A Soviet Republic is a system of government in which the whole state power belongs to the Soviets (workers' councils), a subtype of a parliamentary republic. Although the term is usually associated with communist states, it was not initially intended to represent only one political force, but merely a form of democracy and representation.

Soviet democracy (sometimes council democracy) was a political system in the Soviet Union, in which workers' councils called "soviets" (Russian for "council"), consisting of delegates, formed organs of legislative and executive power. The soviets begin at the local level and onto a national parliament-like assembly. According to Vladimir Lenin and other Marxist theorists, the soviets represent the democratic will of the working class and are thus the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, the councils were filled by members of the Soviet Communist Party and completely subordinated to its leadership. According to historian Robert Conquest, this political system represented "a set of phantom institutions and arrangements which put a human face on the hideous realities: a model constitution adopted in a worst period of terror and guaranteeing human rights, elections in which there was only one candidate, and in which 99 percent voted; a parliament at which no hand was ever raised in opposition or abstention."