The Syntax of Soviet Power: The Resolutions of Local Soviets and Other Institutions, March-October 1917

Abstract

During the last decade historians have considerably altered the landscape of our understanding of the February-October period of the revolution. By exploring the interaction between the mass elements of the Russian Empire's society and the revolutionary parties and institutions that strove to reconstruct the post-February Russian polity, a large group of scholars has established that Russia's lower orders were suspicious of dual power from the outset, had scant affection for the Provisional Government, and, it followed, tended to view the soviets as the sole defenders of their interests. Ronald Suny has described how, by recreating the social dimensions of the October Revolution, the new histories successfully portray it as a reflection of mass aspirations rather than as a coup; the Bolsheviks took certain actions, but hardly did so in a vacuum.2