Talk:Soviet (council)

Unreferenced etymology
This etymology is fascinating, but would be much more convincing and useful with a source for it:

"Soviet" is derived from a Russian word signifying council, assembly, advice, harmony, concord,[trans 1] and all ultimately deriving from the Proto-Slavic verbal stem of *vět-iti "to inform", related to Slavic "věst" ("news"), English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or" (which came to English through French), or the Dutch "weten" (to know; cf. "wetenschap" = science).

--Joel (talk) 21:17, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. The use of the singular noun сове́т to describe an assembly dates to the 18th century according to the Russian version of this wiki. The singular noun originally meant "suggestion or advice" in the Old Slavonic Bible and is used exclusively in that context in the modern day, but how does one cite this? The etymology section of this Wiki should read clarify that the use of this word in conversation will not yield the meaning "council, assembly, harmony, concord, etc" but will yield the definition "suggestion or advice." In its current ambiguous state, one is under the impression that the word meaning "suggestion or advice" is a different word altogether.

--Robert 17:56, 13 August 2019 (EST)

02:32, 7 August 2020 (UTC) - A little digging on en wiktionary results in completely different results...

Unsupported attributions
In the following sentence that demand for attributions seems foolish:

In Imperial Russia, the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to[by whom?]

According to the state council's own wiki page the thing was called the Госуда́рственный сове́т. Now I can't read Russian but this article itself says that the Russian word for soviet is сове́т. What more attribution do we need? Is it necessary that I link to an online dictionary like the Cambridge online dictionary, where it says the following

Council(English) => Russian REPRESENT › a group of people who are elected or chosen to give advice or make decisions совет

Or can we just remove this demand for sourcing, when it is answered in the article itself? -

The demand for sourcing is valid. The word before сове́т is the one that defines what it is. Госуда́рственный сове́т is "the government's Soviet" but it can just as easily be called the Госуда́рственный duma, or Госуда́рственный nachal'stva (Government's Captains). The Russian word for Soviet is defined as сове́т but this word is not necessary to refer to the group in the same sense that members of The House of Representatives is often called The House but nobody would think to deliver goods to them if you asked the to "take this to the house." ---08/13/2019--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.99.18.194 (talk) 22:04, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Untitled
Much of the history of the article can be found in Soviet's history. --Jerzy(t) 04:56, 2004 Apr 30 (UTC)

The first Soviet
According to the Soviet hagiography, the first was Ivanovo Soviet in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. What exactly was Voline's Sovet? References? mikka (t) 08:53, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

No! Voline meant the first workers' soviet, not the first soviet
Please see Soviet (disambiguation) article for a lot of information about the uses and meanings of this Russian abstract noun meaning 'advice'. Even as a concrete noun denoting an organised body, its usage dates back at least as far as the (Tsarist) 'State Soviet', which existed from as early as 1810. This is not a typo - I mean EIGHTEEN TEN. More information at: A Note on the Use of the Word 'Soviet''' 158-152-12-77 01:00, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Ivanovo Soviet was also workers' soviet.--Nixer 20:53, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Rewriting needed
The final paragraph currently says "Based on the view of the state implicit in the Bolshevik use of the term, the word "soviet" naturally extended, or consciously was extended, to mean in effect any body formed by a group of soviets to delegate, up a hierarchy of soviets, the authority to express and effect their will." This sentence doesn't make any sense, I don't know if it is missing clauses or what. I hesitate to edit it it, since I don't know with certainty what it is trying to say. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nmerriam (talk • contribs) 05:59, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Kubanczyk (talk) 10:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Practise/practice (as verb)
The question is one of consistency within the same article (see "Retaining the existing variety"). This article had a preponderant legacy of American preferences, and the subject matter lacks sufficient reason to switch to British. Consequently, practice is the spelling of the verb (same as the noun). Rammer (talk) 17:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Pro bolshevik bias
The last line in the introduction reads "In October 1917 the Bolsheviks secured a majority in the Soviet, and Lenin, staying true to his word, overthrew the Provisional Government, giving all power to the Soviets and the Bolsheviks who governed in their name." Anyone with elimentory knowledge of the revolution knows that the opposite is true, the soviets were independantly created and ended by Lenin. Someone fix that. 109.76.147.42 (talk) 07:21, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I concur and I've added a POV tag on this. In the future, I'll work to clean it up a bit. Anatoly-Rex (talk) 22:40, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. I've tried to reduce the bias with citations from a 1920 Americana article which has its own POV problems but is good in that it actually tries to describe a soviet as a political organization.  It is of course weak as to how this system evolved in the later course of the U.S.S.R.'s development.  I think the objective descriptions of soviets as a component in various political systems should be a part of this article as well, realizing that these are different political entities at different times in Russia's history, though probably with some common threads. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:05, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Needs something post-1922
Nice article, but with the exception of one minor sentence toward the end it stops around 1922. The article could use some discussion of how the system of soviets evolved in function and importance over time, and what it was like by 1991. Thanks. Loraof (talk) 22:13, 4 November 2014 (UTC)