Soviet Power, officially the Power of the Soviets, colloquially Sofya Vlasyevna, Sovok, Sovetskaya Vlast — the dominant form of rule in the USSR. Predecessor of the modern Russian party United Russia".
It was the rule of Party functionaries headed by the first (later the general) secretary. Formally it implemented the interests of the workers and peasants and relied on the dialectics of Marxism-Leninism; in practice it expressed the corporate interests of a separate class of officials, the so-called nomenklatura.