— Why was the Constitution of the USSR adopted in January 1924? How difficult was the work on the content of the basic law of the Soviet Union and its approval?
— This story is a whole detective story. Now for some reason everyone forgets about this, but initially it was formally put into effect on July 6, 1923, at the Second Session of the Central Executive Committee of the first convocation. But the decision indicated that the final approval should be postponed to the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR. Thus, on January 31, 1924, the Constitution was not just approved, but finally approved.
The Constitution was not discussed for very long. In December 1922, at the plenum of the RCP (b), it was decided to prepare a Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. On December 29, representatives of the republics agreed on the text, and on December 30, 1922, at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, representatives of the RSFSR, the Ukrainian and Byelorussian SSR, as well as the Transcaucasian Federation signed the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR and the Union Treaty. And in this resolution, the last paragraph instructed the Central Executive Committee of the USSR to prepare the final text of the declaration for the Second Congress of Soviets. Please note: no word yet on the Constitution. Even when talk about the Constitution began, it was initially understood as the Union Treaty. In February 1923, the plenum of the RCP (b) decided to create a commission to prepare the Constitution. It was confirmed by the XII Congress of the RCP(b). But the commission, as you can see, did not work for long, since on July 6 the Constitution was already adopted.
When I noticed such a short period of time for the adoption of the Constitution, I became curious why there was such a rush. I turned to the documents and found out that there was strong opposition to the adoption of the Constitution - in particular, from Christian Rakovsky, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine. He believed that there was no need to prepare a separate Constitution; the Union Treaty, which can be called the Constitution, was sufficient. And the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR was international in nature. Let's even take the name itself, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was neutral—without reference to geographic location or national identity. A kind of association was created, more like a confederation. Each republic was assigned the right of free exit. It was said that the new state would serve as a bulwark against world capitalism, and would be a step towards uniting the working people of all countries - into the world Socialist Soviet Republic. That is, the USSR was created not as a state of Russians and other peoples living on its territory, but as a prototype of this very world republic.
The agreement of December 30, 1922 did not actually create a state, but only the legal basis for its formation. The Constitution included the Treaty and the Declaration. But if we look closely, we will see that the Treaties of 1922 and 1924 are different. In the first case, the wording is used that the republics are concluding an agreement on unification, and in the second - that they are uniting.
— Today they often say that the first Soviet Constitution contained provisions that became a time bomb for Soviet statehood. Is it so?
— If we talk about the right of the republics to secede from the USSR, then, it seems to me, it was recorded forcibly. All this generally looked quite strange. Initially, the Soviet Union was a rather loose association, and it was not entirely clear whether it was a federation or a confederation. From a legal point of view, it is a confederation. But since the core of this unification was the Communist Party, organized on the principle of democratic centralism, it united the republics into a state that sometimes even acted as a unitary one. This was especially felt during the war. And it is no coincidence that when the Communist Party was removed from the political system, the state collapsed and it is impossible to restore it. The state was built quite complicated. In fact, it was a “party state.” The party was part of it, and a cementing part.
We still haven’t fully comprehended what collapsed in 1991. And, in my opinion, the state created in the 1930s collapsed, not in the early 1920s. In 1936, the Constitution was adopted, creating a new system of government bodies. The state became a federation based on the law. Interestingly, this Constitution had many opponents, including even those around Joseph Stalin. The Constitution of 1924 became a kind of banner for the Bolshevik revolutionaries - opponents of Stalin, who, after all, was one of the soil Bolsheviks who were not oriented towards the world revolution. The Pochvenniks were forced to verbally support slogans about world revolution, but in practice they were focused on creating a state for their own people.
Leaflet of French communists with the text of the Constitution of the USSR
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© M. Filimonov
— Why did they decide to change the first constitution of the USSR in 1936?
— Between the constitutions of 1924 and 1936 there is a huge difference in the social basis. The Constitution of 1924 is the Constitution of the proletarian dictatorship, oriented towards world revolution. This is noticeable, in particular, during the formation of the Soviets. For example, from urban settlements one deputy is elected per 25 thousand voters, and from rural areas - per 125 thousand. But according to the 1936 Constitution, elections were already held on the basis of universal, equal direct suffrage. Moreover, it was Stalin who insisted on this. The Constitution of 1936 was no longer based on class, but on the people. And this did not happen by chance. By this time it had already become clear that an attack by Western European states on the USSR was almost inevitable. Stalin understood that no one would defend the ideas of world revolution. It was necessary to prepare the people to defend their homeland. The Constitution of 1936 actually returned to the people the Motherland, which the Constitution of 1924 had taken from them in the name of the adventurist plan of world revolution.
The state in the full sense of the word, designed to save us from Western attack, was created in the 1930s. And so it collapsed in 1991. This happened largely due to the degeneration of the ruling layer.
If we look carefully at the Constitution of 1924, we will notice a very interesting feature - it does not contain the rights and freedoms of a citizen. These issues were regulated by the Constitutions of the republics. It turns out that the Constitution of 1924 was inferior, being only a superstructure over the republican ones. But the Constitution of 1936 already contains a complete list of rights. She was already real.
It seems to me that Stalin did not like the Constitution of 1924 precisely because, due to its orientation towards world revolution, it was not capable of becoming a legal basis for the formation of a truly strong state. Therefore she was doomed.
— There is an opinion that the peculiarities of the distribution of powers between the union center and the republics contributed to the collapse of the state. Is this really so and does the 1924 Constitution have anything to do with this process?
“It seems to me that it is impossible to say that these “mines” are connected specifically with the Constitution of 1924. She acted for a relatively short time. As for the distribution of powers, the central bodies had functions that contributed to the formation of a unified statehood: maintaining international relations, maintaining the inviolability of external borders, the right to take external loans, strategic planning of economic activities, and leadership of the common Armed Forces. There was a common financial system, budget, and union citizenship. In general, the central government had a set of powers characteristic of federations.
As for the right of republics to secede from the Union, it must be borne in mind that it was not provided for by the Constitution. That is, it was proclaimed, but no one seriously considered it.
— Is it possible to say that the Constitution of 1924 was more progressive than the constitutions of other states that were in force at the same time?
— To begin with, it was not fully the Constitution. It was an ideological document that oriented the country towards participation in the world revolution. As mentioned above, it did not contain many provisions characteristic of other constitutions. Therefore, comparing it with other constitutions and assessing its progressiveness is problematic. But, in fact, it no longer corresponded to the spirit of the times. By the time it was adopted, revolutions outside the USSR had already failed. The world revolution has lost its real prospects, turning into a slogan. It was necessary to think about creating our own powerful state, ultimately formed by the Constitution of 1936. Stalin worked on it with literally several of his comrades and personally wrote a lot of it himself. The Bolshevik revolutionaries liked the Constitution of 1924 more, since the slogan of world revolution could justify any arbitrariness.
Reproduction of a poster published for Constitution Day by the Izogiz publishing house. Author - artist Yu. A. Ganf
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— To what extent did the Constitution of 1924 correspond to the real tasks of the country’s development?
— In my opinion, the Constitution of 1924 did not correspond to the real tasks in the field of development of the country. It was an obstacle to the creation of a strong state. It was possible to strengthen the state only by abandoning the dictatorship of the proletariat and making it popular among the whole people.
The restrictions on the sovereignty of the republics, according to the Constitution, were minimal. This is explained by the conditions in which it was developed. In the republics, the intense political struggle was just ending. Against this background, Ukraine and Transcaucasia advocated for greater independence. Only, if Ukraine was so independent, I don’t understand why it had to transfer historically Russian lands... In general, many republics wanted to use the common resources of the Union without giving anything in return.
I think the “mines” that we recalled were laid elsewhere - in the actual transformation of the Russian people into a donor people. Almost all union republics, with the exception of the RSFSR, were subsidized. The country's development took place in the context of the withdrawal of resources from the Russian people, and any attempts to raise this issue were harshly suppressed. The standard of living in the historical Russian regions was significantly lower than in other union republics. I've seen this personally and seen the tax numbers. It was simply a robbery of the RSFSR. Perhaps this was a legacy of Lenin’s policy of fighting the “great power.” I think this was one of the main reasons for the collapse of the Union. You cannot build a state on the robbery of one people. The system began to fail. General problems were shifted to the ruling layer, which then also wanted an easy life. So he destroyed the state with gusto, passion and absolutely consciously.