns and elections took place in the workplaces, i believe. however, soviets differed about eligibility. the Kronstadt soviet, for example, required that you had to work in a workplace or be a member of a military unit to be a delegate whereas the St. Petersburg and Moscow soviets allowed anyone to run to represent a workplace. that's how Lenin and Martov were put forward as candidates even tho they didn't work in any factory.

it's because of this fact that some soviets allowed members of the intelligentsia representing left parties to run, even tho they didn't work in a particular place, that party leaders from the intelligentsia got elected to the soviets. this happened, in the case of the St. Petersburg soviet, because it was basically set up by leaders of the Menshevik, SR and Popular Socialist (trudnovik) parties in Feb. 1917, including several members of the Duma (parliament). it wasn't set up by workers, tho it is true that a Menshevik worker committee had called for the setting up of a soviet.

after sovnarkom was established at the end of Oct 1917, elections to the soviets became less frequent, as I noted above. also, the cheka, which was controlled by the Bolshevik central committee, sometimes interfered with non-Bolshevik organizations, tho not consistently until the beginning of the civil war in July 1918. the big change was that in the elections of the spring of 1918, when the Bolsheviks lost in a number of cities, those soviets were disbanded. however, this didn't necessarily happen on orders from the center, but was usually the work of the local Bolshevik party activists in that city, typically radicalized soldiers. the Bolshevik party in that period was not as "centralized" as is sometimes made out.

after the beginning of the civil war in the summer of 1918, the cheka was used to systematically deny organizing rights to other left political tendencies. this tended to convert the soviets into rubber stamps even more than thay had been before, as they had little political debate. the decisions by the executive were a forgone conclusion.

[Lamanov]

OK, thanks allot. This will help a great deal, so I'll know what to concentrate on. Two questions though, concerning the period through 1918, before and after Left SR rebellion:

Did workers ever attempt to elect a Soviet in a "non-party" fashion, i.e., to elect a candidate amongst themselves, rather then a Bolshevik representative? Did Bolsheviks simply disband those types of Soviets as well?

What did they do to these "all-worker" Soviets, such as the Kronstadt one?

[workingcommunist]

Great Post! It is always great to learn something new! :redstar:

[syndicat]

Did workers ever attempt to elect a Soviet in a "non-party" fashion, i.e., to elect a candidate amongst themselves, rather then a Bolshevik representative? Did Bolsheviks simply disband those types of Soviets as well?

What did they do to these "all-worker" Soviets, such as the Kronstadt one?

The way the Kronstadt soviet worked, workers in a particular place elected one of their own. The workers in that workplace also continued to have regular assemblies of the workers there, and elected their own shop committee. The assemblies and shop committee were vigilant in making sure their delegate on the soviet voted the way they wanted, attended all the meetings, etc. The soviet, for it's part, also was vigilant in making sure there was a shop committee, and that it met regularly. The political organizations had their supporters in the various workplaces and tried to get them elected. At the soviet meetings the delegates voted in accord with their organization. The largest left organization in the Kronstadt soviet in 1917 was the Union of Socialist Revolutionaries-Maximalist. This was an anti-parliamentary libertarian socialist group that supported the October revolution (overthrow of the provisional government). The Bolsheviks in that soviet were the second largest faction. This is all described by Israel Getzler in "Kronstadt 1917-1921"

After the banning of the Left SRs and the attacks on the other non-Bolshevik left political organizations in July 1918, the Communist Party finally gained control of the Kronstadt soviet and they reorganized it. The assemblies in the workplaces were done away with, and the elected shop committees were replaced by "troikas", 3-person commitees of Communist Party members, in the workplaces. the soviet itself became pretty much a rubber stamp because the Communist Party had such an overwhelming majority in it. that soviet was at the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet and one of the things it had done in the revolution was to institute election of officers. That was done away with by the Communist Party after July 1918. the Communists set up a system of "commissars" in the Baltic Fleet who were agents of the Communist Party government in the ships, who reported back to the Communist leadership on the "political climate" in the fleet etc., and acted as a party control on the officers. but the commissars were accountable to people at the top, not to people at the bottom. again, all of this is described in Getzler's book.