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Review of Central and East European Law 35 (2010) 77-110

Future, Past and Present in Russian


Constitutional Politics: Russian Constitutions in
a Conceptual-Historical Perspective
Katja Ruutu
Abstract
The present article uses the methods of conceptual history to investigate the
transformation of Soviet and Russian constitutional concepts. My intention
is to show the whole constitutional movement of Russia, and to focus on the
time layers (future, past and present) used by actors in constructing the key
concepts that inform the narratives of the constitutional unity of the Soviet
Union/Russian Federation. By focusing on the six constitutions adopted in the
Soviet Union/Russian Federation, the article will seek to show that Soviet/Rus
sian conceptual history is more multifaceted, and more political in nature, than
is commonly thought. Because the political unity of the state was restricted
not only by the constitution, but also by the party ideology of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, political debates concerning constitutional concepts
represented the key discussions for all the reformative pursuits of Soviet politics.
Constitutional concepts were the most important means to argue and create
a basis for a new political presentation and new political programs. This pattern has also been typical of present-day Russian politics, with the difference
that, so far, only one constitution has been adopted in the Russian Federation.
Specifically, we will seek to relate Putins constitutional concepts to the textual
base, and the political background, of the previous constitutions. On a more
general level, the present article should contribute to the development of a
theory of periodization that takes into consideration the shifts in a periods
key concepts and vocabularies.

Keywords
conceptual history of Russia, constitutional history of Russia, federalism,
glasnost, party system, perestroika, politics

1. Introduction
It was typical of the new Soviet leader to distinguish himself from his
predecessors in order to stabilize his power; to achieve that aim, each new
leader would present his political agenda in constitutional terms. That too,
is one of the main reasons behind the large number of constitutions that
were adopted in the USSR. In the post-Soviet context, that dynamic has
been turned on its head, as constitutional concepts tend to be the main,
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010

DOI: 10.1163/157303510X12650378240034

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Review of Central and East European Law 35 (2010)

if not the exclusive, source of continuity in present-day Russia. The present article will explore the role of constitutional concepts as key tools of
political presentation, as well as their special status and characteristics
in Soviet and post-Soviet political discourse. Its main objective will be
to investigate the transformation of those concepts in relation to plans
of political leaders for continuity and change, and to show how that
conceptual historyin many respectsis more multifaceted, and more
political in nature, than it has usually been deemed to be. It also discusses
the traditional continuities and changes between the constitutions and
party programs adopted in Russia/the Soviet Union. In the final part, it
attempts to connect Vladimir Putins political era with the textual base
and the political backgrounds of the previous constitutions.
From a methodological point of view, Russian constitutional concepts
make a conceptual-history approach very suitable and change the focus on
history. The conceptual-history approach studies history in contemporary
contexts that follow one after the other, and whose texts are the main research object. The picture of history is created through the interpretation
of the original sources of contemporary contexts. The aim of conceptualhistory research is not to form an understanding of the chronological
history of the events, but rather to examine the presented ideas about
history, interpreting the sources in their contemporary contexts.
The conceptual-history approach thus always focuses on both
the dynamic and traditional characteristics of concepts. In this
study, I refer to a certain kind of value and the task of concepts
to justify and define the political and societal unity in every situation by combining the pursued future orientation of political unity
with new acts of preservation of the principles of old tradition.
In addition, the conceptual-history approach shows different time layers;
the past, the present and the future are the key aspects of the political
storytelling in justifying the continuity and redefining the constitutional
unity for the sake of reform.
The present article attempts to deal with the topic of Russian constitutional history from the perspective of conceptual change, paying
particular attention to the political relations among the various actors,
and to the latters political presentations. Specifically, it focuses on those
actors speeches and on their mutual relations and, through them, on the
passage from one contemporary context to another.
I will try to show that Stalins era represented a watershed in Soviet
constitutional and political development, a fact that becomes readily apparent when that periods concepts and vocabularies are examined. Stalins
political scheme undertook to invalidate the ideology of the Revolu

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

79

tion and to justify the creation of the absolute centralized state, which
represented its realization. Thus, in Stalins plan with regard to the 1936
Constitution, there was no longer a need for fine rhetorical distinctions
between different unions, which had been important elements in the
1918 and 1924 Constitutions, legitimating the single state and the special
duties of the classes. Stalins intention was to create something closer to
a purely administrative model. The concept of the state took over from
all other ideological structures.
As Stalins concept of state concerned the institutionalized rela
tionship between the state and the Soviet people, his successors were
confronted with the challenge of maintaining the maximally expanded,
ideological class-based state and the concept of Soviet citizenship in a
situation where there was no maximal control apparatus. I will argue
that, after the Stalin period, it became difficult to reuse and reconnect
the constitutional concepts that were related to the revolution as new
interpretations. Put another way, the central problem was how to maintain Stalins administrative rhetoric and his connection with the Soviet
people, as well as his class-based justifications in the concepts of the state
and the nation, in a context where Stalins control apparatus had been
considerably weakened. The outcome of this process was the introduction
of concepts that emphasized peoples participation and representation
for example, the concepts of an all-peoples state and all-peoples party.
These were pre-perestroika concepts that radically changed the original
Marxist-Leninist concepts based on the Revolution and the state. I will
attempt to show that the conceptual changesinitiated during the socalled de-Stalinization period (destalinizatsiia)played a crucial role in
the eventual destruction of socialism in the Soviet Union.

2. The Role of Constitutional Concepts in


Soviet/Russian Political History
The first modern Russian Constitution had its one hundredth anniversary
in April 2006. Following its late start, Russia has adopted five constitutions, four of them during the Soviet era. That relatively large number can
be explained by the changes in Russias political system: from one state
system into another. From a monarchical state power, it first changed,
with the October Revolution of 1917, into the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic (RSFSR), and then, in 1924, into the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR). In 1993, the Constitution of the Russian
Federation was adopted.
The great number of constitutions in the USSR/Russian context can
also be explained by another, more complex factnamely, that in a one-

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party system, the modification of constitutional concepts became one of


the most important methods of introducing political programs. Because
the political unity of the state was not only restricted by the constitution,
but also by the party ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), political debates concerning constitutional concepts represented
the key discussions for many of the reformative pursuits of Soviet politics.
In the context of a one-party system that restrained political discussions
and debates, with the exception of small Party circles, constitutional
concepts were the most important means to discuss and create a basis
for a new political presentation and new political programs. I would further argue that this pattern has also been typical of present-day Russian
politics, with the difference that only one constitution has been adopted
in the Russian Federation, so far.
Adopting a constitution in the Soviet Union was not a public procedure. In the one-party system, a small group of political leaders prepared the document in secrecy. That there was a strong opposition to
constitutional reform, first under Khrushchev and then under Brezhnev,
indicated the difficulties in adopting it. However, the literature about the
topic is sparse. It was only after the draft of the 1977 Constitution was
publishedand particularly after its adoptionthat Soviet legal journals
began to publish comments on the new constitution. Only at the end
of the Soviet era could the writings of the Soviet jurists be interpreted
as being aimed at influencingrather than reflectingthe views of the
Soviet leadership.1
Thus, a basic feature of Soviet and post-Soviet political discourse
has been the continuous competition over the meaning of constitutional
concepts. It can, therefore, be argued thatin the Soviet Unionmuch
of the political discourse dealt with constitutional concepts. By altering
the constitutional concepts, political elites sought to confer upon the
October Revolution a new meaning of their own, which would enable
them to differentiate themselves from their predecessors in power.
The proposition that political programs are debated and realized by
means of vocabulary innovations is a good starting point for introducing
the conceptual-historical approach to the study of Russian politics and
constitutional concepts. That approach has been adopted only in a few
works, in part, I would argue, due to the fact that the political character
of constitutional concepts has generally not been acknowledged.2
1

See D.D. Barry, The Specialist in Soviet Policy-Making: The Adoption of Law, Soviet Studies
(1964) No.3, 152-165, at 158.

See Alexei Yurchaks remarks about the unacknowledged role of the political character of the
concepts in his Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More,
45(3) Comparative Studies in Society and History (2003), 480-510, at 484.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

81

As to the methodological basis of the present article, I have used the


conceptual historian Reinhart Kosellecks idea of time layers in exploring
the key constitutional concepts of the Soviet Union/Russian Federation.3
Kosellecks methodological innovations make it possible to re-interpret
the source material from a novel perspective. In his view, the different
time layers of conceptsthe past, the present and the futureconstitute
the key narrative aspects both in justifying continuity and, also, for the
purposes of redefining constitutional unity for the sake of stability or
reform.
Inspired by Kosellecks ideas, I seek to focus on the time layers used
by actors in constructing the key concepts informing the narratives of
the constitutional unity of the Soviet Union/Russian Federation that they
used in political debates. A central element of the conceptual-historical
approach is the idea that, for political actors, the interpretation of history and the understanding of the future are debatable as the analyses and
interpretations of the present.
From a more specific methodological standpoint, the Russian con
stitutional concepts themselves make a conceptual-historical approach
particularly suitable. The main merit of this approach is that it makes it
possible to view history as consisting of a succession of contemporary contexts the texts of which constitute the primary research target. A picture
of history is thus created through the interpretation of the contemporary
contexts original sources, the aim being not the typical one of construct
ing a chronology of the events, but of investigating the ideas present in
the textual sources within the framework of the specific contemporary
context to which they relate.
By focusing simultaneously on the dynamics of change and the traditional elements embedded in Russian constitutional concepts, I wish
to illustrate how those concepts play a key role in defining and justifying
the political and social unity of the state through their combination of
future orientation and new variations on the traditional principles that
undergird this unity.
The conceptual-historical study of the process of constitutional
movement particularly emphasizes the past and the present time layers
of constitutional concepts. Moreover, it aims to show how constitutional
concepts make up a code. That last point is made especially significant
by the fact that Soviet and Russian political rhetoric has relied on consti
tutional terms for much of its vocabulary. This codification was central
3

Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Columbia University Press,
New York, NY, 2004, translated by Keith Tribe). See, also, Risto Wallin, Movement in the
Key Concepts of International Relations, 32(4) Alternatives (2007), 361-391.

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during the Soviet period, but it has also been typical of the politics of the
Russian Federation since Putin came to power.
In different periods, new dogmas applying to various social situations
and to the CPSU can be observed. Such dogmas were regarded as useful
means to build up the concepts underlying the Soviet state. In spite of the
one-party system, the Soviet Union was not conceived of as a monolithic
political entity. Similarly, Soviet political actors regularly articulated a
need for reforms.
By focusing on constitutional movement, it is possible to examine the
reformative as well as the preservative features of constitutional concepts,
which together transform the basic understanding of the state and of its
unity from one political era to another.
In the following sections, I will briefly present my ideas regarding
constitutional movement in the context of the six constitutions adopted
in Russia/the Soviet Union.

3. From the Monarchical Constitution to the


Soviet Constitutions
The first constitution of Russiaadopted during the reign of Tsar Nicholas
IIwas not called a constitution (konstitutsiia) but was widely recognized
as such. Its official name was the Svod osnovnykh gosudarstvennykh zakonov
(Compilation of Fundamental State Laws), for the reason that the term
constitution connoted more representative power than the emperor was
willing to concede. What is of greater significance, however, is thatwith
that constitutional documenta new concept of the state was introduced,
one based on more openness and on the written word. The sovereign emperor was defined as sacred and inviolable and his power as being derived
directly from God.4
Before the adoption of the 1906 Constitution, the October Manifesto of 1905 had already radically widened the electorate and established
citizens rights, such as the right of assembly and the freedom of forming
associations. In addition, a new electoral law had given the peasants
as well as workerswider presentation in the Duma than they had ever
enjoyed.5
For the purposes of charting the conceptual history of the Russian
constitutions, the 1906 Constitution represents a doubly relevant starting point, becausein addition to being the first Russian constitutional
documentit inaugurated a new paradigm for the presentation of state
4

Art.5, Svod Osnovnykh Gosudarstvennykh Zakonov, adopted 23 April 1906, Svod Zakonov
Rossiiskoi Imperii. Tom I. Chast I (Gosudarstvennaia tipografiia, St. Petersburg, 1906) (hereinafter 1906 Constitution).

Geoffrey A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment, Government and Duma, 1907-1914
(Cambridge University Press, London, 1973), 9.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

83

power in Russia. For the first time in Russian history, a central representative body was established: the State Duma. According to the 1906
Constitution, the tsar exercised his power jointly with the State Council
and the Duma. This concession concerning the redistribution of power
has clearly been deemed to be significant.6
However, while in principle the Duma could restrict the power of the
emperor, in practice it could not resist his will. He had authority over the
legislature and the executive, as well as over foreign policy and the armed
forces (Arts.6-14). The constitution did not make it possible to form a
government that would be representative of the legislative sector. This fact
prompted Max Weber to claim that the 1906 Constitution represented
sham constitutionalism.7
There was a strict guideline for the politics of nationality in the first
article of the Constitution: the Russian state was declared to be one and
indivisible (gosudarstvo edino i nerazdelno). That formulation referred to
the terminology of the French Revolution. According to Article 1 of the
1791 French Constitution: Le Royaume est un et indivisible. That declaration was made in order to resist strong federalism.8
After the 1917 October Revolution, the context of constitutional
rhetoric changed completelyas did the basis for the restricted unity
of the state, which was now being argued by means of Marxian concepts
and by their interpretations.
The first constitutions of the Soviet state were not only organizational
and foundational documents for various state bodies, but also plans for
action. They developed the aims of the central administration and created
a purposeful political agenda. This is our policy, said Lenin in 1921, and
you will find it in our constitution. Stalin, on the other hand, argued: The
party program speaks of that which does not yet exist, of that which has
to yet be achieved and won in the future, a constitution, on the contrary,
must speak of that which already exists, of that which has already been
achieved and won now, at the present time.9
Thus, the Bolsheviks legitimated their power by adopting the first
Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic eight
6

7
8

See, for example, Geoffrey A. Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917 (Fontana, London,
1988), 426.
Max Weber, Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, London, 1988) (Peter
Lassman, ed. and Ronald Speirs, transl.).
In the nineteenth century, there were national uprisings in the Northern Caucasus and Poland/
Lithuania, for example, against the reign of the tsar. However, such uprisings were usually
brutally crushed by the tsars troops. The liberal ideals of the French Revolution were feared
in Russia.
Quoted in Aryeh Unger, Constitutional Development in the USSR (Methuen, London, 1981), 2.

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months after the October Revolution, in July 1918.10 The 1918 Constitu
tion insisted on a complete break with the barbaric politics of bourgeois
civilization (Art.5). It reflected the thrust of the Revolution. However, it
was not founded on the notions of individual freedom and equality, as the
French Revolution had been; instead, it openly professed its dictatorial
essence, as well as its class character. The 1918 Constitution was created
for a transitional period, during which the classes would be abolished
and conditions created for the complete disappearance of the state. It
despised what it identified as bourgeois and legal appeasement and openly
advocated the undiluted power of the oppressed. Lenin and the other
Bolshevik leaders who drafted that Constitution often stated that it was
a practical product of the Revolution, not an institutionalized solution
created by lawyers.11
The 1918 Constitution began with the Declaration of the Rights of
the Toiling and Exploited People, which Lenin himself had written in
January 1918. The first article declared: Russia is proclaimed a republic of
soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants deputies. All power at the center
and in the peripheries shall be vested in these soviets. In this context, it
is apposite to remember that Marxism-Leninism rejected the principle of
the separation of powers as developed in the Western political and legal
traditions on the grounds that it would impede the representation of the
people. Marxist-Leninist authors argued that the principle of separation
of powers served only to mask the oppressive rule of the bourgeoisie.
Instead, the soviets represented a revolutionary form of self-government
designed exclusively for the proletariat.
The principle of federalism was declared in the second article of the
1918 Constitution: The Russian Soviet Republic is established on the basis
of a free union of free nations, as a federation of soviet national republics.
The Constitution was not limited to a single state or nation, but applied to
every nation that joined the union. Thus, starting with the first Constitution of Soviet Russia, federalism was accepted as a form of government
alongside the soviet model in order to complement and counterbalance
the power basis of the latter, although the concept of federation was not
the soviet paradigm. There is no mention of federalism in the Manifesto
of the Communist Party written by Marx and Engels. Thus, the Bolsheviks
accepted it as a form of government, a key to the singular union between
10

11

Konstitutsiia (Osnovnoi Zakon) Rossiiskoi Sotsialisticheskoi Federativnoi Sovetskoi Respubliki, adopted 10 July 1918, SU RSFSR (1918) No.51 item 582, available at <http://www.consultant.
ru/online/base/?req=doc;base=ESU;n=2929> (hereinafter 1918 Constitution).
Unger, op.cit. note 9, 11.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

85

the soviets and the state. Soviet Russia was the first modern state in which
the nation-state formed the basis of the federal structure.12
Bolsheviks who had objected to the federal model until November
1917 quickly became its supporters. They saw federalism as a means to
combine the areas under Soviet rule, which had been dispersed until the
last few years of Tsarist authority. Nation-states such as Poland and Finland
had already begun to form. Consequently, Lenins government did not
have much choice but to build a new federation on the basis of national
autonomy of the republics.
In 1918, Lenin said:
In rational and economic confines, federation could be useful in certain limits, and
it in no ways contradicts democratic centralism. The example of the Russian Soviet
Republic demonstrates [to] us that federation is the surest step to the union of different nationalities of Russia towards [a] democratic and centralized Soviet State.13

Therefore, federation meant a shift from the union of soviets towards


a more centralized Soviet state. Stalin, who was appointed as Peoples
Commissar of Nationalities, said in April 1918 that federalism is meant
to serve as a [means for] a transition to [...] socialist unitarism in the
future.14 This model was used in the Bolshevik Party Manifesto of 1919
when Soviet federalism was described as one formulation in the transition
towards full unity.15
The 1924 Constitution repeated the basic structure of its 1918 counterpart, consisting of two separate parts, the declaration of the formation of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the treaty on the formation of
the USSR.16 This was important in order to maintain the political message
of the 1918 Constitution and adapt it to a new context, in which a wider
statethe Soviet Unionwas established. The class consciousness that
animated the 1918 Constitution was only proclaimed in the introductory
part of the 1924 Constitution; but this did not include articles on citizens
rights or duties since constitutionally guaranteed rights concerned only
the oppressed and the workers.
12

13

See Victor Zaslavsky, Success and Collapse: Traditional Soviet Nationality Policy, in Ian Brem
mer and Ray Taras (eds.), Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1993), 29-42, at 31.

Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 1-45 (Foreign Language Press, Moscow, 1960-70), Vol.19,
243.

Josef V. Stalin, Works (Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1954), Vol.4, 75.

14
15
16

Programmy i Ustavy KPSS 1969 (Politizdat, Moscow, 1969), 41-42.

Konstitutsiia (Osnovnoi Zakon) Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, adopted


6 July 1923, ratified 31 January 1924, Vestnik TsIK, SNK i STO SSSR (1924) No.2 item 24, available at <http://www.consultant.ru/online/base/?req=doc;base=ESU;n=2963> (hereinafter 1924
Constitution).

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The first part of the 1924 Constitution justified the establishment


of the socialist state and expressed the wish to keep open admission to
the union for all socialist Soviet republics, those existing now as well as
those arising in the future. It was also stated that:
The new union state is a fitting consummation of the principles of peaceful coex
istence and fraternal cooperation of peoples established in October 1917, that is a
firm bulwark against world capitalism and a decisive step toward the union of the
toilers of all countries into one world Soviet socialist republic.

Those statements presupposed the unification of the Soviet republics into


a single union state (odno soiuznoe gosudarstvo). According to the preamble
of the Constitution of 1924:
The will of the people of the Soviet republics, unanimously proclaimed at their
recent congresses of Soviets in the decision to form the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, is a sure guarantee that this Union is a voluntary association of peoples
with equal rights, that each republic is assured the right of free secession from the
Union.

In Chapter Two of the 1924 Constitution, The Sovereign Rights of the


Union Republics and Union Citizenship, a single union citizenship (edi
noe soiuznoe grazhdanstvo) was established. This was a special feature of
Russian federalism, which made the boundaries between the respective
jurisdictions of the union state and the union republics far from clear,
but at the same time effectively furthered the centralization of power.
The background to that particular clause was the dilemma of the poli
tics of nationality: hence, the need to create a very open constitutional
agreement between the union republics and the central government.
The various nationalities wanted to have the certainty that they had
committed to an agreement, and in this way it was possible to legitimate
an empire based on Soviet nationalism. However, the wider background
to that compromise was constituted by the centralizing impetus of the
one-party rule, Marxist class-consciousness and the old empire inherited
from Tsarist Russia.17
When drafting the 1924 Constitution, special attention was given to
the multinational character of the Soviet Union. The so-called Bilateral
Assembly was established, formed from the Union Council (Soiuznyi Sovet)
and the Council of Nationalities (Sovet Natsionalnostei). The formation of
a bicameral assembly was a concession to accepted notions concerning the
structure of federal legislatures. The Bolsheviks had earlier opposed second
chambers as typical institutions of a class society. The union republics had
the right to have their own flags, constitutions, organs of government
17

Katja Ruutu, Venjn Politiikka ja Perustuslaki, Tutkimus Venjn Perustuslakiksitteistn Kehityksest


1900-luvulla (Kikimora, Helsinki, 2006), 57 (Constitutional Politics in Russia: A Conceptual
History Study of Constitutional Rhetoric in the 20th Century).

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

87

and representation in the central legislature. This played some part in


encouraging national aspirations and in introducing national minorities
into the political system. The fact that the federal framework had been
considerably extended since 1918 is evidence that the Soviet leadership
found it a useful form.18
The right of secession from the union was the only element that
radically differed from the otherwise centralized tone of the constitution,
and it recalled older concepts of federation as a treaty of union or peace
league between sovereign states. The right of secession from the USSR
must be understood as a rhetorical element embedded in the constitutional concepts during the Revolution, during which time the founding
fathers of Soviet power thought of the nationalities right to secede as
being entailed by the autonomy of the republics. In the opinion of Soviet
legal theorists, however, the right of secession from the Soviet Union had a
more declaratory than legislative character.19 It represented an important
part of a revolutionary rhetoric that strived to be integrative and stirring
rather than strictly formal and constitutional. However, that character
changed towards the end of the Soviet Unions development.
Following the adoption of the first two Soviet constitutions, the basic rhetoric of the Revolution was also maintained in the last two Soviet
constitutions, those of 1936 and 1977. The basic components of those
constitutions were the power of the soviets, the Great Socialist Revolution
and the voluntary union of the Soviet republics. Besides this core revolutionary vocabulary, there were significant conceptual reforms. Especially
after Stalin, rhetorical solutions and emphases based on constitutional
concepts became very important.

4. Stalins 1936 Constitution: The Watershed of


Russian Constitutional Rhetoric
Stalins ideas about the necessity to develop socialism in one country and
the need to establish a strong Soviet state diverged from the Communist
Internationals stance on those issues. Those ideological differences explain
why Stalin modified both the aim and the rhetoric of the previous two
Soviet constitutions. As a result, the concept of state replaced the concept
of revolution at the apex of Soviet ideology. Similarly, the interpretations
of socialism present in the 1936 Constitution deliberately differed from the
utopian and futurological perspectives of the October Revolution. Those
changes together obviously represented a momentous transformation of
the Soviet constitutional concepts.
18
19

See Unger, op.cit. note 9, 53.

Ibid.

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Stalin declared that he was carrying on the revolutionary struggle begun by Lenin; however, he had to justify the continuation of that struggle
after the successful establishment of socialism in the Soviet Union. He
overcame that difficulty by devising the theory that, as the final victory of
socialism was drawing nearer, the resistance of its defeated enemies was
increasing. The class struggle becomes sharper as a revolutionary state
moves closer to achieving communism.20 Those words were universally
acknowledged to constitute Stalins personal theory regarding the intensification of the class struggle under socialism. At the same time, Stalin
transformed the radical Marxist state into a more pragmatic institution.
He legitimated the use of terror towards the party itself and made it possible to claim that mistakes were caused by the enemies of the people.21
In relation to this, Stalin declared in 1939 that: We need the stabil
ity of laws more than ever.22 That statement represented an important
departure from the revolutionary interpretation, which argued that the
law was part of class society. In Stalins view, changes in the tools of pro
duction and in the relations of ownership needed to be reflected in the
laws. The demand for laws that reflected the contemporary reality of the
Soviet Unionas opposed to expressing expectations for its future
was one of the main reasons invoked by Stalin to justify the drafting of
a new constitution, instead of merely amending the existing one. The
original Marxist-Leninist idea of the law withering away under socialism
was replaced with Vyshinskys theory, which stated: Capitalism will lead
to degeneration of law and legality; instead history will show us that in
socialism the law is raised above the highest development level.23
In this context, the most important conceptual reform was to base
the constitution directly on the definitive idea of the state. The 1936 Con
stitution began with the words: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
is a socialist state of workers and peasants.24 Because of the changes made
to Marxist theory, there was no preamble to the 1936 Constitution, un
20
21
22

23
24

Neil Robinson, Russia: A State for Uncertainty (Routledge, London, 2002), 41.

Ibid., 41.

Josef Stalin, Report to the XVIII Party Congress, March 10, 1939, in Hugh W. Babb and John
N. Hazard (eds.), Soviet Legal Philosophy. 20th Century Legal Philosophy Series. Vol. V (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1951), xxix.

Andrei Vyshinsky, The Law of the Soviet State (Macmillan, New York, NY, 1948), 48-50.

Konstitutsiia (Osnovnoi Zakon) Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (with sub


sequent amendments), adopted 5 December 1936, Izvestiia TsIK SSSR i VTsIK (1936) No.238,
available at <http://www.consultant.ru/online/base/?req=doc;base=ESU;n=3007> (hereinafter
1936 Constitution). English-language translations of, and a commentary upon, the 1936 and
1977 USSR Constitutions can be found in F.J.M. Feldbrugge (ed.), Constitutions of the USSR and
the Union Republics: Analyses, Texts, Reports (Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, Germantown,
MD, Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1979).

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

89

like those of 1918 and 1924, which had begun with a Declaration of the
Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People. The break with the basic
arrangements of the previous constitutions was made in a simple manner.
The first part of the 1936 Constitution did not play the role of a founding
charter, as the corresponding passages had for its predecessors, although
it was based on existing structures. Article 2 stated: The soviets of toilers deputies, which arose and grew strong as a result of the overthrow
of the landlords and capitalists and the victory of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, shall constitute the political foundation of the USSR.
A radical change in relations between Soviet nationalities was also
introduced in the 1936 Constitution. Harmony between the classes
meant harmony between the nationalities. Stalin stated: The mutual
distrust of the soviet nationalities has disappeared and been replaced by
the brotherly cooperation of the nationalities in the form of the unified
federal state.25
The regulations concerning the national republics were defined in the
second section of the 1936 Constitution, which was entitled Structure
of the State (gosudartsvennoe ustroistvo). Article 13 of that section stated:
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shall be a union state, formed on
the basis of the voluntary association of equal soviet socialist republics.
The union republics right to secession from the USSR remained in the
Constitution. A list of the eleven republics that formed the Soviet Union
in 1936 followed. Article 15 declared:
The sovereignty of the union republics shall be restricted only within the limits
specified in Article 14 of the Constitution of the USSR. Outside these limits each
union republic shall exercise state power independently. The USSR shall protect the
sovereign rights of the union republics.

Thus, a specific feature of Soviet federalism was that two kinds of sov
ereignty could coexist: one at the republican and the other at the union
level.
In addition, Stalin promulgated a new declaration of the rights and
freedoms of the Soviet citizen, spanning fifteen separate articles. The
rights of the citizen were based on positive freedoms; the state guaranteed
certain rights to all Soviet citizensfor example, the right to work, the
right to rest and leisure, and the right to education. Furthermore, a citizen
of the USSR had guaranteed freedomsfor example, the freedom of assembly and of the press. According to Stalin, those explained that these
rights and freedoms were owed to the ending of the class struggle, which
resulted in friendship between the classes in the Soviet Union.26 It was in
25
26

Quoted in Unger, op.cit. note 9, 81.

Josef V. Stalin, Leninismin kysymyksi (Karjalais-suomalaisen valtion kustannusliike, Petrozavodsk,


1940), 545 (Problems of Leninism).

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that context that a universal, egalitarian and direct electoral system was
established, in Chapter 11 of the Constitution.
Stalins Soviet state, thus, represented a remarkable reform, one that
transformed the Soviet Union into both a state and a society. The 1936 Con
stitution did not need to rhetorically emphasize the distinctions between
different unions, as its predecessors had done in order to legitimate the
unified state, because it subordinated all other constitutional concepts,
such as republic, federation or union to the overarching constitutional
concept of state. The state was no longer a tool of class oppression; on the
contrary, it was presented as a requirement for a balanced class society.
Stalins massive control system enabled the existence of both the
Soviet state and of a firm connection between the state and the Soviet
citizen. The Constitution marked a departure from the principle of class
dictatorship towards a wider social base, which was declared to include
all working people, i.e., practically the entire population. However, in
practice, it meant tougher social control on the part of the state, which
proclaimed its inseparable unity with society.27
To conclude, some words should be added regarding the role of the
Communist Party in the context of the 1936 Constitution. As one of the
merits of the new Constitution, Stalin mentioned the fact that it pre
served the regime of the dictatorship of the working class, just as it also
preserved, unaltered, the leading political position of the Communist
Party of the USSR.28
However, the Communist Party was mentioned only once in the
1936 Constitution, in relation to the right to form different kinds of or
ganizations. The relevant passage read: The most active and conscious
citizens from the ranks of the working class and other strata of the toilers shall unite in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which is
the vanguard of the toilers.29 Thus, Stalin was not interested in either
defining the role of the Communist Party or relating it to constitutional
concepts. In a sense, keeping the Communist Party separate from the
constitutional concepts continued the tradition begun in the first two
Soviet constitutions. On the other hand, the 1936 Constitution can be
said to have started a tradition of its own, one that made the party an
integral part of the state structure.

27
28
29

Andrey N. Medushevsky, Russian Constitutionalism. Historical and Contemporary Development


(Routledge, New York, NY, 2006), 159.
See Unger, op.cit. note 9, 81.
Art.126, 1936 Constitution.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

91

5. Constitutional Rhetoric after Stalin


The post-Stalin political debate had difficulty returning to class-based
notions of the state and Soviet society. Whereas Stalins administrative
rhetoric was focused on direct control, political discourses following his
death went back to constitutional vocabularies; the emphasis was now
on wider participation and democracy. This shift represented a deliberate
attempt to escape from Stalins monolithic and absolutist concept of the
state. Following his death, Stalins successors had two crucial problems
with which to grapple: the image of the Revolution he had created and
nurtured, and the minimalist expectations he had set for the future evolution of the Soviet Unions power structure. For the new political elites, the
political and administrative legacy of Stalins years in power represented
as strong a historical tradition as did the 1917 October Revolution.
The new leaderships first task was to rehabilitate the developmental
prospects of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of Stalins mass terrorism
and real socialism. What was needed was a way to foster belief in the
reformative capabilities of the Marxist constitutional conceptsand of
the political system itselfwithout calling into question the role of the
CPSU, the authority of the Soviet government or the international status
of the USSR. This conundrum prompted Khrushchev and his allies to focus
their reforming efforts on those concepts that concerned the function of
the CPSU and the relationship between state and society.
Emphasizing the role of the CPSU and undermining the position of
the state bureaucracy was also integral to Khrushchevs personal campaign
for power, by which he tried to gain the support of the Party, as well as
secure the latters preeminence in the post-Stalin USSR.30
The political dynamics of the Khrushchev era were, thus, character
ized on the one hand by a tendency to decentralize power and to increase
participation and, on the other, by the will to buttress the power and
influence of the new elite.
After Stalins death, the Soviet leadership was in unanimous agreement regarding the need to put an end to the terror he had institutionalized. In that regard, the question of the proper role of the CPSU during
the period between socialism and communism was raised. The passivity
of the CPSU towards the state administration was identified as one of
the previous eras central problems. The Soviet system now needed to be
put back on the right track, the final goal being to achieve communism
in the future.
The main goal of Khrushchevs reform of constitutional concepts
was to redefine them in ways that would narrow the gap between the rul
30

Ronald Hill, Khrushchev and Khrushchevism, in Martin McCauley (ed.), State and Ideology
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1987), 46-60, at 48.

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ers and the people, and which would consequently increase the latters
involvement in the workings of government. Concurrently, both the party
apparatus and the state administration were made more receptive to the
democratic guidance of the CPSU.
Khrushchevs interest in administrative reform was not confined to
the organs of government: the CPSU was also affected. Khrushchev supported a greater turnover of party officials. Posts in the CPSU were made
temporary, and people other than members of the CPSU were allowed to
take part in the Partys work. Those reforms had two objectives: to increase
peoples participation and to control party officials more tightly.31
In 1956, Khrushchev gave his famous secret speech at the twentieth
Party Congress of the CPSU, during which he condemned Stalins cult and
promised to take the country back onto the Leninist path in the name
of socialist legality. Nevertheless, there was no need for constitutional
changes yet. As Unger wrote: It was the observance of existing constitu
tional provisions, rather than the enactment of new ones, that was needed
to ensure the return to Leninist norms in general and socialist legality
in particular.32
Instead of a new Soviet constitution, a new program was adopted by
the CPSU in 1961. Unlike Stalins real socialism, the new program was
based on a utopian and future orientation; it was called the Program of
the Future Communist Society. The program stated that, in contrast to
the previous eraswhich were characterized as periods of gradual change
towards communismSoviet society had now entered the age of the full
realization of communism. In the spirit of the realism of Stalins consti
tutional concepts, it was stated that the dictatorship of the proletariat
had performed its historic task and that the state had now accomplished
the will of the people. Nevertheless, the new party program of the CPSU
distanced itself from Stalins realism by making the following statement
regarding future-oriented tasks: The proletariat will have fulfilled its
task as a leading force of society when communism has been built and
the classes have disappeared.33
The program also included a promise to the Soviet people that the
transition to full communism would be carried through. The Soviet Union
was said to have entered a new and momentous age, as a result of which
the building of a communist society had become an immediate and practical task. The program additionally stated that: The state has become a
state of the entire people, representing the wills and interests of all people
31
32
33

Ibid., 55.

Unger, op.cit. note 9, 173.

Programma KPSS 1961, in Programmy i Ustavy KPSS, op.cit. note 15, 23.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

93

[] Social classes have become homogeneous. The concept of socialist


democracy was also mentioned: Proletarian democracy is growing more
and more into a socialist democracy of the people as a whole.34 This
process meant that the state, which had emerged as a vehicle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, had now become a state of the whole people
(obshchenarodnoe gosudarstvo). It was now a vehicle for the interests and
will of the people as a whole. The state as an organization of the entire
people (obshchenarodnaia organizatsiia) would survive until the complete
victory of communism.35
Khrushchev had thus introduced a new concept, that of an all-peoples
state, into Soviet political discourse. That concept was developmental in
nature; as such, the idea of historical movement was central to it. This
innovation can be interpreted as a shift away from the traditional Marxist
concept of state and the revolutionary rhetoric of the previous periods.
According to Khrushchev, the modern state was not an instrument of
class power. It was an instrument used by the whole Soviet people on the
road towards full communism.36
An all-peoples state meant that party members were not the only
ones to be politically conscious. Instead, every Soviet citizen, worker,
peasant and member of the intelligentsia was politically conscious (ideinye).
All Soviet people were ready for disciplined revolutionary action.37 This
notion represented a break with the ideas of Lenin and Stalin, as they
had both emphasized the vanguard role of the party (avantgard), as well
as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The role of the CPSU was in transition. The 1961 Program referred
to the CPSU as a party of the whole people, the role of whichas the
leading and guiding force of Soviet societywould be enhanced and would
require a new higher stage in the development of the party itself . The
party represented the brain of the new era, and its task was to show the
people the scientifically determined paths along which to proceed. The
party thus maintained its leading role as all-peoples party under the
all-peoples state.

6. Brezhnevs Constitutional Reforms


Leonid Brezhnevs rule has typically been described as an era of stagna
tion. However, from the rhetorical point of view, the Brezhnev era was
quite interesting. It produced some particularly interesting changes in
34
35
36
37

Ibid.

Ibid.

Unger, op.cit. note 9, 183-184.

Programma KPSS 1961, op.cit. note 15, 24.

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constitutional concepts. Actually, the term stagnation (zastoi) emerged


only in retrospect, during the Gorbachev period, when the socialist system
was undergoing rapid transformation.
During the Khrushchev era, the constitutional scheme was being for
mulated in relation to the developmental stage of full-scale construction
of communism. That concept was abandoned by Brezhnev and his associ
ates, who replaced it with their own new contributions to the language of
Soviet developmental dynamics: the developed socialist society (razvitoe
sotsialisticheskoe obshchestvo) or with the mature society (zreloe obshchestvo).
Those phrases started to appear with greater frequency following the
twenty-fourth CPSU conference, in 1971.38
In contrast to the utopian and transformational implications of
Khrushchevs full-scale construction of communism, the concept of de
veloped socialism aimed to convey the maturity of the existing system and
to define it as perfect. The emphasis was on present tasks, to be carried
out during the socialist phase, not to its future, as in the idea of utopian
transfer to the future. The leading role of the CPSU in the developed
socialist society was accordingly stressed.
When Brezhnev reported to the Supreme Soviet on the new consti
tution, in 1977, he remarked that:
The stage of the perfection of socialism on its own basis, the stage of a mature,
developed socialist society, is a necessary element in the social transformation and
constitutes a relatively long period of development on the path from capitalism to
communism. Moreover, knowledge and utilization of all the possibilities of developed
socialism is at the same time a transition towards the construction of communism.
The future does not lie beyond the limits of the present. The future is rooted in the
present, and by accomplishing the tasks of todayof the socialist presentwe are
gradually entering tomorrowthe communist future.39

The Brezhnevian leadership, thus, moved sharply away from Khrushchevs


utopian concept of the withering away of the state to embrace developed
socialism. Another central idea of the eras political discourse was that of
scientific-technical revolution, much stress being also laid on the related
notion of a scientific approach to decision-making. The concept of developed socialism denoted a new stage in the development of the state,
democracy and society. The wide use of information technology and of
the latest scientific achievements were characteristic of that new era, as
were a systematic attitude towards decision-making and all-inclusiveness
in relation to citizens participation. Indeed, it was thought that the latter was being increased by the high level of education resulting from the
38
39

Mark Sandle, A Short History of Soviet Socialism (UCL Press, London, 1999), 338.

Leonid Brezhnev, On the Draft Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Report at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, 24 May 1977, in Feldbrugge,
op.cit. note 24, 201-214.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

95

scientific-technical revolution. Essentially, the Brezhnevian discourse


aimed to present the Soviet Union as an information society.40
Thus, the retreat from Khrushchevs utopian language did not involve
an abandonment of his endorsement of civic participation in decisionmaking. A developed socialist system was always said to involve a large
degree of political participation. The soviets were found to have the best
potential for integrating the administrative load and distributive duties
in the context of de-Stalinization, for they represented the whole Soviet
people, rather than any particular section or class, as was the case with
the Party, trade unions or collective farms (kolkhozy). Civic participation
was treated by the regime as an important and necessary part of the informational input required for scientific decision-making.41
The emphasis being laid on citizens political participation has led to
Brezhnevs program being described as a sort of pre-perestroika in some
quarters, the purpose of which was to create a virtuous circle according to
which the higher education levels brought about by the scientific-technical
revolution would lead to increased participation because the latter was
one of the requirements of scientific-technical development.42
Regarding the text of the new 1977 Constitution, while its preamble
maintained continuity with the ideas and principles of the first three So
viet constitutions, there also were changes in the constitutional concepts.
Three new concepts that had not appeared in earlier constitutions were
introduced: the all-peoples state, the developed socialist society and
the new historical community of people, the Soviet people. 43 Another
new formulation was stated that all power in the USSR belonged to the
people and was realized through peoples deputies. Earlier constitutions
had established no clear connection with the power of the people and
peoples deputies. The crucial role of the Communist Party was specifically
defined properly in Article 6 of the 1977 Constitution, which represented
the first time a Soviet constitution had done so in such terms. There
was no reference to its social composition or its status as a vanguard, as
in the 1936 Constitution. The party was now the leading and guiding
force of the Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all
state organizations and public organizations. Soviet legal experts of the
40

41

Fjodor Burlatsky, Nykyajan valtio ja politiikka (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978), 56 (Contemporary State and Politics).

42

Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1979), 255-256.

See Sandle, op.cit. note 38, 339.

Konstitutsiia (Osnovnoi Zakon) Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (with


subsequent amendments), adopted 7 October 1977, Ved.SSSR 1977 No.41 item 617, available at
<http://www.consultant.ru/popular/conscccr/> (hereinafter 1977 Constitution).

43

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Brezhnev era were explicit in their predictions that the role of the party
would increase markedly during the period of developed socialism.44 The
party embodied the interests of all segments of the community; it was an
all-peoples party. At the same time, it would retain its class essence as
a party of the working class throughout the developed socialist stage.
In spite of his innovations, Brezhnev preserved the transitional
features of Khrushchevs rhetoric. As a concession to Soviet tradition,
development was stable and respected Marxist political values. It was
stated that mature socialist society had come into being as a result of the
transformation of the state from the dictatorship of the proletariat into
a state of the entire people. This form of state was said to be founded on
universal socialist democracy and the strengthening of social homogeneity
resulting from the convergence (sblizhenie) of all classes, social groups and
nations, as well as on the strengthening of the leading role of the CPSU
in society and the state.45
The concept of developed socialism referred to an evolutionary
stage marked most significantly by its own inherent stability and by the
slow-paced and non-traumatic nature of its evolution towards even higher
socio-economic forms. Thus, the pace of change characteristic of the
Khrushchev era was a thing of the past and, accordingly, party cadres did
not have to be frightened of losing their places.46
It can be concluded that, during the Brezhnev era, the concepts of
socialism, transition, evolution and communism were all used to refer to
centralized politics and as values shared by everyone. Society (obshchestvo)
began to be seen as a systematic unity that it was possible to guide. It was
natural for the constitution to be changed so that it reflected the new,
scientific-technical political system, the central idea of which was to transform utopian principles into objective legal actions. The persistence of
strong central authority, in the shape of the party and the state, emphasized
the hegemony of statism and centralism in Brezhnevian discourse.

7. Constitutional Rhetoric during the Perestroika Period


Despite the fact that a new constitution was not adopted during the
Gorbachev era, Gorbachev radically reformed the Soviet constitutional concepts. The use of terms such as perestroika (restructuring),
44

45

According to Burlatsky, the tasks of the party were the following: (1) scientifically informed
policy development; (2) fostering cadres; (3) defining the scientific management principles and
methods of analysis; (4) general supervision. See Burlatsky, op.cit. note 40, 116.

Brezhnev, op.cit. note 39.

See Donald R. Kelley, Developments in Ideology. Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Period (Praeger
Publishers, New York, NY, 1980), 184.

46

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

97

glasnost(openness), pravovoe gosudarstvo (law-based state) and gumanitarnyi sotsializm (human socialism) brought new meanings to the unity of
constitutional concepts.
Gorbachev officially introduced the term glasnost in 1986, at the
twenty-seventh Party Congress. During his speech on that occasion, he
declared that the better the people were informed, the more reasonably
they would act and support the party and its plans and objectives. He also
stated: We have to deepen glasnost in the work of the party, soviet, state
and social organizations. Lenin said that the state is rich when its people
are responsible. Our experience has strengthened this conclusion.47 This
constituted the political logic of glasnost, which, of course, was considered
very radical in the aftermath of Leonid Brezhnevs regime.
Beginning in 1987, Gorbachev started to sound a note of caution:
saying that perestroika was a social movement and that the CPSU was in
danger of failing to adapt to the development of society. This was seen
as a clear divergence from Lenins thesis, which stated that there was
danger in social spontaneity and that the working class needed to be led
away from it. Gorbachev, however, ignored the conflict between his own
ideas and those of Lenin and the Revolution. In his diaries, published in
1987, he focused on his antagonism towards the Brezhnev era. According
to him, the Soviet Union was at a turning point (perelom) in its development and it was time to guide the country into a new era, away from the
stagnation of Brezhnevs period in power.
In Gorbachevs view, the core of perestroika was that it united socialism
with democracy and revived the Leninist concept of socialist construction
both in theory and in practice. Perestroika meant the combination of the
achievements of the scientific and technical revolution with a planned
economy. It represented an addition to socialism, in the shape of the most
modern social developments.48
Thus, Gorbachev did not define perestroika as a transition, because
he did not envision a shift from one system to another. On the contrary,
he believed that the same type of socialism as that introduced by the
October Revolution, and founded on it, was still developing; perestroika
would merely assist in the further development of socialisms potential
and in its implementation. This process would not usher in a new politi
cal system or a new era, but a more progressive, moral and liberal form
of socialism.49
47
48
49

Mikhail Gorbachev, Izbrannye Rechi i Stati. Tom 1-5 (Izdateltsvo politicheskoi literatury, Moscow,
1989), Tom 2, 130-131.

Ibid., 35.

George Breslauer, Gorbachev and Eltsin as Leaders (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2002), 66.

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One of the most far-reaching reforms of Gorbachevs perestroika was


the formation in 1988 of the Congress of Peoples Deputies, which was set
up in order to help transfer control of perestroika from the CPSU to governmental bodies. Gorbachev concluded that the resistance to perestroika
was so strong among CPSU officials that a reduction of the CPSUs power
was necessary in order to implement the reforms of perestroika.50
In relation to the formation of the Congress of Peoples Deputies,
Gorbachev wanted to revitalize the old concept of all power to the soviets.
In effect, Gorbachev sought to democratize the soviets by enhancing their position and the role of the legislative sector in relation to the
executive sector, namely by making the executive accountable to the legislative. It was an application of glasnost to implement reforms. The reforms
meant that the soviets would elect the executive body and its leaders. This
represented a radical step, because traditionally the CPSU had made all
decisions concerning the appointment of executive personnel. Gorbachev
used the soviets as part of his strategy to widen glasnost. However, while
glasnost loosened the ideological control exercised by the CPSU, it also
threatened the basic principle of the Soviet systemthe one-party system
based on the Communist Partyand helped generate radical movements,
among which the most visible were the national movements.
As regards the formation of the Congress of Peoples Deputies, Gor
bachevs statement that deputies would be elected to it, and also to regional
and local soviets, by competitive elections represented a radical departure
from the past. This reform struck at the Achilles heel of the CPSU because
it introduced an alternative to the political nomination process, which
it had hitherto dominated. It resulted in a revolutionary transformation
of the Soviet political landscape. A number of non-Communist political
parties emerged and had their representatives elected to the Congress of
Peoples Deputies, as well as republican and municipal bodies.
Gorbachev stated that the Congress of Peoples Deputies represented
the socialist pluralism of opinions and the socialist law-based state
(pravovoe gosudarstvo). It was made the highest power in the country by
constitutional amendments of December 1988, and Gorbachev was elected
chairman of the new body following the elections of March 1989.51 While
the electoral reform introduced by Gorbachev was intended to introduce
a degree of popular sovereignty into the operations of the Soviet system,52
50

Thomas F. Remington, Russian Parliament. Institutional Evolution in a Transitional Regime, 19891999 (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2001), 24.

Robert Sharlet, Soviet Constitutional Crisis from De-stalinization to Disintegration (M.E. Sharpe,
New York, NY, 1992), 92.

51

52

Ved.SSSR 1988 No.49 item 727.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

99

the reform of the Supreme Soviet was intended to provide greater legitimacy to the whole constitutional restructuring.
Besides making radical changes to the basic components of the Soviet
administrative system, Gorbachev and his allies introduced new concepts
of freedom and human socialism. These concepts transformed the core of
the class-based system by putting forward the principle that the individual
human being would be raised above the class from then on.
The program called gumannyi demokraticheskii sotsializm (human
democratic socialism), which opposed the class-based hatred approach,
was launched in 1989. Gorbachevs idea was that common human values
took precedence over class values. He explained:
in the name of wrongly understood collectivism, human individuality was ignored,
the development of the personality was hampered, and the reasonable confines of
freedom were drastically narrowed under the pretext of the priority of the collective
over the individual.53

During the February 1990 meeting of the Central Committee of the


CPSU, Gorbachev declared that it was no longer necessary to guarantee
the CPSUs position in society by means of the constitution. This led to
the removal of Article 6 from the 1977 Constitution.54 The Party, thus,
lost its monopolistic position in Soviet society; from then on, it had to
compete in elections with other parties and organizations. In the spirit of
Gorbachevs reform policy, the first democratic local- and regional-level
elections were held in March 1990. The purpose of the elections was to
bring to the local councils perestroika-minded people. In some localities,
such as in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the democrats managed to get a
majority in the regional and local councils. Elsewhere, the so-called old
members of the nomenklatura managed to retain their places. And so it
was that the democrats received most of the votes in the big cities while
the old members of the elite instead won at the oblast level.55 Gorbachev
thus managed to create a representative system at the regional and local
levels, where the elected organs of government were higher than the appointed ones.56
Gorbachev wrote: A large democratization is presently taking place in
our society. New social and political organizations will be born. He added:
53
54

Quoted in Sandle, op.cit. note 38, 392.

Ved. SSSR 1990 No.12 item 189.

Jeffrey W. Hahn, Democratization and Political Participation in Russias Regions in Karen


Dawisha and Bruce Parrot (eds.), Democratic Change and Authoritarian Reactions In Russia, Ukraine,
Belarus and Moldova (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997), 133-136.

55

56

Theodore H. Friedgut, Introduction, Local Government under the Old Regime, in Theodore
H. Friedgut and Jeffrey W. Hahn (eds.), Power and Post-Soviet Politics (M.E. Sharpe, New York,
NY, 1994), 3-12, at 6.

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The CPSU is ready to work and have a dialogue with all the new organi
zations which work according to the basis of the Soviet constitution.57
In Gorbachevs view, however, maintaining the leading role of the
CPSU in the new multiparty system constituted a primary objective.
Thus, the new situation represented a sort of test for the CPSU, a chal
lenge to win the battle for peoples votes. It was in this context that the
party put forward its main electoral arguments, which emphasized the
preservation of the uniformity of the political system, the protection of
its social ideals and its successful reform. These concepts, it was hoped,
would help legitimize the leading role of the CPSU. As can be seen, politi
cal arguments could no longer be founded on traditional Soviet tenets,
such as the ideological justice represented by the class state.
Typically, the new concept of democratic human socialism had been
introduced into Soviet political discourse in the aftermath of a change of
leadership; this matched the traditional, ritualized Soviet pattern whereby
new concepts were required, and were developed, in the wake of each
leadership change. Gorbachev stated that democratic human socialism
would lend legitimacy, direction and content to perestroika as a whole. Following the historical pattern set by previous reform strategies, the new
program of perestroika contained elements of the political system that it
was meant to supersede. Hence, the purpose of perestroika was to con
nect socialism and the new reforms. Gorbachevs program, therefore, can
be interpreted as a traditional Soviet reform project, the central idea of
which was to promote the transformation of the system while defending
the old principles and values of Soviet socialism.
Although Gorbachev radically transformed the system of one-party
rule, his opinions about the role and structure of the Soviet Union remained
traditionalistic. In 1989, he stated that the Soviet people had become
united in a common interest and had committed themselves to the 1917
Revolution. He wanted this union to develop and, to this end, the CPSU
needed to demonstrate its commitment to socialism by showing that its
politics reflected the peoples will. This would legitimate the party and
the new Soviet system.58
It can be concluded that Gorbachevs program was paradoxical be
cause its aim was to preserve the Soviet Unions integrity andat the
same timeto radically reform socialism. In other words, the problem
facing Gorbachev lay in the intractable difficulty of maintaining the role
of the party as the conceptual base of the system while reforming it in
the name of perestroika. By endowing parliament with a measure of real
57

58

Mikhail Gorbachev, O proekte platformy TsK KPSS k XXVIII sezdu partii, doklad M.S.
Gorbacheva, Pravda, 6 February 1990, 1-2.

Karen Henderson and Neil Robinson, Post-Communist Politics. An Introduction (Prentice Hall,
London, 1997), 44.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

101

power and moving in the direction of meaningful parliamentary elections,


Gorbachev was undermining the authority of the party. Once he initiated
this process, there was no going back.

8. Eltsins Concepts towards the Soviet State


While forming the new Russia in the beginning of the 1990s, an inter
pretation of Soviet constitutional concepts giving crucial importance to
local politics became extremely important for Eltsin. In this context,
understanding the Soviet Union as a union of regions made it possible to
define it from the bottom up, and thus to delegitimize the central state.
Eltsins constitutional rhetoric was based on the traditional rhetorical
elements of the Soviet constitution, which defined the formation of the
Soviet Union as a voluntary combination of sovereign unions.
Eltsin gave key significance to the concept of sovereignty when he
gave his speech to the first Russian Congress of Peoples Deputies in May
1990, stating: The problems of the republics cannot be settled unless
they are given full political sovereignty.59 In contrast to Gorbachev, who
defined sovereignty as the organic participation of the republics in the
division of the states labor, Eltsin gave sovereignty political meaning.
During the debate about the Baltic states, Eltsin introduced his main
idea of the Soviet Union as a future kingdom of freedom. By means of this
concept, Eltsin took away all the repressive bonds between the republics
and the union state and changed the whole meaning of the latter. He spoke
about the absolute sovereignty of the republics and their almost maximal
independence within the Soviet Union. And in no way did he activate the
dualism of the Soviet Constitution, whose purpose was to protect the
central government of the USSR, as well as the CPSU.
Gorbachev, as Eltsins opponent, strived during the Baltic debate to
stick to the old constitutional bond, according to which it was the coherence of the CPSU and the ideological centralization of the state that made
it possible to decentralize the state and achieve regional autonomy. Eltsin,
on the other hand, continuously sought to loosen the Partys dominance
as a means of weakening the power of the union state and thereby build
strong regions. For Eltsin, the most important outcome of the struggle
for independence of the Baltic States was that the union state and the
party were now separated from each other.
Eltsins leading idea, at the end of the 1980s, was to get rid of the
old Soviet state structure, where the federal level rested on the CPSU. In
59

Mikhail Gorbachev, Sezd narodnykh deputatov SSSR, Izvestiia, 25 May 1990, 1. See, also, M.K.
Gorshkov, V.V. Zhuravlev and L.N. Dobrohotov (eds.), Eltsin-Khasbulatov. Edinstvo, Kompromis,
Borba (Terra, Moscow, 1994), 24.

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Review of Central and East European Law 35 (2010)

this model, the regions were fastened to the hierarchically organized net
work of the soviets. In his effort to alter the old system, Eltsin achieved
remarkable success. And once the Soviet Union had collapsed, the central
question became: how to build up the New Russia. The Russian Federation
wasfollowing the pattern of the Soviet Uniona federal state, whose
regions were supposed to be integrated with the center.
The most integral institution of Eltsins reforms was the post of
governor, which was established after the August Putsch of 1991. After
Gorbachev had tried to democratize the soviets by making the executive
branch accountable to the legislative branch, Eltsin used the regions as
legitimate sources of central power. After the August Putsch, Eltsin and
his group saw the soviets as opponents of their policy andwith the help
of the governorswanted to get rid of them. The idea was to strengthen
executive power in relation to the democratic bodies and fill the crucial
executive posts with local officials who supported the president.60
After the debate over the Baltic states, it was no longer possible to
use the Party card to refer to the unity of the Soviet Union. Khasbulatov
rejected the possibility that Russia might become the Soviet Union again.
Instead, he defended the idea that Russia would become a union of sovi
ets. Eltsin, on the other hand, wanted the more politically independent
regions to replace the federal unity. Eltsin based the rebirth of the Russian
constitutional order on the pre-Soviet era and saw the Soviet period as
illegitimate, an interregnum in Russias search for democracy.61
Eltsins revolutionary federalism emphasized the role of the regions
but not the Soviet identity of the citizens. His program focused on the
dissolution of the Soviet system, and his major criticism was aimed at the
concept of the soviets themselves, whichin the Soviet modelhad played
a central role in both the key concept of democracy from below and that
of the federal union of soviet states. The purpose of Eltsins politics was
to develop a federal model in which the soviets played no role at all.
When studying the process that led to the coup and eventually to
the new 1993 Constitution, it can be noticed that Eltsins argumentation
radicalized after the first coup in August 1991. Eltsin was suspicious of the
leaders of the republics because during the blockade of the White House,
the regional leaderships general tendency was to use the crisis to advance
their own interests. After signing the federal treaty in 1992, the role of
the regions culminated in the debate over Russias new constitution.62
60

61

Jeffrey W. Hahn, Reforming Post-Soviet Russia: The Attitudes of Local Politicians, in Friedgut
and Hahn, op.cit. note 56, 208- 238, at 211.

See Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (Routledge, London, 1996), 125.

Konstitutsionnoe soveshchanie: Stenogrammy. Materialy. Dokumenty. 29 aprelia-10 noiabria 1993 g.


(Izdatelstvo Iuridicheskaia Literatura, Administratsii Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii,
Moscow, 1995-1996); also available at <http://www.constitution.garant.ru/DOC_55000.htm>.

62

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

103

In order to have the regions on his side against the policies of President
Eltsin in the constitutional debate, the chairman of the Supreme Soviet,
Ruslan Khasbulatov, started to make trips to the regions. He announced
in April 1993 that he had returned the power of the soviets to the regions,
which would soon return the power to the central level. Khasbulatov
proposed the establishment of a central parliamentary republic and the
restoration of the power of the soviets in the regions and localities. He
favored the restoration of the power of the soviets in which local executive
authorities would be subordinated to local soviets, which in turn would
be subordinated to the presidium of the Supreme Soviet.63
Eltsin also tried to get the regions on his side in the constitutional
debate, offering a federal model in contrast to Khasbulatov, who had offered the regions the original Soviet model.64
In May 1993, Eltsin decreed that a constitutional convention was to
convene to refine and adopt a new constitution in final form. In his opening
speech to the Constitutional Assembly in June 1993, Eltsin compared that
time with 1917 in that the new Constitutional Assembly was continuing
the work of the Provisional Government, which was brought to an end
by the Bolshevik seizure of power and the dispersal of the Constituent
Assembly in January 1918.65 Eltsin thus based the rebirth of the Russian
constitutional order on the pre-Soviet era. The Soviet period was portrayed as illegitimate, an interregnum in Russias search for democracy.
According to Eltsin, the soviets and democracy were fundamentally
incompatible.66
The Constitutional Assembly approved by a large majority a new
constitutional draft in July 1993 that differed from the presidents draft.
The Assemblys draft envisioned a rather weak president, who was dependent on the parliament. As a response, Eltsin issued an edict (ukaz)
in September 1993 on gradual constitutional reform in the RF.67 This dissolved the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of Peoples deputies, whose
powers were to be transferred to a new Federal Assembly (Federalnoe
sobranie). This institution, in turn, would be made up of the State Duma
and the Federation Council (Sovet Federatsii). Deputies would be elected to
the Duma for a term of four years while the Federation Council would be
63
64
65
66
67

Ibid., 125.

Gorshkov et al., op.cit. note 59, 406.

Konstitutsionnoe soveshchanie, op.cit. note 62, tom 2, 4.

Sakwa, op.cit. note 61, 58.

Ukaz Prezidenta RF, 21 September 1993, Sobranie Aktov Prezidenta i Pravitelstva RF (1993) No.39
item 3597, No.1400 (as amended), available at <http://www.consultant.ru/online/base/?req=doc;
base=LAW;n=40589>.

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Review of Central and East European Law 35 (2010)

composed of the heads of the executive and legislative branches of each


subject of the federation.68 The draft constitution to be considered at the
referendum was published on 10 November 1993. A national vote on a new
draft constitution was organized on 12 December, and the constitution
entered into force the same day.69
The 1993 Constitution is the first basic law ever adopted in Russia
to be based on the idea of universally recognized human rights. It introduced the concepts of freedom (svoboda) and free participation (narod
osushchestvliaet svoiu vlast neposredstvenno) as its key constitutional notions
in Russia. Additionally, it is addressed to all human beings andthrough
the concept of freedomconceives of human rights as being universal and
unrestricted. This constitution thereby represents a mixture of patriotism
and universal justice. Along the same lines, the concept of ideological
multiplicity (ideologicheskoe mnogoobrazie) is mentioned in Article 13. Thus,
it is obvious that there was no place for Marxist and radical humanist
citizenship in the 1993 Constitution. Moreover, it abandoned the statist
ideology and introduced a Russian model of representative democracy,
as well as a multiparty systemnew concepts in Russian constitutional
history.
For the first time in Russian history, a constitution made a serious
attempt to defineand, thus, to limitstate power. However, it also
established a strong executive presidency to which the government is
subordinated within an unbalanced system of separation of powers. That
led to continuous conflicts between the parliament and the president
during Eltsins period in power.
Furthermore, the 1993 Constitution defines Russia both as Otechestvo
and Rodina (fatherland, homeland) as well as a certain kind of administrative entity. As a form of state organization, it introduces the federal state,
in which the tools of the central government are vera v spravedlivost (a
belief in justice) and priznanie, sobliudenie i zashchita prav i svobod chelovek
i grazhdanina (the recognition, supervision, and protection of the rights
and freedom of man and the citizen) (Preamble and Art.2, respectively).
In its original scheme, the region was one of the loci of political operations.
Those elements are the bases of a very federative structure. The Constitution introduces a multifaceted local and central network the raison dtre
of which is to defend the freedom of the individual. The Preamble of the
68

69

Thomas F. Remington, The Russian Parliament, Institutional Evolution in a Transitional Regime,


1989-1999 (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, and London, 2001), 166.

Konstitutsiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii (with subsequent amendments), adopted 12 December


1993, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 25 December 1993 (hereinafter 1993 Constitution), available at <http://
www.consultant.ru/popular/cons/#info>.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

105

Constitution is a declaration of the nature of the state, in which the past is


strongly present. It is written in the development-historical style in order
to justify the unity of the new state and the self-determination of nations.
The concepts of fatherland and of the sovereignty of the Russian state
and federation are both embraced on a constitutional, as well as national,
level. On the other hand, notions of a unified Russia and fatherland found
in the Constitution took on new meaning in 1994 in the context of the
first Chechen war. Svoboda rhetoric was shelved, and economic reforms
increasingly came to be seen as only profiting those participating in the
free market. Monolithic concepts of politics and society were used to
counteract multiparty chaos and the anarchy of the free market.

9. Putins Constitutional Reinterpretations


While President Vladimir Putin did not engineer the adoption of a new
constitution, he has radically transformed Russian constitutional thinking, in particular as concerns the understanding of federal unity. At first,
such novel concepts as dictatorship of law (diktatura zakona) and power
vertical (vertikal vlasti) reflected the unstable state of the Kremlin after
Eltsins time in power and Russias pressing need for more stability and
cohesion, domestically as well as internationally.70 Essentially, the new
concepts of Putins command administration represented guidelines on
how Russian national unity must function.
Thus, the term dictatorship of law was targeted against the legislative
chaos of Eltsins years in power. Within the framework of the dictatorship
of law, every Russian citizen was guaranteed the same rights, and federal
legislation was to be understood in a uniform manner throughout the
federation. These reforms were legitimized by referring to Article 78 of
the 1993 Constitution, this idea of which is that federation officialsthe
president and the governmenthave the right to create regional bodies
with undefined powers and to order officials to implement the power and
authority of the federation. This has made it possible for Putin to create
the so-called seven super districts (federalnye okruga) and appoint as their
leaders (polpredy) former generals and officials from the FSB.71 The task
of those seven leaders is to oversee the complex process of bringing the
constitutions of the republics and the regional charters in accordance with
the federal constitution and federal laws. The new law placed the presiden
tially appointed officials higher in the political-administrative hierarchy
than the elected governors and the presidents of the regions. In regard
70

71

Cameron Ross, Putins Federal Reforms and the Consolidation of Federalism in Russia: One
Step Forward, Two Steps Back, 36(1) Communist and Post-Communist Studies (2003), 29-47.

Jeffrey Kahn, Federalism, Democratization and the Rule of Law in Russia (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2002), 137.

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Review of Central and East European Law 35 (2010)

to the regions autonomy, soon after Putins election to the presidency in


2000, the Constitutional Court ruled that the declarations of sovereignty
of the republics, typical of the early 1990s, were incompatible with the
sovereignty of the Russian Federation.72
The further strengthening of vertical power continued when Putin
announced, at an autumn 2004 meeting with regional governors, a new
stance towards the regions. In the context of the Beslan school hostage siege, he declared that the reforms of the executive sector would
unite all the regions in the fight against terrorism. Putin claimed that
federal unity was already proclaimed in Article 77 of the 1993 Constitution, which states that the federal organs of executive power and the
organs of executive power of the subjects of the Russian Federation
form a unitary system of executive power in the Russian Federation.
Putins interpretation of that Article was that the executive power of the
federation and the different regions of Russia form(ed) a single system of
power and must work as an inseparable entity of executive power [edinaia
sistema ispolnitelnoi vlasti].73 New legislation on regional governors was
introduced later in 2004. This provided that the legislative bodies of the
regions henceforth would have the right to elect the governors after the
president of the Russian Federation had first nominated the candidates.
The new system also removed the governors and elected heads of the local
legislatures from those same bodies, replacing them with appointed officials
from the executive and legislative branches of regional government. By
contrast, the Federal Council in the Eltsin era consisted of the members
of the regional governments and the heads of regional legislatures who
had been elected by peoples direct vote; the Council could, thus, work as
a force of opposition to the president.74 This was demonstrated in 1996,
when the Federal Assembly tried to remove Eltsin from office on the basis
of accusations that he had started the war in Chechnia.
It has been argued that the reform abolishing the democratic election of governors violated Article 55 of the 1993 Constitution, which
72

73

RF Constiutional Court, Ruling (postanovlenie), 7 June 2000, No.10-P, In the Matter of Examining the Constitutionality of Several Provisions of the Constitution of the Altai Republic
[...], Vestnik Konstitutsionnogo Suda RF (2000) No.5, available at <http://www.rg.ru/oficial/doc/
min_and_vedom/ks/10_p.shtm>, and RF Constitutional Court, Decision (opredelenie), 27 June
2000, No.92-O, Regarding the Inquiry of a Group of Deputies of the State Duma in the Matter
of Examining the Conformity of Constitutionality of Several Provisions of the Constitution
of the Adygei Republic [...], Vestnik Konstitutsionnogo Suda RF (2000) No.5, dissenting opinion
(of Justice Luchin) at Vestnik Konstitutsionnogo Suda RF (2000) No.6, both available at <http://
www.constitution.garant.ru/DOC_82298.htm>. See, further, Ross, op.cit. note 70, 42.

74

Vladimir Putin, Speech delivered at the Enlarged Government Meeting with the Government
and Heads of the Regions, 13 September 2004, available at <http://www.kremlin.ru>.

Thomas F. Remington, Majorities without Mandates: The Russian Federation Council since
2000, 55(5) Europa-Asia Studies (2003), 667-691, at 671.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

107

states that: Laws abolishing or diminishing rights and freedoms of man


and citizen must not be issued in the RF. Additionally, the reform also
arguably infringed Article 11, which declares that: State power in the RF
is exercised by the RF President, the Federal Assembly (the Council of
the Federation and the State Duma), the RF Government, and the RF
courts. Those arguments are consistent with a 1996 decision of the Constitutional Court. The Court found that the election of the Altai district
krai leader by a resolution of the Altai regional legislative assembly was
unconstitutional and caused damage to the balance of powers.75 The decision further stipulated that the same principles applied to the election of
legislative bodies at the regional and federal levels.
Another important aspect of Putins policy of tighter political and
social integrity concerns the adoption of a party-list proportional voting
system for the elections to the State Duma. The new voting system favors
big parties, the biggest of which is Putins own United Russia. The new
voting arrangement went from 50% single-member districts and 50%
party list to 100% party list. A similar reform was implemented by a 2001
law on the strengthening of the federal multiparty system in the regions.76
The purpose of this legislation was to prevent the formation of regional
party coalitions, which were seen as political vehicles of the regional elites
and, therefore, potential sources of opposition to government policies.
Following the laws enactment, a majority of regional leaders joined the
ranks of United Russia.
Indeed, in the context of the history of Russian constitutional
concepts, the transformation of the concept of the party is the most
significant change of Putins era. To be sure, constitutional regulations
concerning the multiparty system and, in particular, the prohibition on
setting up a one-party system have not as yet been overturned. However,
the status and influence of United Russia in present-day Russiaof which
the overwhelming majority of deputies in the Duma are membersmay
seem to leave open such possibilities for the future.77 It remains to be seen
75

76

RF Constitutional Court, Ruling (postanovleniie), 18 January 1996, No.2-P, In the Matter of


Examining the Constitutionality of a Number of Provisions of the Charter (Basic Law) of
the Altai Krai, Sobranie Zakonodatelstva Rossiiskoi Federatsii (1996) No.4 item 409, available at
<http://www.cikrf.ru/newsite/law/postsud/pesolut5.jsp>.

77

RF Federal Law O politicheskikh partiiakh, No.95-FZ, signed 11 July 2001, Sobranie


Zakonodatelstva Rossiiskoi Federatisii (2001) No.29 item 2950. It has since been amended; available at <http://www.consultant.ru/online/base/?req=doc;base=LAW;n=95050>.

See Vladimir Gelmans remarks about the role of the United Russia at From the Frying Pan
into the Fire? The Dynamics of Post-Soviet Regimes in Comparative Perspective, 50(1) Russian Social Science Review (2009), 4-39, at 30, and his United Russia: Ruling Party or Emperors
New Clothes, Center for Strategic & International studies (CSIS), Ponars Policy Memo No.255,
available at <http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/pm_0255.pdf>.

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how the respective roles of party, state and citizens will evolve in the long
run. So far, there has been no question of returning to a one-party system,
because United Russia has not adopted an active ideological role; rather,
it has been acting as a political organization that guarantees the popularity of the president and, lately, of the prime minister. Nevertheless, there
are fears in some circles that United Russia will be used to strengthen the
power of the central government by bringing its own networks closer to
those of the state.78 So far, the role of United Russia is not so powerful that
it can be compared to that of the CPSU in the late 1980s. Additionally,
the theory of a multiparty system and free elections confer at least the
appearance of representative democracy on Russian politics, an advantage
that the ruling elite does not appear ready to forfeit. All that being said,
the position of the other parties is precarious, and Russia cannot be said
to have a truly functional multiparty system at present.
Concerning the search for an official ideology for the Russian state,
Vladislav Surkov, the Deputy Head of the Presidents Chancellery, intro
duced the term sovereign democracy in February 2006:
In order for Russia to be fully competitive in a globalized world, [it] must have
full state sovereignty, that is full control by the Russian state over [its] borders and
territory as well as over the price of oil and the use of natural resources [] Thus,
sovereignty is the political synonym of competitiveness.79

The concept of sovereignty was introduced in the context of managed


democracy, an ideology that emphasizes national unity, and its purpose
was to lead to a new understanding of the proper relations between the
Russian regions and the central state. In addition, the concept of sover
eign democracy emphasizes a more independent role for Russia in world
affairs.
Managed democracy in practice has meant the implementation of
economic restrictions, the purpose of which has been to improve tax
collection and to punish oligarchs. This disciplinary campaign represents
nothing new in the context of contemporary Russian history: indeed, we
can interpret it as the reintroduction of an old method to implement
rapidly and with maximal symbolic valuethe shift from one administrative era to another. Managed democracys proclaimed goal is to influence,
as widely as possible, the whole of societal reality.
78

79

See Nicklaus Laverty, Limited Choices, Russian Opposition Parties and the 2007 Duma
Elections, 16(4) Demokratizatsiia (2008), 364-381, at 365. See, also, Hans Oversloot and Ruben
Verheul Managing Democracy: Political Parties and the State in Russia, 22(3) Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics (2006), 383-405, at 394.
Cited in Mark A. Smith, Sovereign Democracy: The Ideology of Edinaia Rossiia, Conflict
Studies Research Centre, UK Defence Academy, Russian Series (August 2006) No.6/37, available
at <http://www.da.mod.uk/colleges/csrc/document-listings/russian>.

Future, Past and Present in Russian Constitutional Politics

109

Certain conceptual changes in official rhetoric could be observed


towards the end of Putins second term. The topics of welfare and civil
society gained more space in official texts. The launch of new national
programs on housing, education, healthcare and agriculture, in 2005, constitute the background of the new rhetoric. The head of these programs,
Dmitrii Medvedev, who has now succeeded Putin as President of Russia,
has identified individual citizens as the main targets of investment in
the future by the state. Putin, too, has spoken about poverty, and, in the
latter part of his presidency, the reduction of poverty began to appear in
his program and declarations as one of the priorities of his social policy.
A combination of welfare rhetoric with patriotic tones can clearly be noticed in Putins last speeches as President. In historical comparison, Putin
belongs to the same group of leaders as his predecessors, Khrushchev and
Gorbachev. None of them adopted an entirely new constitution, but they
were leaders who, nonetheless, initiated strong social and political change
in the USSR/Russia. Putins multiple roleshe participated as a candidate
for United Russia in the state election of December 2007, is the chairman
of United Russia and is Russias Prime Ministerstrengthens the already
strong position of United Russia in the political system. If future events
conform to the pattern set during the Soviet era, it can be expected that
United Russia will be used more efficiently to shape the political debate,
because, in Soviet rhetoric, the Party represented the most important
element in legitimizing the central governments attempts to reform both
state and society.
The 1993 Constitution represents the sole, true source of continuity when all the other political structures have been under pressure or
in transition. Thus, the key part of Putins political rhetoric has been to
interpret the Constitution and its basic concepts in ways that have suited
his politics. This phenomenon makes the conceptual examination of its
key concepts and of their evolution over time especially relevant.

10. Concluding Remarks


One of my purposes in writing this article has been to demonstrate the
benefits that stem from the conceptual-historical reading of Russian historical sources. The conceptual approach has not, in any way, been used
to dismiss the value of more normative studies; rather, it is a basis for understanding certain recurring characteristics of Russian political history.
Traditional periodizations emphasize the understanding of politics as a
developmental-historical process, which tends to weaken the interpretive
connection between events and a more contextual map of political actors
and political action. Such interpretive projects illustrate the problems

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inherent in analyses that neglect the concepts and vocabulary that are
created and given context by contemporary political actors.
The shift from Soviet-era to post-Soviet constitutional concepts represents a significant turning point in Russian history. The de-Stalinization
period laid the ground for this process. The development of concepts
that emphasized peoples participation and wider democracy started to
occur in the texts after Stalins era. The period of perestroika was obviously
crucial for the development of the new concepts. Gorbachev and his allies
radically transformed the Soviet vocabulary. Terms such as perestroika,
glasnost and gumanitarnyi sotsializm reformed the Soviet constitutional
concepts in a revolutionary manner, and the outcome of this process was
the 1993 Constitution; it represented the first time in Russian history that
a constitution was based on the ideas of western liberal democracy. Putins
administration returned to the concepts of restricted unity after the short
freedom interlude of the 1990s, introducing concepts such as sovereign
democracy and managed democracy, which, however, have lately started
to be supplanted by the rhetoric of welfare and civil society.

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