The Constitutional Democrats enthusiastically welcomed the February 1917 revolution and helped establish the first Provisional Government, in which they held five portfolios; party membership burgeoned. Their newfound popularity quickly waned, however, due to their continued support for the unpopular war and related insistence on postponing social reforms. Determined opponents of the Bolsheviks, the liberal Cadets were the first party outlawed by the new Soviet government, in December 1917, despite their having won only 2 million of the 41.6 million votes cast in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Much of the party leadership joined the anti-Bolshevik movement; after the Red victory in the Civil War, many Cadets emigrated to Europe, where they reconstituted the party organizations and debated how to end Bolshevik rule in Russia. The Constitutional Democratic Party split into two separate organizations over this issue in Paris in July 1921; it formally ceased to exist in 1924. See also: CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY; DUMA; MILYUKOV, PAVEL NIKOLAYEVICH; PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
MELISSA K. STOCKDALE
Adopted on July 10, 1918, amid violent civil war, the Soviet Constitution of 1918, the first charter of the new Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic (RSFSR), was described by Vladimir Lenin as a “revolutionary” document. It was, he said, unlike any constitution drafted by a nation-state. Nor was it derived, he noted, from any traditional Russian or Western juristic principles.
Unlike the three Soviet constitutions to follow (in 1924, 1936, and 1977), the 1918 constitution included the candid statement that absolute power resides in the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” as embodied in the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and as specifically derived from the concept of socialist dictatorship developed in Karl Marx’s major work, The Critique of the Gotha Program. The proletarian dictatorship is described in Soviet ideology as “power not limited by any laws.” Although the constitution was proclaimed the “fundamental law of the Soviet State,” the constitution was by no means seen as the only source of legal norms. The CPSU(b) Program and the decrees and orders of the Party Central Committee likewise were fully normative. So were decrees issued by the Council of People’s Commissars.
Soviet constitutions thus reflected the fact that the Soviet state, the “superstructure” erected upon the economic “base,” was the political expression of exclusive, one-party rule by the CPSU(b). Subsequent constitutions omitted specific reference to this dictatorship. Instead, they acknowledged, as did explicitly the last constitution of 1977, that the Communist Party was the “leading core” of all political and social organizations.
CONSTITUTION OF 1936
Other parts of the 1918 charter differed radically from previous or later constitutions of other states throughout the world. For instance, the 1918 constitution laid out the fundamental ideological goals of the Communist Party. One such goal was the building of a socialist society. Another was the promotion of world revolution. This wording was imitated in the charters of Soviet republics annexed into the union, which was officially proclaimed as the USSR in 1924.
The national legislative body established under the constitution was known as the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, described as the “supreme organ of power,” despite the fact that most key legislation originated in the CPSU(b) bills presented to the congress were almost always passed and enacted unanimously. Moreover, the constitutionally empowered Central Executive Committee, that is, the perpetually meeting executive organ of the congress, was empowered, through its Presidium, to issue major decrees during the long interims between annual (later, less frequent) sessions of the more than two thousand-member plenary congress. Another governing body, the Council of People’s Commissars, whose chairman was head of the government, or premier, likewise had the constitutional power to issue decrees.
In the congress served deputies of workers, peasants, and soldiers chosen and elected on single-list, nonsecret ballots from the provinces and other, smaller political-administrative areas of the RSFSR. In practice, the Congress of Soviets, like the USSR Supreme Soviet to follow as established in subsequent constitutions, became a “rubber-stamp,” or pseudo-parliament whose powers were purely formal.
The first Soviet constitution of 1918 contained no formal listing of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Yet when the rights were eventually itemized in the 1936 constitution, the condition was inserted that the expression of all such rights by the populace must be “in accordance with” the principles laid down by the Communist Party. Constitutions in all sixteen (later fifteen) republics contained this provision, which, in effect, narrowed the expression of traditional civil rights. See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harper, Samuel N. (1949). The Government of the Soviet Union. New York: Van Nostrand. Reshetar, John S., Jr. (1989). The Soviet Polity Government and Politics in the USSR, 3rd ed. New York: Harper and Row. Towster, Julian. (1948). Political Power in the USSR 1917-1947. New York: Oxford University Press.
The Soviet Constitution of 1936, also known as the “Stalin Constitution,” was approved by the Eighth Congress of Soviets and became law on December 5, 1936. This Constitution remained in force until 1977 when Leonid Brezhnev based his new “Brezhnev Constitution” on the 1936 document. At Josef Stalin’s urging, the Central Committee of the Communist Party had proposed to the Seventh Congress of Soviets in February 1935 that the 1924 Constitution be changed to reflect the profound transformations in Soviet society wrought by the First Five Year Plan (1928-1932). According to the Soviet government, the main goals of the new constitution were to reflect the successful attainment of socialism in the USSR, to institute universal suffrage, and to grant basic civil rights to the entire Soviet population. Former class enemies such as the nobility, the bourgeoisie, priests, and so-called rich peasants or “kulaks” would now be incorporated into Soviet life as equal citizens with full civil rights. The constitution affirmed that “socialist ownership of the instruments and means of production . . . shall constitute the economic foundation of the USSR,” though it did allow “the small-scale private economy of individual peasants and artisans based on their personal labor”; private ownership of small plots of land, houses, and domestic property; and inheritance of private property. The document expanded the state’s role in providing social welfare by guaranteeing the right to work, free secondary education, and medical aid for all toilers and by furnishing social insurance and paid vacations for industrial and white-collar workers. The constitution also reorganized the Soviet government based on direct elections and reshaped the federal structure of the Soviet Union.
In a marked departure from previous Soviet political practice, a draft constitution was circulated beginning in June 1936, and the population was invited to take part in a “nationwide” discussion to propose changes. Throughout the summer and fall of 1936, the Soviet government put
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extensive pressure on local officials to organize collective discussions of the draft. Soviet figures claim that as many as seventy-five million people, or 80 percent of the adult population, took part in these discussions. In spite of the dangers of speaking out, the population actively criticized certain aspects of the draft constitution, such as the privileged status of workers in comparison to peasants. Many also protested the granting of equal rights to former class enemies. After polling citizens on their views, the government largely ignored the opinions gathered. Few of the changes proposed by the Soviet population made it into the final version of the constitution.
Given the repressive political climate throughout the 1930s, one of the most striking aspects of the Stalin Constitution is the explicit enumeration of the civil rights of the individual. The constitution guaranteed “universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot” and created new legislative bodies at the all-union, republican, and local levels. The new Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the supreme soviets of the union republics, and various local soviets were all to be directly elected. Paradoxically, the government let loose a barrage of publicity informing citizens about the candidates for the Supreme Soviet elections in December 1937, despite the fact that each district ballot had only one candidate, who had been chosen in advance by Party and government officials. The constitution also guaranteed Soviet citizens equal rights irrespective of gender, nationality, or race; freedom of religious worship (but not religious propaganda); freedom of assembly; freedom of association; freedom of the press; and inviolability of person and of the home (Articles 122-128, 134). These extensive guarantees remained only on paper, however, as the Soviet government trampled on the civil rights of its citizens through censorship, persecution because of religion
