Absent a Dictatorship, Could the Russian Soviets Become a Legitimate Representative Institution?

[Dr. Hochmeister]

We all know the USSR was a brutal centralized dictatorship, but the actual Soviets (councils) themselves started well before the October revolution as grassroots democratic institutions that workers, soldiers, and peasants used to organize themselves politically and economically. They did not start under the control of autocratic leftists like Lenin, who were often surprised at how quickly and spontaneously they arose and how attached the populace was to them. Prior to the election of the constituent assembly in Nov. 1917, the Soviets were arguably the most representative organization in Russia, with the Provisional Government at best having been elected back before 1914 under an extremely limited Tsarist franchise.

Historically the Soviets were subjugated by Lenin's Bolshvik Party and existed mainly as a organ of local governance and a rubber stamp for the party's directives for most of the USSR's history. However, let's posit an alternate timeline where, for whatever reasons, Kerensky's provisional government still falls and the Constituent Assembly is dissolved or never forms in favor of "all power to the Soviets," but no singular party or dictator manages to capture and control the Soviets as Lenin and the Bolsheviks historically did. Could the Soviets have evolved into a representative institution capable of both universally representing the entire population and governing Russia? Basically, could they have evolved into a sort of parliament organized on the basis of occupation instead of geographic location? If so, how and what would it look like? Or were they organizationally flawed from the start, perhaps to capture by strong individuals, from their restriction to only certain types of workers inherently freezing out the bourgeois and other people that don't fit into the socialist mold, or just by being difficult to co-ordinate and maintain over time and a changing economy?

For discussion's sake, let's please try and focus on the actual Soviets themselves and not ancillary questions like Reds vs Whites, Germans, Nazis, Brest-Litvosk, or what particular POD lead to Lenin and the Bolsheviks not getting off the ground.

 

[ZenarchistI937]

What you're basically asking here is "do you think libertarian socialism/anarchism can work." If you're interested in learning more about various proposals on what such a society could look like, you'd probably want to look at the various theoretical and practical works written by important figures like Kropotkin (anarcho-communism), Pannekoek (council communism), and Öcalan (democratic confederalism). If you'd rather, the channel Anark on YouTube has a ~30 minute video going over what a hypothetical anarchist society would look like and uses a model not dissimilar from the intentions of the Soviet model.

 

[Thoresby]

As @I937 says this is effectively a litmus test for your views on the practicality of this sort of social organisation. I personally think the they wouldn't of worked in the medium term and you would have ended up either with an evolution to a classic representative democracy just with constituencies based on non-geographical characteristics (profession) but otherwise acting like a normal party list PR system or more likely towards dictatorship.

 

[RousseauX]

What you're basically asking here is "do you think libertarian socialism/anarchism can work." If you're interested in learning more about various proposals on what such a society could look like, you'd probably want to look at the various theoretical and practical works written by important figures like Kropotkin (anarcho-communism), Pannekoek (council communism), and Öcalan (democratic confederalism). If you'd rather, the channel Anark on YouTube has a ~30 minute video going over what a hypothetical anarchist society would look like and uses a model not dissimilar from the intentions of the Soviet model.

The Soviets could have evolved into something that looked like what the otl Supreme Soviet was -in theory-, which is a democratically elected legislature not too unlike those in liberal democracies in its actual function. But representing certain classes within the USSR instead of geographical areas or everyone regardless of class. So in practice the electoral system will just exclude everyone who is deemed to be of the "wrong" class.

 

[David T]

Even the "democratic" soviets of 1917 had serious drawbacks from the viewpoint of "pure" democracy. Overrepresentation of workers and soldiers compared to peasants (who were after all the great majority of Russia's population). Complete exclusion of the bourgeoisie. Open voting. Of course to Bolsheviks and some left-wingers in other socialist parties, these were features, not bugs. Indeed, when the Soviet constitution of 1936 instituted universal suffage (even priests could now vote!), the secret ballot, and represntation based on population regardelss of class, these moves meant little from the practical point of view but on paper looked like a return to parliamentary "bourgeois" democracy and indeed were criticized as such by some Trotskyists...

 

[Anneessens]

What you're basically asking here is "do you think libertarian socialism/anarchism can work." If you're interested in learning more about various proposals on what such a society could look like, you'd probably want to look at the various theoretical and practical works written by important figures like Kropotkin (anarcho-communism), Pannekoek (council communism), and Öcalan (democratic confederalism). If you'd rather, the channel Anark on YouTube has a ~30 minute video going over what a hypothetical anarchist society would look like and uses a model not dissimilar from the intentions of the Soviet model.

I'd also look into the left SR's. Within the Soviets, they were the most important group defending more or less a model as described in the OP. (I'm also, BTW, still looking for the text of their alternative, "libertarian" Soviet Constitution Oskar Anweiler mentions in his "The Russian Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Councils, 1905-1921".)

I'll leave it to others to judge how likely a victory of the Left SR's is and how it could come about.

 

[Salvador79]

I'll shameless plug my TL Feeble Constitution - A Red-and-Green Russia here, in which ONE possible way for soviets/councils to co-exist with classical parliamentary democracy in a federal constitutional framework has been pursued by me. There are other possibilities, of course. The elephants in the room are the ones that you told us to ignore, so I'll do that, but it's really hard, of course. It's like discussing the soviets' possibilities in a political void. But nothing ever exists in a void. In pure theory, lots of things are conceivable. People might ultimately realise, if the soviets turn into a stabilised institution, that this is quite a corporatist design...

 

[Sam R.]

We all know the USSR was a brutal centralized dictatorship

Might want to actually read some scholarship on how consensus government operated in the Soviet Union. Formal networks of consultation lay over the ordinary informal ones which appear everywhere. Most importantly in all most all matters the most influential political committee or polit bureau spoke last to summarise the line in the room. His efforts were deployed long before hand in local and regional centres to ensure that what he was forced to accept would be what he wished to.

And while only one body of people could be selected for roles, the determination of the composition of people worth consulting was itself consultative. Imagine more the massive pressure of a local participant sports club and drinking house, your Australian lawn bowls club, the pressure politics and crude self interest across a self selecting membership writ large. Sheila Fitzpatrick is my normal citation for Stalin’s relationship with the periphery. I’ve read translated pc minutes which show exactly this behaviour in opposed line conflicts over an existential crisis for the party’s existence (56).

 

[Dr. Hochmeister]

What you're basically asking here is "do you think libertarian socialism/anarchism can work." If you're interested in learning more about various proposals on what such a society could look like, you'd probably want to look at the various theoretical and practical works written by important figures like Kropotkin (anarcho-communism), Pannekoek (council communism), and Öcalan (democratic confederalism). If you'd rather, the channel Anark on YouTube has a ~30 minute video going over what a hypothetical anarchist society would look like and uses a model not dissimilar from the intentions of the Soviet model.

As @I937 says this is effectively a litmus test for your views on the practicality of this sort of social organisation. I personally think the they wouldn't of worked in the medium term and you would have ended up either with an evolution to a classic representative democracy just with constituencies based on non-geographical characteristics (profession) but otherwise acting like a normal party list PR system or more likely towards dictatorship.

To an extent, but I think the question of whether some sort of anarcho-socialist society is politically and economically feasible is distinct enough from the question of the evolution of the Soviets absent Lenin's Bolshevik takeover. The economic questions are certainly their own can of worms, but as of 1917 even a Soviet-run Russia would not necessarily have gone all in on collectivization; there were still plenty of orthodox Marxists that believed Russia still needed to go through the capitalist stage of development for instance. At the extreme, one could view the Soviets as just another form of electoral representation with limited franchise, albiet distributed by occupation instead of land, wealth, race, etc... Given that they did exist and were making plays for political power outside of Lenin's schemes I think it's fair to ask how they might have evolved in a scenario where they end up on top but still split between the multitude of Socialist groups in Pre-1918 Russia.

The Soviets could have evolved into something that looked like what the otl Supreme Soviet was -in theory-, which is a democratically elected legislature not too unlike those in liberal democracies in its actual function. But representing certain classes within the USSR instead of geographical areas or everyone regardless of class. So in practice the electoral system will just exclude everyone who is deemed to be of the "wrong" class.

Even the "democratic" soviets of 1917 had serious drawbacks from the viewpoint of "pure" democracy. Overrepresentation of workers and soldiers compared to peasants (who were after all the great majority of Russia's population). Complete exclusion of the bourgeoisie. Open voting. Of course to Bolsheviks and some left-wingers in other socialist parties, these were features, not bugs. Indeed, when the Soviet constitution of 1936 instituted universal suffage (even priests could now vote!), the secret ballot, and represntation based on population regardelss of class, these moves meant little from the practical point of view but on paper looked like a return to parliamentary "bourgeois" democracy and indeed were criticized as such by some Trotskyists...

As they were in 1917 the Soviets definitely did not represent the entirety of Russia. There was still a drive for universal suffrage among the Socialists at that, but how or if that's squared with the nature of the Soviets is kinda the heart of what I'm asking here. On one hand, I could see the Soviets basically becoming something akin to unions in the US; limited in franchise and often insular, self-interested, and dominated from the top down by various strong figures that manage to control the organization. A lot also depends on how the upper classes would react; as ironic as it seems maybe the Bourgeois and other conservatives form their own Soviets to try and get some influence over the new system, or maybe they treat them as entirely illegitimate and try to tear them down from the outside. A lot also depends on the exact structure of the government that is formed; how votes are distributed, the mechanics of voting, where executive power is vested, etc...

I'll shameless plug my TL Feeble Constitution - A Red-and-Green Russia here, in which ONE possible way for soviets/councils to co-exist with classical parliamentary democracy in a federal constitutional framework has been pursued by me. There are other possibilities, of course. The elephants in the room are the ones that you told us to ignore, so I'll do that, but it's really hard, of course. It's like discussing the soviets' possibilities in a political void. But nothing ever exists in a void. In pure theory, lots of things are conceivable. People might ultimately realise, if the soviets turn into a stabilised institution, that this is quite a corporatist design...

Thanks, I need to read that sometime. A dual-power framework between a Constituent Assembly and the Soviets would be another fascinating outcome of the Russian Revolution; reminds me a bit of the Senate/House distinction in the US. Yeah, there's a lot of factors that would influence how this came about, mainly around the end of the War and what happens with Lenin, but given that he didn't start pushing things his way until later in 1917 I think it's possible to speculate how the situation could evolve if him and the rest of the parties don't become completely dominant. A lot probably depends on who ends up "in charge" and makes the system; there were leftists that were not as attached to vanguardism, or an uneasy coalition might hammer out some compromise.

My main concern is that this thread not derail into yet another pissing match about quantifying exactly how evil the OTL Reds and Whites were, or wheter Russia would have survived WWII without Stalin's forced industrialization. As long as we don't go down those routes please, speculate away!

 

[crazyhorse18]

Except of the period of 1937-1953 USSR actually was a one-party republic...

 

[David T]

Could the "universal, direct, equal, and secret" ballot democracy of the Consituent Assembly be combined with the power of the soviets as representatives of working-class opinion? Trotsky ridiculed the idea: "Hilferding and Kautsky in Germany, Max Adler in Austria, proposed that they should “combine” democracy with the soviet system, including the workers’ soviets in the constitution. That would have meant making potential or open civil war a constituent part of the state régime. It would be impossible to imagine a more curious Utopia. Its sole justification on German soil is perhaps an old tradition: the Württemberg democrats of ’48 wanted a republic with a duke at the head." https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch11.htm

But many Russian socialists--including some Bolsheviks--did not for some time rule out the possibility of Constituent Assembly and soviets coexisting. As late as the Constituent Assembly's short-lives session, Chernov argued that any disagreements between the Assembly and the soviets could be resolved by referendum. But by then of course it was too late. The question is whether moderate socialists--maybe even including conciliatory Bolsheviks--could have done something to being it about earlier. Orlando Figes writes in *A People's Tragedy* that for the moderate socialists in February,

"The Soviets, as class-based organs, might play a role in local government but they lacked the means to run the state. What was needed now, as a preparation for the transition to socialism, was for the masses to go through the school of democracy — which for the workers, in particular, meant following the example of the European labour movements — and this could only be achieved within a liberal framework of political freedom. But this too was to impose a Western model of democracy on a country where the base for it was missing. The 'direct democracy' of the Soviets was much closer to the experience of the Russian masses — it was reminiscent of the peasant commune — and it might have served as the starting point for a new and different type of democratic order, one much more decentralized than the liberal democracy of the West, provided the Soviets were somehow combined with the broader representative bodies (e.g. the city dumas, the zemstvos and the Constituent Assembly) in a national political framework...

"Only a democracy that contained elements of this social revolution had any prospect of holding on to power in the conditions of 1917. The Soviet leaders, because of their own dogmatic preconceptions about the need for a 'bourgeois revolution', missed a unique chance to set up such a system by assuming power through the Soviets; and perhaps a chance to avert a full-scale civil war by combining the power of the Soviets with that of the other public bodies, such as the zemstvos and the city dumas, under the Constituent Assembly. This sort of resolution would have been acceptable to Bolshevik moderates such as Kamenev, to left-wing Mensheviks such as Martov and to any number of left-wing SRs. Undoubtedly, this would have been a precarious resolution: neither Lenin nor Kerensky would have accepted it; and there was bound to be armed opposition to it from the Right. Some sort of civil war was unavoidable. But such a democratic settlement — one which satisfied the social demands of the masses — was perhaps the only option that had any chance of minimizing the scale of that civil war. It alone could have stopped the Bolsheviks.'

Elsewhere in the book Figes notes that "Kamenev, for one, was a consistent advocate of the idea that the Bolsheviks should compete for power within it [the Consititent Assembly] and, like some of the Left SRs, even favoured the notion of combining Soviet power at the local level with the Assembly as a sovereign national parliament."

 

[Sam R.]

Also to get down off my high horse:

the Bolshevik coup seized two institutions:
The geographic soviets dominated by bourgeois intelligentsia such as the bolsheviks
The government departments

the bolsheviks primarily ran their government using existing government departmentalities.

Simon Pirani goes into detail how the bolsheviks turned the geographic soviets AGAINST proletarian working class factory soviets.

 

[David T]

1917: Power of the soviets (vlast’ sovetov)
1919: Soviet power (sovetskaia vlast’)

That's how Martov summarized the transformation; "the second version pointed to a vlast that was based on the Bolshevik party, with only a historical or sentimental connection to original, independent soviets" as Lars Lih put it. https://johnriddell.com/2014/08/18/all-power-to-the-soviets-biography-of-a-slogan-by-lars-lih/

 

[Salvador79]

A dual-power framework between a Constituent Assembly and the Soviets would be another fascinating outcome of the Russian Revolution; reminds me a bit of the Senate/House distinction in the US.

Dual power is different from bicameralism. The bicameral US is purely representative democracy. Then, we have other bicameral models, like in Germany, where one chamber is nationally elected and the other is the organ through which the constituent states exercise their influence on the federal level, thus a federal bicameralism. A Russian constitution with parliaments AND soviets would be different yet again, and probably to an extent which makes the US and the German model look very similar to each other by comparison.

Yeah, there's a lot of factors that would influence how this came about, mainly around the end of the War and what happens with Lenin, but given that he didn't start pushing things his way until later in 1917 I think it's possible to speculate how the situation could evolve if him and the rest of the parties don't become completely dominant. A lot probably depends on who ends up "in charge" and makes the system; there were leftists that were not as attached to vanguardism, or an uneasy coalition might hammer out some compromise.

@David T has already mentioned Orlando Figes' s view on this, to which I have nothing substantial to add.

My main concern is that this thread not derail into yet another pissing match about quantifying exactly how evil the OTL Reds and Whites were, or wheter Russia would have survived WWII without Stalin's forced industrialization. As long as we don't go down those routes please, speculate away!

I can totally understand. I would think that, beyond individual politicians (like Lenin), we would also have to take the situation of the war and of progressive economic collapse into account. It is one thing to speculate about how the soviets could function in peace-time, constitutionally enshrined. And it's entirely another to recognise that e.g. the soldiers' councils primary function, in their own view, was to prevent being sent into the meatgrinder in an imperialist war, while workers' councils had the pressing problems of factory closures and food shortages at hand, and peasant councils, where they formed, were bent on distributing land.

One reason why the Leninist putsch aka the October Revolution gained such momentum and overcame its internal armed enemies, was because it communicated to address all these issues directly.

Who is going to coexist with the soviets and make an offer that mobilises the popular forces that are behind the soviets to a sufficient degree, while also managing to contain whatever non-soviet views and interests are in the room?

And then, of course, there is the question of the national minorities and their demands for autonomy and/or independence... and the question of how the officers react.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Soviet Union retained it formally democratic structure for the entirety of its existence. You basically need two main things to give more practical dimension to its democracy.
1. Roll back bans on fractionalism within the Party which in turn would lead to multi-candidate elections.

2. Prevent ascendance of Stalin as a sole leader of Soviet bureaucracy in the late 20s. You need to keep some strong personalities around (but not Trotsky because Trotsky is just less competent but more flamboyant Stalin) to counterbalance him and enact collective rule scheme immediately after Lenin's death instead of it arising after death of Stalin. It will give Soviet democracy few more decades to mature.

The issues are of course obvious. There were not a long of strong personalities around in the first place, Frunze living longer could possibly be it but it is still a stretch. And WW2 is an elephant in the room. Crash industrialization is basically a requirement for Soviet Union survival and it would be impossible without strong centralized authority with a long term plan. So nature of WW2 must be tweaked too for that scenario.

And of course this Soviet Union will not be western style liberal democracy anyway as capitalist parties and platforms would be banned anyway. But it will be democratic.

 

[Salvador79]

@Crueldwarf
You forgot one crucial point which flawed the System from the start: murderous political/secret Police: Cheka, GPU, NKVD, whatever its name. You'll never have even intra-party democracy when those in power can wield such a horrible instrument against rivals.

There is nothing Western about "liberal democracy". Where people are unfree, there won't ever be democracy of any sort.

 

[Crueldwarf]

@Crueldwarf
You forgot one crucial point which flawed the System from the start: murderous political/secret Police: Cheka, GPU, NKVD, whatever its name. You'll never have even intra-party democracy when those in power can wield such a horrible instrument against rivals.

Soviet security services were always fully subordinated to political authority. It was always as violent as it was ordered to be with the sole exception of Great Purge where screws were left loose on purpose. And of course they were immediately stopped after people in charge said that it was enough.

So if you change nature of the Soviet top leadership, you will also change the nature of Soviet security service.

 

[Salvador79]

Soviet security services were always fully subordinated to political authority. It was always as violent as it was ordered to be with the sole exception of Great Purge where screws were left loose on purpose. And of course they were immediately stopped after people in charge said that it was enough.

That's true. But I did not speak of the Secret polices as self-serving powerhouses, but as too powerful and extreme TOOLS.

So if you change nature of the Soviet top leadership, you will also change the nature of Soviet security service.

I think we have different Views in history and society here. I don't different human individuals change much - the people are shaped by the structures. Power corrupts, and total Power corrupts totally.
You want soviet democracy, you need to Start without such extreme tools.

 

[Crueldwarf]

I think we have different Views in history and society here. I don't different human individuals change much - the people are shaped by the structures. Power corrupts, and total Power corrupts totally.
You want soviet democracy, you need to Start without such extreme tools.

No one in entire history of the USSR wielded the absolute power. Even Stalin for all his power and influence was limited and had to maneuver a lot.
NKVD (or whatever) by its very nature is no different from FBI. What made it different IRL was legal framework and this legal framework was constructed by Stalin to further Stalin's power. You change that and you change the nature of NKVD and its successors.

 

[Salvador79]

No one in entire history of the USSR wielded the absolute power. Even Stalin for all his power and influence was limited and had to maneuver a lot.
NKVD (or whatever) by its very nature is no different from FBI. What made it different IRL was legal framework and this legal framework was constructed by Stalin to further Stalin's power. You change that and you change the nature of NKVD and its successors.

It all started in the first weeks after the storming of the Winter Palace with the creation of the Cheka already. I don't know if "legal" is the right term, but yes: If you change the framework, then you change the nature of the institution. Had it not been instructed to do what the Okhrana had previously done, and then to top it up with lots of executions, and instead just been tasked to identify conspirers against the new soviet order and to inform another soviet comission or comissioned-instituion, preferrably of a judicial kind, about them, then, yes, that would have been a lot better, in the sense that one major obstacle for soviet democracy would have been abolished. That's exactly what I meant.