com·mu·ni·tar·ian (kə myo̵̅o̅′nə ter′ē ən)
noun
Authoritarianism
Some people have argued [5] that communitarianism's focus on social cohesion raises similarities with nationalistic communism, or various forms of authoritarianism, although supporters contend that there are substantial differences between communitarianism and authoritarianism, and that communitarianism has very little in common with Communism, which values individual liberty almost not at all.
Authoritarian governments often embrace extremist ideologies and rule with brute force, accompanied with severe restrictions on personal freedom, political and civil rights. Authoritarian governments are overt about the role of the government as director and commander. Civil society and democracy are not generally characteristic of authoritarian regimes. For the most part, communitarians emphasize the use of non-governmental organizations, such as private businesses, churches, non-profits, or labor unions, in furthering their goals.
so•vi•et
Pronunciation: (sō'vē-et", -it, sō"vē-et'), [key]
—n.
1. (in the Soviet Union).
a. (before the revolution) any governmental council.
b. (after the revolution) a local council, originally elected only by manual workers, with certain powers of local administration.
c. (after the revolution) a higher council elected by a local council, being part of a hierarchy of soviets culminating in the Supreme Soviet.
2. any similar council or assembly connected with a socialistic governmental system elsewhere.
3. (cap.) Often, Soviets. a governing official or person living in the Soviet Union: The Soviets have denied our charge.
—adj.
1. of or pertaining to a soviet.
2. (cap.) of the Soviet Union: a Soviet statesman.
- Soviet
- A soviet originally was a workers' local council in Czarist Russia. It was a people's effort to practicedirect democracy. Russian Marxists made them a medium for organizing against the state, and between the February and October Revolutions, Bolsheviks used the slogan "All power to the soviets" in opposing the government led by Kerensky.
- Following the October Revolution, all factories eventually had soviets organized according to the Bolshevik understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory, supplanting the earlier meaning that allowed for independent soviets. (Dissident existing soviets were won over or suppressed; Bolshevik soviets were organized in factories that lacked soviets.) The view was widely promoted and expressed that Bolshevik power rested on the collective will of these soviets, representing the fulfillment of the slogan.
- In essentially the preceding sense, the term was used outside the Soviet Union by some Marxist-Leninist movements, for example, the Chinese Communist Party's efforts in the "Chinese Soviet Republic" immediately prior to the Long March.
- Based on and in support of view of the state implicit in sense 2 above, the term 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. In this sense, post-Kerensky government bodies at local and republic levels (but in the Russian federated republic, local,republic, and federated republic levels) were described as soviet, and at the top of the hierarchy, theSupreme Soviet was the nominal core of the Union government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, officially formed in December 1922.
- Hence Soviet became also an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the Soviet Union or its constituent soviet republics.
- Hence another noun, Soviet, means citizen of the Soviet Union.
- "The Soviet", in some Western sources from 1922 into the last half of that century, is also a term forthe Soviet government.
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