Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils

Representative bodies of soldiers and workers on the basis of the council system, a form of political rule aimed at practicing direct democracy with the aid of elected councilors. The council idea had essentially been developed by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. In the Russian Revolution of 1905 self-governing bodies had for the first time been organized in the form of spontaneously elected councils (soviets). After the February Revolution of 1917 Lenin tried to enforce…