I was talking with Bob again about Russian and he asked me what I thought “Soviet” means. I suggested that it was something to do with a person, perhaps from a region. He said that he had no idea what it means because the meaning in the dictionary is actually recursive. By recursive, I mean this:
“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.”
So if a “soviet” is any body formed by a group of “soviets”, what is a soviet?
We eventually found that “soviet” means “council”. So even though the acronym USSR is “Union of Soviet Socialist Repulics”, it can be literally stated as “Union of Socialist Republic Councils”, although you would never see or hear that stated. It sounds very feudal and evidently feudalism was in use up to the revolution.
What a lunch hour! We must be nerds! 🙂