Problems with the soviet system.

Hello comrades!

I just want to ask you about what you think of the democratic problems in the soviet system in 1917-1918 (i think that after that the soviets degenerated).

The democratic problems is as follows:

In the soviet constitution of 1918 it states:

25. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of representatives of urban soviets (one delegate for 25,000 voters), and of representatives of the provincial (gubernia) congresses of soviets (one delegate for 125,000 inhabitants).

This means, that a workers vote was 5 times more important than a peasants vote. Many historians have used it to explain why the bolsheviks got around 52 % of the votes in the 2. All-Russian Soviet Congress, but only around 25 % in the Constituent Assembly.

On wikipedia there is the following information about the soviets:

Two more recent book using material from the opened Soviet achieves, The Russian Revolution 1899-1919 by Richard Pipes and A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes, give a different version. Pipes argues that the elections to the Second Congress were not fair, for example one Soviet with 1,500 members sent 5 delegates which was more than Kiev.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian...rical_disputes

So how do you view all these problems?

Gustav, I don't quite understand what 'problem' you're highlighting here. Do you think the provincial soviets were under-represented? The whole point of a proletarian dictatorship is to give greater weight to the working class than other non-exploiting classes. It is the only revolutionary class, after all.

I think one of the lessons of the Russian Revolution was that the Soviets -- and the Bolsheviks with them -- became integrated into the state apparatus when they should have maintained their autonomy and hegemony over it. The party should not have formed a 'government'. The bolsheviks made mistakes because the whole situation was unique. Thankfully we have the benefit of hindsight and must draw the appropriate lessons from the history of the workers' movement.

I get the impression that you think that the lack of 'democracy' constributed to the degenration of the revolution, that if there had been more democracy then the revolution would have been saved. Is this right?

For the ICC, the decisive factor in the degeneration of the Russian Revolution -- although there were many others -- was its growing international isolation. From International Review 75:

It was of little importance that the Soviet constitution tried to preserve the political weight of the working class so that the latter had first place in representation in the state (1 delegate for each 25,000 workers, while 125,000 peasants also elected 1 delegate), when already the problem was the absorption of these workers into the conservative machinery of the state.

And once the proletarian revolution was completely defeated in Europe, nothing, not even the iron control the Bolshevik party maintained over society, could prevent world and thus Russian capitalism from taking control of the state and leading it in a direction absolutely opposed to what the communists were trying to do:

"The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was not going in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand. God knows who, perhaps of a profiteer, or of a private capitalist, or of both. Be that as it may, the car is not going quite in the direction the man at the wheel imagines, and often it goes in an altogether different direction" (Lenin: "Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP.', 27.3.22, Selected Works, Vol 3 page 620).

Hope that has helped clarify things...

Thank you for your answer!

Maybe it was right, to give greater weight to the proletariat than to the peasantry, but was it right to give 1500 people the right to elect more deputies than Kiev to the Second Soviet Congress elections?

Moreover there is also this on the wikipedia article about the Constituent Assembly:

Instead the socialists (Socialist Revolutionaries and their Menshevik allies) decided to work within the Soviet system and returned to the Soviet All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), the Petrograd Soviet and other Soviet bodies that they had walked out of during the Bolshevik uprising in October 1917. They hoped that Soviet re-elections would go their way once the Bolsheviks proved unable to solve pressing social and economic problems. They would then achieve a majority within local Soviets and, eventually, the Soviet government, at which point they would be able to re-convene the Constituent Assembly.
The socialists' plan was partially successful in that Soviet re-elections in the winter and especially spring of 1918 often returned pro-SR and anti-Bolshevik majorities, but their plan was frustrated by the Soviet government's refusal to accept election results and its repeated dissolution of anti-Bolshevik Soviets. As one of the leaders of Tula Bolsheviks N. V. Kopulov wrote to the Bolshevik Central Committee in early 1918:
After the transfer of power to the soviet, a rapid about­-face began in the mood of the workers. The Bolshevik deputies began to be recalled one after another, and soon the general situation took on a rather unhappy appearance. Despite the fact that there was a schism among the SRs, and the Left SRs were with us, our situation became shakier with each passing day. We were forced to block new elections to the soviet and even not to recognize them where they had taken place not in our favor.[20]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian...y-June_1918.29