A valuable explanation of the organs of power in the Soviet state as established by the 1918 Constitution and developed in the first years of the Revolution. In six parts: I. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, II. The Council of People’s Commissars, III. The Council of Labor and Defence, IV. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets, V. Local Soviet Congresses, VI. Town Soviets.

‘How the Soviet Government Works V: Local Soviet Congresses’ from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 6 No. 5 March 15, 1922.

THE area over which the machinery of Russia’s local government has to be distributed is so vast that, with existing methods of communication, it would be hopeless to expect a fully representative body to remain in permanent session without losing that touch with the electorate which is considered essential in the Soviet system. The smallest unit for local government purposes above the town or village is the volost, or rural district, often equal in size to half an English county; the uyezd or county, composed of several volosts, is frequently as large as two or three English counties while — are gubernius, or provinces, as large as England.

Consequently, even before the November revolution of 1917, it was recognized that the most workable method was to hold frequent congresses of all the Soviets in the given area, which should lay down the general lines of policy to be followed for the future, and solve any important problems which the executive committees considered beyond their competence. The executive committees—provincial, county, and rural district—were small bodies of from ten to twenty-five members, elected by the congresses, and, unlike the Central Executive Committee, which was elected by the All-Russian Congress, were limited to purely executive functions, without the right of legislation.

The November Revolution did not alter the essence of this system, and tended rather to reduce it to a logical form, in which local practice could be utilized for the benefit of the country at large, and local variations and departures from the general rule be brought down to a minimum. The Soviet Constitution of July, 1918, summed up the results of twelve months’ working of the system of Soviet congresses, and the three and a half years which have elapsed since that date have introduced changes of technical rather than of sweeping importance. In this the local apparatus, as the first four articles of this series have shown, fell behind the central apparatus of the State; but this was the natural consequence of the condition of ceaseless war—particularly of civil war—which demanded before all else a constant reviewing and bringing up to date of the central authority. The revolutionary impetus of the masses in the districts, which had improvised the Soviets as their own peculiar form of organization before ever it became a form of the State, was left largely to itself for long after that change had taken place. The result was that the history of Russian local government during the three years following the constitution of 1918 is a story of very gradual elimination of local differences by a process of practical testing and comparison, and of very gradual approximation to a common rule.

A quite typical example of this may be cited. The Constitution of July, 1918, laid down that provincial congresses were to consist of delegates from the rural district congresses, in the proportion of one delegate for 10,000 inhabitants, and from town Soviets on the basis of one delegate for 2,000 electors; the whole not to exceed three hundred delegates. Statistics compiled by the People’s Commissariat for Home Affairs (Russia’s “Local Government Board”), however, reveal the following picture:

Thus practice showed that the maximum fixed by rule of thumb, as it were, July, 1918, was comparatively slowly understood by all local administrative workers as binding, and not until the first half of 1921 were no exceptions recorded.

(A) Rural District Congresses. These are composed of delegates from all the village Soviets in the district, in the proportion of one delegate for every 100 inhabitants represented in the Soviet. It was originally intended that these congresses should meet every month, thereby approximating to the practice of county councils in other countries; but experience showed that the rural districts, which were largely artificial creations of the old régime, had not yet developed the feeling of local homogeneity necessary for such a scheme. By 1919 the People’s Commissar for Home Affairs reported that congresses were taking place on an average once in three months; and now that twelve months of peace have shown the urgency of practical work rather than discussion the All-Russian Congress of December, 1921, definitely enacted that congresses would in future take place at intervals of twelve months, conferences of chairmen and secretaries of the village Soviets being held for consultative purposes as frequently as possible.

The highest authority in a rural district between congresses is the executive committee, elected by the congress, and composed of three members in districts with less than 5,000 inhabitants, but in no case exceeding seven members, Only three departments, as a rule, exist in connection with a rural district executive—administration, war, and land.

(B) County Congresses

The Constitution of July, 1918, betrays all the signs of the old separation of town and county which had been only very roughly bridged over by the amalgamation of the two All-Russian Congresses (workers’ and peasants’) which was mentioned in the last article. In the case in point, it laid down that the county congresses were to be composed of delegates from village Soviets only, in the proportion of one delegate for every 1,000 inhabitants, towns with a population of under 10,000 inhabitants being treated as villages, while others (and this category often included the county town itself) were not represented in the congress at all. As time went on, however, this distinction rapidly disappeared, the double influences of the revolution and the revolutionary war melting away and effacing the differences which originally had led to the organization of separate town and country Soviets. The Seventh All-Russian Congress, in December, 1919, corrected this state of affairs by enacting that county congresses should be composed of delegates from all the Soviets in the given area, towns delegating on a basis of electorate, villages on a basis of population. The same congress recognized that the original period for the meeting of county congresses— three months—was too short for practical purposes, and extended it to six; which the Ninth Congress last December further extended to twelve.

A few of the most important statistics relative to these congresses are valuable for the light they throw on the various criticisms which have been directed against the Soviet system and those who administered it after the November revolution. It has been alleged, for example, that county congresses were not allowed to meet; that the majority of the rural population were not represented in them; or that they were dominated by one political party. Between January, 1918, and June, 1921, some 4,000 county congresses were held, in connection with 1,651 (forty per cent.) of which the People’s Commissariat for Home Affairs is in possession of detailed statistics. In these 1,651 alone, 190,077 delegates took part; which makes it probable that in all, during these three and a half years, about 450,000 peasants (as they were for the most part) were introduced to the elements of local government on a scale larger than that of their own hamlet or village. Figures such as these are more eloquent than any reasoning when we inquire into the attachment of the Russian laboring masses to the Soviet system.

The overwhelming peasant character of these congresses may be shown by reference to the statistics for 1920 and the first six months of 1921, which show that the delegates to the county congresses of those years were distributed among the following categories:

The same lesson is to be drawn from a study of the constituencies represented. In 1920 30,000 delegates (77.5 per cent.) were elected by rural district congresses, and only 6,600 by towns, factory settlements, trade unions, etc. For the first half of 1921 the corresponding figures were 15,500 and 3,800.

As for the assertion of a political dictatorship over the will of the peasantry, the following table will show that it was only in the most critical period of the revolution—between the middle of 1918, which saw the beginning of the civil war, and the last months of 1919, which saw the end of Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich — that the Communists and their sympathizers outnumbered the other parties and groups. The fact that the executive committees elected by the county congresses played the most decisive part in gathering Russia’s gigantic Red Army, composed, as to 80 per cent. of its numbers, of peasants, shows that psychologically as well as numerically the nonparty peasants were the allies and not the servants of a political faction.

(C) Provincial Congresses

These assemblies, composed of delegates from towns on the basis of electorate (1:2,000) and from rural district congresses on the basis of population (1:10,000)—or from county congresses on the same basis, if these be held immediately before the provincial congress—are distinguished by much the same features as were noticed in the case of the county congresses. During the first two years of the revolution, they were held, roughly, once in six months; later this period began to be extended, until it was fixed by the Ninth Congress at twelve months. Affecting, as they do, the administration of vast areas, the efficient government of which is of primary importance from the economic or military point of view, where smaller territorial units can be left more safely as a field of experience for purely local initiative, the provincial congresses show a more even balance between town and country representatives, and consequently between workers’ and peasants’ representation; the most capable administrators naturally being produced by the large industrial centres, which we find taking part in Soviet congresses for the first time at this stage of the administrative ladder.

The following table shows the distribution of delegates according to principal constituencies represented.

It may be noticed that here, as in the case of the county congresses, the percentage of Soviet employees amongst the delegates has increased since the coming of peace. It is natural, of course, that the demobilization of the army, the return of several millions of men to more normal pursuits, and the possibility of developing the local administrative apparatus more extensively and usefully than could be the case in the years when the war was the first public concern, should bring about an increase in the number of active local workers who are engaged in purely administrative occupations. Of the same order is the fact that the percentage of communists delegated to provincial congresses has steadily decreased from 90.3 in July-December, 1918, to 74.7 in January-June, 1921; while the percentage of independents has just as steadily increased from 5.7 to 25.1.

This, together with the circumstance that between the November revolution and June, 1921, over 50,000 delegates had taken part in provincial congresses, once again serves to emphasize the fact that the Soviet system, besides being a form of local government on which the Russian Republic has been able to exist amidst difficulties which no other less flexible form would have enabled it to outlive, is in addition a gigantic political school, an unprecedented training ground in public affairs, for the Russian working and peasant masses, who have thus for the first time been admitted to the fulfilment of other functions besides those of endless toil and unbroken subjection.

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v6-7-soviet-russia%20Jan-Dec%201922.pdf