Talk:Soviet (word)

message: So can those term be used as a synonime for Bolshevicks and Red Russians between 1917 and 1924 or not? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:18, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Soviet, soviets 

message: Please click on "What links here" at the side of the Soviet article, and you will see the huge number of pages that link there, very likely nearly all meaning Soviet Union.  Considering this, I suggest that Soviet should be made a redirect to Soviet Union, with at the top of Soviet Union either "Soviet" redirects here.  See also soviet (council) and Supreme Soviet. or "Soviet" redirects here.  For other uses, see Soviet (disambiguation)., where the current content of Soviet would be moved to Soviet (disambiguation).  Is there agreement on the redirect?--Pharos 01:39, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK with me for the second version. Just like "american" is 90% adjective to the USA, "soviet" is mostly an adjective to USSR in common usage. Mikkalai 02:11, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree with Jake95--from admittedly anecdotal evidence, it seems like a number of people want to know what a Soviet is, and so they naturally enter "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet" into their URL bars.  When they're redirected to the Soviet Union page, there's no way for them to get to Soviet (word) or Soviet (disambiguation).  The better (but admittedly more work-intensive) strategy is to fix the links that point to Soviet that should be pointing to Soviet Union. --Atemperman 18:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Make redirect to [[Soviet Union]] 

message: I strongly doubt that anyone who knows Russian has contributed to this article. 'Soviet' (or 'sovet' by standard transliteration) is the Russian word for both 'council' and 'counsel' (advice). In English, the meanings of these two words are related - thus members of a Privy Council are known as 'Privy Counsellors'. In Russian, the two meanings are also related, and a single word is used. It may come a surprise to non-Russian-speakers in the US, but in Russia, the State Soviet was functioning as early as 1810. In English it is normally referred to as the Privy Council, but in Russian it was known as the Gosudarstvenniy Sovet, i.e. 'State Soviet'. The upper house of the Duma after 1906 was also called the 'State Soviet' - the word being exactly the same as the one used for the Supreme Soviet ('Verkhovniy Sovet'), and local soviets ('mestnye sovety' - 'local councils') during the Bolshevik period.
It is of course conventional, when using English, to leave the word 'soviet', in the meaning of a discussion/decision body, untranslated in a 1917-91 context (and also, with regard to workers' councils, in the context of 1905-06), and to translate it to 'council' in all other contexts, whether post-1991 or pre-1917. But such a distinction just could not occur in Russian, since exactly the same word is used in all of these contexts!
I am not sure that I will find time to correct this article. I could do a rough-and-ready job, but I feel it should be done with proper care, which would require time that I can't spare at the moment.
Anyone who wants to revise the article to take the above into account should read A Note on the Use of the Word 'Soviet'. I think a link should be given to this article at the end too. 158-152-12-77  00:11, 26 August 2005 (BST)
One thing I have found time to change is the last bit, which says that the noun 'soviet' was used as a noun to denote a person from the USSR. This was only true in vulgar usage. You would say 'he is Soviet', not 'he is a Soviet'. The latter would be akin to saying 'he is a French'. 158-152-12-77  11:44, 27 August 2005 (BST)
I have now found time to do a revision. 158-152-12-77 00:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  It is a complete error to say that the Russian noun 'soviet', meaning 'council', only refers to a workers' council. The Tsar had a 'State Soviet' from as early as 1810, and the upper house of the Duma was known by this name from 1906