The Petrograd Soviet (full name: the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies) emerged on 27 February 1917 (Old Style; 12 March New Style) during the February Revolution, convening in the Tauride Palace alongside the rump of the dissolved State Duma. Modelled on the St Petersburg Soviet of the 1905 Revolution—chaired then by Leon Trotsky—it was an elected assembly of delegates drawn from factories and military units of the garrison. Its first Executive Committee was dominated not by the Bolsheviks but by the moderate socialist parties: the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs), with the Menshevik Nikolai Chkheidze as its first chairman. The Soviet's creation institutionalised the condition Lenin termed dvoevlastie, or "dual power," whereby Russia after the fall of the Romanovs was governed simultaneously by the bourgeois Provisional Government and by the Soviet, which commanded the practical loyalty of workers and soldiers.
The Soviet's authority rested on its control of the streets, the railways, the telegraph, and above all the troops. This was crystallised in Order No. 1, issued on 1 March 1917, which directed soldiers to obey the Provisional Government only insofar as its orders did not contradict those of the Soviet, established soldiers' committees, and ended the privileges of officers. Order No. 1 effectively transferred command of the Petrograd garrison to the Soviet and is regarded as a decisive blow to military discipline in 1917. The Soviet initially adopted a posture of "conditional support" for the Provisional Government and pursued a defencist line in the war, a stance challenged by Lenin's April Theses (April 1917), which demanded "All power to the Soviets" and condemned cooperation with the bourgeois government.
Through 1917 the balance within the Soviet shifted leftward as the war dragged on, the July Days failed, and the Kornilov affair (August–September 1917) discredited the moderates and the government alike. By September 1917 the Bolsheviks had won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet, and Leon Trotsky was elected its chairman. The Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-revolyutsionny komitet), established in October, became the operational headquarters of the October Revolution, directing the seizure of power on 25 October 1917 (Old Style; 7 November New Style). The Petrograd Soviet thus furnished both the institutional template and the executive instrument of the Bolshevik takeover, after which the soviet system was generalised across the new state.
For the examinations, the Petrograd Soviet recurs in the World History segment of UPSC General Studies Paper I and in optional History papers, as well as in FSOT and CSS world-history components. The standard question angles are: the meaning and mechanics of dual power (dvoevlastie); the significance of Order No. 1 in dissolving the army's discipline; the contrast between the Soviet's early Menshevik-SR leadership and its later Bolshevik capture; and the Soviet's role, through Trotsky's Military Revolutionary Committee, in executing the October Revolution. Candidates should distinguish the 1905 precedent from the 1917 body and link the Soviet to Lenin's April Theses slogan.
Example
In March 1917 the Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1, placing the capital's garrison under its own authority rather than the Provisional Government's, and by October 1917 it served, under Leon Trotsky, as the command centre of the Bolshevik seizure of power.
Frequently asked questions
Dual power (dvoevlastie) was Lenin's term for the coexistence after February 1917 of the bourgeois Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. The Government held formal authority, but the Soviet commanded the actual loyalty of workers, soldiers, and the railways and telegraph.