Council Communism and The Soviets of The USSR
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, councils akin to those advocated by Council Communists were a significant political and organizational force; with the Russian word "soviet" itself meaning council. After the success of the February Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to capitalize on the influence of the soviets in order to boost their own popularity. Bolshevik leaders advocated the transference of authority to the soviets and the dissolution of Russian Provisional Government by means of a second revolution. When this campaign was successful and the October Revolution occurred, the creation of the Congress of Soviets marked the beginning of a process by which the genuine workers' control of the soviets was diminished and the decisions of the Bolshevik Party acquired the full authority of the State. By the time new regime had developed into a single-party system, the Supreme Soviet (successor to the Congress of Soviets) had been relegated to the role of a rubber-stamp parliament, meeting just once a year to ratify decisions already made at higher levels, in most cases without even a single dissenting vote. Real power was concentrated in the hands of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
On the topic of the Russian Revolution, Council Communists maintain that the February Revolution and the soviets of the era were proletarian in nature. However, the ascent of the Bolsheviks and the following creation of a party bureaucracy constituted a "bourgeois revolution"; with the Soviet Union itself being an example of state capitalism rather than the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. With the Soviet State's exclusive control over the utilization of capital, it is argued by Council Communists that the party bureaucracy had simply taken the place of individual capitalists and established its own form of capitalist class relations; emphasized in part by the continued defense and perpetuation of capitalist relations after the revolution by means of the New Economic Policy.
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