Where did the term “Soviet” come from, and what did it mean?
If it was a specific location, where is it? Russia? Ukraine? I doubt it referred to the political/econimic system, because that’s what “socialist” was for. So…?
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@kozmo.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Russian sovét, council, soviet, from Old Russian svt; see ksun- in Indo-European Roots.
Good ol’ dictionary.com.
“It says, I choo-choo-choose you. And it’s got a picture of a train.”
– Ralph Wiggum
Having dispensed with the etymological side of the question, let’s get to the meat of things.
In the context of the period 1905-1917, the word ‘soviet’ referred to organizations of workers who had taken control of economic and political administration for periods of time. The most notable was the St. Petersburg soviet, which first came about in the crisis of 1905 and of which Leon Trotsky was president. For a while they were running the whole city - transportation, food distribution, the whole nine yards - but were driven underground after the revolution of 1905 collapsed and the reaction set in. It re-emerged with the rise of dissent during WWI and became the leading administrative body in the city before and during the October Revolution of 1917.
Few revolutionary Marxists understood the real value of the soviet in 1905 but by 1917 they were all for 'em. So much so that they argued soviets were the real basis for building socialism. Probably they incorporated the ‘soviet’ into ‘Soviet Socialist’ to differentiate themselves from anyone else who called themselves ‘socialist’.
Now whether the USSR was socialist is another argument entirely…
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…
In the original Russian it’s very specifically used as an adjective. Whereas “soviet” itself means what Olentzero means, “sovietski” is an adjective thereof.
Soyuz (Union) Sovyetski (Soviet) Sotsialicheski (Socialist) Respublik (Republics)
[yes, I know I’m leaving out the genetive case (the “of” part) here but I’m already chewing gum here and I don’t want to make this any more complicated]
In Cyrillic the sound ‘S’ is represented by the letter ‘C’ and the sound ‘R’ is represented by the letter ‘P’. That’s why the hockey teams et al always had CCCP on their jersies. It’s pronounced ‘Ehs Ehs Ehs Aerh’