Awhile back I purchased and read the wobbly book, "The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years," by Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken ( Link To Book Via IWW Lit Dept ). I no longer have it, though there is a portion of the book that deals with a series of labor events in the US in the years after the October Revolution. Several embryonic soviets are described in different regions/cities. I was trying to find more information about them, and came across a site called "The Seattle General Strike Project":
While people may have exaggerated the involvement of the IWW in the Seattle General Strike, the history of the Wobblies in the months and years leading up to the strike did provide their opponents with ammunition and evidence to support their claims. IWW members never shied away from confrontations with their opponents, and made their radical ideas well known. In August 1918 the IWW was reported to be plotting a general strike of miners and lumber workers throughout the West. 32 Wobblies were arrested in Spokane in connection with the plot. Scores of Wobblies were arrested following the passing of anti-sedition laws by the government. The same month that the plot was broken up in Spokane, 70 IWW members were jailed in Seattle for "government investigation as suspected seditionists."There were also reports of a mass meeting in Tacoma of the Tacoma Soldiers’, Sailors’, and Workmens’ Council where the speakers, including I.W.W. representatives, urged "a peaceful overthrow of the present form of government in the United States and the taking over of government industries by the working class..."
An article in the Oregonian on January 13, 1919 reported on a meeting of "Bolsheviks" in Seattle at 4th and Virginia at which speakers were urging a general strike in large part to prevent the shipping of supplies to Siberia for use by armies who were resisting the Bolsheviks there. These articles all reflect the fact that there was an abundance of activity by the IWW and other radicals in the years prior to the strike. The activities that found their way onto the pages of the newspapers made much of the public resentful, distrustful, and afraid of the Wobblies and their intentions.
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/anderson.shtml
Does anyone know of any other sources of information concerning the soviets or attempted soviets in the United States, specifically within a few years of the October 1917 revolution?
Their existence and history doesn't seem to be well known or discussed much.
"Strike!" by Jeremy Brecher; "Dynamite" by Louis Adamic; "Labor's Untold Story" by Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais