sourced story
October 1905Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

The first soviet forms in St. Petersburg

A general strike committee becomes a new kind of workers' council, with Trotsky as its rising voice.

On the timeline · around October 1905 · 1905: The Dress RehearsalThe Old Regime, 1861-19041905: The Dress RehearsalThe first soviet forms in St. Petersburg18941898190219061908

Quick facts

Founded
October 1905
Workers represented
200,000 from 147 factories
Deputy chairman
Leon Trotsky

What happened

In October 1905, striking workers in St. Petersburg formed a council of workers' deputies to coordinate a general strike that had shut down much of the city. The St. Petersburg Soviet represented 200,000 workers from 147 factories, and it printed its own newspaper, Izvestiya ("News"). Georgy Khrustalev-Nosar chaired the council, with the young Leon Trotsky serving as his deputy. After Khrustalev-Nosar's arrest in late November 1905, Trotsky took over as chairman until the authorities crushed the soviet and arrested its leadership in December.

Why it matters

The soviet was a genuinely new institution, a workers' council with no equivalent in the tsarist system, and it gave Trotsky his first major political platform. When revolution returned in 1917, the soviets that formed across Russia's cities drew directly on this 1905 model and became the rival power base to the Provisional Government.

How we know

World History Encyclopedia documents the soviet's formation, leadership, and the scale of its worker representation as part of its coverage of the role soviets played across both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineThe Russian Revolution29 events · How three centuries of Romanov rule collapsed in a single year, and how the party that caught power in the wreckage never let go.View all →