<P> At the start of the 20th century , the Russian Empire was an autocracy controlled by Tsar Nicholas II , with millions of the country 's largely agrarian population living in abject poverty and the anti-communist historian Robert Service noted that `` poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in '' . The man responsible for largely introducing the ideology into the country was Georgi Plekhanov , although the movement itself was largely organised by a man known as Vladimir Lenin , who had for a time been exiled to a prison camp in Siberia by the Tsarist government for his beliefs . A Marxist group known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in the country , although it soon divided into two main factions : the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov . In 1905 , there was a revolution against the Tsar 's rule , in which workers ' councils known as `` soviets '' were formed in many parts of the country and the Tsar was forced to implement democratic reform , introducing an elected government , the Duma . </P>
<P> At the start of the 20th century , the Russian Empire was an autocracy controlled by Tsar Nicholas II , with millions of the country 's largely agrarian population living in abject poverty and the anti-communist historian Robert Service noted that `` poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in '' . The man responsible for largely introducing the ideology into the country was Georgi Plekhanov , although the movement itself was largely organised by a man known as Vladimir Lenin , who had for a time been exiled to a prison camp in Siberia by the Tsarist government for his beliefs . A Marxist group known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in the country , although it soon divided into two main factions : the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov . In 1905 , there was a revolution against the Tsar 's rule , in which workers ' councils known as `` soviets '' were formed in many parts of the country and the Tsar was forced to implement democratic reform , introducing an elected government , the Duma . </P>
during the 1900s the term soviet was initially the name for
during the 1900s the term soviet was initially the name for
workers ' councils
workers ' councils