# Petrograd Soviet The **Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies** was the council that emerged from the February Revolution of 1917 and held the other half of Russia's *dual power* alongside the [[Provisional Government]]. Rooted in factories and military units rather than in any constitutional authority, it commanded the practical obedience the Provisional Government could only request — the gap the Bolsheviks moved into in October. For this vault it is the reference case for **parallel institutional authority**: a body with no formal power that is nonetheless obeyed, which is the condition that makes a formal government's collapse look sudden from outside and inevitable from within. > [!note] Stub — fill out > To expand: Order No. 1, the soviet movement's spread across Russia, the Bolshevik majority of September 1917, and the transition to the Congress of Soviets. ## See Also - [[Russian Revolution]] — the full sequence - [[Provisional Government]] — the rival authority