5 December — the USSR adopted its second Constitution, which went down in history as the “Stalin Constitution”.
The history of the Constitution in Russia before its official adoption as the state’s fundamental law in 1918 also has certain roots. It is enough to recall the draft projects of a Code under Catherine II, and the constitutional projects of M.M. Speransky under Alexander I. A Constitution as a key programmatic document also existed for one of the ideologues of the Decembrists, N.M. Muravyov. In Russia, the path toward adopting a Constitution that limited monarchical power ran through a series of state transformations and reforms. A major step along this path was the liberal reforms of Alexander II. Next came the state transformations at the beginning of the 20th century, whose emergence was aided by the revolutionary situation in the country. One of the most important such events in the early 20th century was the Manifesto of 17 October 1905 “On the Improvement of the State Order,” signed by Nicholas II. The revolutionary events of 1917, which first put an end to the monarchy and then to liberalism in Russia, and the Bolshevik Party’s rise to power, marked the beginning not only of the Civil War but also of the formation of a new state. The whole world knows it as the USSR. It was the Bolsheviks who, for the first time in Russian history, used the term “Constitution” to designate the country’s basic law. On 10 July 1918 they adopted the first Constitution in Russian history.
At that time the state was called the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). Hence the name of the document—the Constitution of the RSFSR. Granting civil liberties to the working class and the peasantry, it deprived of freedoms all persons who had unearned income or who used hired labor. In effect, the state’s basic law закрепляла the dictatorship of the proletariat, which gave the Bolsheviks free rein in the class struggle.
The new state—the USSR—formed on 30 December 1922, made it necessary to create a new fundamental document: the Constitution of the USSR, which came into being on 31 January 1924; and the regulation of inter-republic relations within the USSR gave rise to a new Constitution of the RSFSR, since the RSFSR had now become one of the union republics. The Constitution of the RSFSR, as one of the republics of the newly formed state, was adopted a year later, in 1925. From this point on, when speaking about the history of the Constitution in Russia, one can speak of the paired adoption of Constitutions (of the USSR and of the RSFSR), which served as the prehistory of adopting the basic law of the Russian Federation. Twice more in the history of the USSR the basic law changed. The first time was during the period when the state and party were led by J.V. Stalin, and the second time by L.I. Brezhnev. In both cases, the Constitution of the USSR was adopted first, and then that of the RSFSR. The last Constitution of the USSR was adopted on 7 October 1977. The Stalin Constitution, adopted on 5 December 1936, consisted of thirteen chapters. As in the 1924 Constitution of the USSR, it stated that the existence of the state was the заслуга of the working class and the result of the achievements of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The document pointed to the dominance of state property and also recognized the existence of cooperative-collective-farm property.
This did not mean, however, that the state denied the existence of private property. The existence of small private farming in the countryside and artisanal activity was permitted, but without the use of hired labor. Citizens’ right to personal property, as well as its inheritance, was protected by the state.
Unlike the previous basic law, rights and freedoms now became equal for all citizens of the country, regardless of belonging to one social class or another, and also regardless of which rights and freedoms were in question. Compared with the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918 and the Constitution of the USSR of 1924, the new basic law was a major step forward.