Encyclopedia of Russian History
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See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL
SERGEYEVICH; KAMENEV, LEV BORISOVICH; LEFT OP-
POSITION; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; MARXISM; MOLO-
TOV, VYACHESLAV MIKHAILOVICH; NOMENKLATURA;
OCTOBER REVOLUTION; POLITBURO; RIGHT OPPOSI-
TION; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; STATE DEFENSE
COMMITTEE; TROTSKY, LEON DAVIDOVICH; UNITED
OPPOSITION; WAR COMMUNISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gill, Graeme. (1988). The Rules of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
Gill, Graeme. (1994). The Collapse of a Single-Party System.
The Disintegration of the Communist Party of the So-
viet Union. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Millar, James R., ed. (1992). Cracks in the Monolith: Party
Power in the Brezhnev Era. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Schapiro, Leonard. (1970). The Communist Party of the So-
viet Union. London, Methuen.
Wesson, Robert G. (1978). Lenin’s Legacy. The Story of the
CPSU. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
White, Stephen. (1989). Soviet Communism. Programme
and Rules. London: Routledge.
G
RAEME
G
ILL
COMMUNIST YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS
The Communist Youth Organization (Komsomol)
was the major vehicle of political education and
mobilization for Soviet youth. Founded in Novem-
ber 1918, and disbanded in 1991, the All-Union
Leninist Communist League of Youth was one of a
series of Soviet institutions dedicated to educating
and regulating Soviet citizens at every life stage—
the Little Octobrists, the Young Pioneers (ten to
fourteen), the Komsomol (fourteen to mid-twen-
ties), and the Communist Party.
The Komsomol was founded as an elite and
“self-standing” organization of communist youth.
Over the course of the 1920s and 1930s the Kom-
somol was gradually transformed from a select or-
ganization of activist proletarian youth into a mass
organization subservient to Party policy. By March
1926, there were approximately 1.75 million
young people in the Komsomol; more than half of
the working-class youth in Leningrad and Moscow
were members. A few years later, the Komsomol
was almost twice the size of the Party. Nonethe-
less, as of 1936, still only about 10 percent of eli-
gible youth belonged to the Communist Youth
League. In response, and at Josef Stalin’s direction,
the Komsomol was formally relegated this same
year to the role of a propaganda and education or-
ganization open to almost all youth regardless of
class background. By 1985, the year Mikhail Gor-
bachev acceded to general secretary, the Komsomol
reported that it had 42 million members between
the ages of fourteen and twenty-seven.
Young people joined the Komsomol for many
different reasons. In the first decades of Soviet
power, the Komsomol provided a community of
peers for urban youth, especially as all other youth
groups—the Boy Scouts, religious youth organiza-
tions—were suppressed. Komsomol clubs in facto-
ries, schools, and institutes of higher education
organized sports activities, drama groups, and con-
certs, as well as literacy and antidrinking cam-
paigns. The Komsomol offered a new identity as
well as new opportunities; some young people ex-
perienced the exhilaration of the Revolution, the
struggle of Civil War, and the rapid industrializa-
tion of the Stalin era, with a sense of great personal
involvement. Like joining the Party, becoming a
member of the Komsomol could also confer eco-
nomic and political benefits. It helped pave the way
to eventual Party membership, and Komsomol
members were often awarded important political
and agitational positions. The Komsomol was not
equally relevant or available to everybody, how-
ever. Proletariat males were at the top of the lad-
der of Bolshevik virtue, while peasants, students,
and women of all classes were on lower rungs.
Women of all classes made up just 20 percent of
the Komsomol in 1926. Although their numbers
increased throughout the Soviet period, they re-
mained underrepresented in leadership positions.
The energetic participation of some Komsomol
members in the dramatic industrialization and col-
lectivization campaigns of the early 1930s did not
protect either the rank-and-file or the Komsomol
elite from the purges. In 1937 and 1938, the entire
Komsomol bureau was purged and the first secre-
tary, Alexander Kosarev, was executed along with
several others. During World War II, the Komso-
mol was deeply involved in patriotic campaigns and
was effective in this period of national defense at
attracting members and encouraging enthusiastic
response to patriotic propaganda. The war was the
final high point of the Komsomol, however. After
the war, the Komsomol was increasingly trapped
between the Party’s demands for political con-
formism and young people’s increasingly diverse
COMMUNIST YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
and internationally informed desires for relevance
and for entertainment. The conservatism of the
Komsomol was reflected in the aging of its leader-
ship. In 1920, the median age of a delegate to a
Komsomol Congress was twenty. In 1954, it was
twenty-seven. By the years of stagnation (the pe-
riod of Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership) the Commu-
nist Youth League was mired in bureaucracy and
corruption, and unable to remake itself; it had be-
come a mass membership organization to which
few truly wanted to belong, but many felt they
needed to join in order to advance professionally
and politically. The Komsomol’s irrelevance to a
changing Soviet Union was even more evident dur-
ing the transition to Mikhail Gorbachev’s presi-
dency. The Communist Youth League lost millions
of members per year (1.5 million in 1986, 2.5 mil-
lion in 1987) and disbanded itself at a final Kom-
somol Congress in September 1991.
See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; ED-
UCATION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fisher, Ralph. (1959). Pattern for Soviet Youth: A Study of
the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918–1954. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Gorsuch, Anne E. (2000). Youth in Revolutionary Russia:
Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Pilkington, Hilary. (1994). Russia’s Youth and Its Culture:
A Nation’s Constructors and Constructed. New York
and London: Routledge.
Tirado, Isabel. (1988). Young Guard! The Communist Youth
League, Petrograd, 1917–1920. New York: Green-
wood.
A
NNE
E. G
ORSUCH
CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES
The Congress of People’s Deputies was a legislative
structure introduced in the Soviet Union by CPSU
CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES
314
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Young Pioneers march on Red Square. © AFP/CORBIS
(Communist Party of the Soviet Union) general sec-
retary Mikhail Gorbachev. Its purpose was to ex-
pand elective representation in policy debate and
decision making, while leaving final power at the
disposal of the top party leadership. The USSR Con-
gress of People’s Deputies lasted only from 1989
until 1991. It nevertheless marked an important
step in the opening of the Soviet system to com-
petitive electoral politics. A Congress of People’s
Deputies for the Russian Republic (RSFSR) was also
established, but it lasted only from 1990 to 1993.
Under Gorbachev’s model, the new USSR Con-
gress of People’s Deputies replaced the USSR
Supreme Soviet. The old Supreme Soviet had 1,500
deputies, 750 elected in ordinary territorial districts
based on equal population, and 750 elected in “na-
tional-territorial” districts representing the ethnic
territorial subdivisions of the country. To these the
new congress added another 750 deputies elected
directly from existing recognized “public organiza-
tions” such as the CPSU, the trade unions, and the
Academy of Sciences, with quotas set for each or-
ganization.
The congress elected a smaller full-time Supreme
Soviet from among its 2,250 members. This inner
parliament had 542 members divided into two
chambers of equal size and functioned like a de-
mocratic parliament, debating and voting on laws.
Most of its organizational and agenda decisions
were made, however, by its Presidium. The Presid-
ium structure was a carryover from the old regime,
where it had effectively controlled the Supreme So-
viet through its large full-time staff. The Presidium
and its chair continued to direct the congress and
Supreme Soviet into the Gorbachev period as well.
The March 1989 elections to the USSR Con-
gress of People’s Deputies proved to be a turning
point in the Gorbachev era. The elections stimu-
lated a surge of popular participation in politics,
often directed against the Soviet regime itself. Many
senior Communist Party officials who ran for elec-
tion as deputies were defeated. The elections
brought a new wave of democratic and nationalist
political leaders into politics. Boris Yeltsin, for ex-
ample, won a landslide victory from an at-large
seat in Moscow. When the First Congress convened
in May 1989, the televised proceedings, featuring
stirring speeches by famous personalities such as
Andrei Sakharov, riveted the public. Soon it became
clear that the congress was too large and unstruc-
tured to be an effective forum for decision making,
but it did give a platform to many politicians and
ideas. Moreover, the Supreme Soviet that it elected
enacted some significant legislation on such topics
as freedom of religion and the press, judicial re-
form, and local government. A system of compet-
itive political caucuses emerged.
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Repub-
lic (RSFSR) Congress of People’s Deputies formed in
1990. Like the USSR congress, the RSFSR congress
elected a Supreme Soviet to serve as a full-time par-
liament. Yeltsin was initially elected as chair, but
left parliament when he was elected president of
RSFSR a year later. An intense power struggle be-
tween president and parliament followed. Ulti-
mately, in September and October 1993, Yeltsin
forcibly dissolved the congress and Supreme Soviet.
The new constitution approved by national refer-
endum in December 1993 replaced the congress and
Supreme Soviet with a bicameral Federal Assembly.
See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; GOR-
BACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PRESIDIUM OF SU-
PREME SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Remington, Thomas F. (1991). “Parliamentary Govern-
ment in the USSR.” In Perestroika-Era Politics: The
New Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev’s Political Re-
forms, ed. Robert T. Huber and Donald R. Kelley. Ar-
monk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Remington, Thomas F. (1996). “Ménage a Trois: The End
of Soviet Parliamentarism.” In Democratization in
Russia: The Development of Legislative Institutions, ed.
Jeffrey W. Hahn. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Remington, Thomas F. (2001). The Russian Parliament:
The Evolution of Institutions in a Transitional Regime,
1989-1999. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
T
HOMAS
F. R
EMINGTON
CONGRESS OF RUSSIAN COMMUNITIES
The Congress of Russian Communities (Kongress
Russkikh Obshchin, or KRO), an offshoot of the
Union for the Rebirth of Russia, was founded in
1993 by Dmitry Rogozin as the International Con-
gress of Russian Communities for the representa-
tion of Russian and Russian-speaking residents of
the “nearby foreign lands.” It brought together
Russian communities and sociopolitical organiza-
tions in the national republics of the Russian Fed-
eration and in the former republics of the USSR. In
the fall of 1994 the Russian KRO was founded for
participation in state Duma elections. Later, in
January 1995, the electoral bloc of the KRO was
CONGRESS OF RUSSIAN COMMUNITIES
315
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
renamed the sociopolitical movement Congress of
Russian Communities. Yuri Skokov was elected
chair of the National Council. A former secretary
of the Security Council (1992–1993), he had once
been close to Yeltsin, but fell out with him later.
Dmitry Rogozin was elected chair of the Executive
Committee. KRO leaders included such famous fig-
ures as Stanislav Govorukhin, Yegor Stroyev,
Nikita Moiseyev, Viktor Ilyukhin, Sergei Glaziev,
and Konstantin Zatulin.
In the 1995 Duma elections, the KRO, enticing
the disgraced and highly popular general Alexan-
der Lebed into the second place on its list of candi-
dates (Skokov was first, and Glaziev third), won 3
million votes and almost reached the required
threshold to gain a seat (4.3 percent). The KRO pro-
gram, a mix of statism and patriotic values, im-
pressed many, but its figurehead was not a brave
general, rather an unknown apparatchik. Of the
ninety candidates proposed by the KRO in single-
mandate districts, only five were elected into the
Duma, including Lebed and three candidates of
Chelyabinsk Oblast, where the KRO collaborated
with the Movement for the Rebirth of the Urals and
the former governor Petr Sumin. Later, in 1997,
Rogozin, now the sole head of the KRO, entered the
Duma by-elections with the slogan “We are Rus-
sians! God is with us!” His platform included “the
fusion of immemorial Russian values with the
attainment of advanced technology”; “a federal,
lawful, democratic government”; and a “highly ef-
fective and socially oriented market economy.” At
the beginning of the 1999 Duma electoral cam-
paigns, along with a few little-known political
movements, the KRO constituted the organizational
basis for Yuri Luzhkov’s Fatherland movement. As
the latter gained influence, the KRO and its leader
were edged out of key positions, and they left Fa-
therland in the summer of 1999. As a result, the
KRO entered the elections along with the movement
of Yuri Boldyrev and suffered a fiasco, winning
only 400,000 votes (0.6 percent). Rogozin was re-
elected by his majority district, entered the pro-
government People’s Deputy group, and headed the
Duma committee on international affairs.
An extraordinary session of the KRO elected
Glaziev chair; he was at the time cochair of the Na-
tional Patriotic Front of Russia (NPSR). It was an-
nounced that the KRO would not participate in
upcoming Duma elections, so as not to promote
the “further division” of patriotic forces, but was
willing to “act as an organizer of a patriotic coali-
tion.”
See also: LEBED, ALEXANDER IVANOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution:
Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University.
McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Trou-
bled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities,
and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution
Press.
Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy
of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democ-
racy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.
N
IKOLAI
P
ETROV
CONSISTORY
The consistory was main diocesan administrative
and judicial organ in the Russian Orthodox Church
from the eighteenth century to the early twenti-
eth. The 1721 Spiritual Regulation of Peter I marked
a new period in the history of the administrative
life of the Orthodox Church. Although the Regula-
tion did not refer specifically to a consistory, nine-
teenth-century Russian church historians cited
Clause 5 in the section pertaining to bishops as
pointing to the eventual consistory. Diocesan ad-
ministration changed only gradually in the eight-
eenth century. In many ways it came to mirror the
provincial government administration, as well as
the collegial organization of the church’s higher ad-
ministrative body, the Holy Synod. Although the
consistory can be seen as part of the modern insti-
tutional church, nineteenth-century churchmen
often associated it with an ancient form of church
government (a council of presbyters) described in
the writings of such early Christians as Ignatius of
Antioch, Cyprian of Carthage and Ambrose of Mi-
lan.
During the early decades of the eighteenth cen-
tury, diocesan boards were referred to by various
names. A 1744 directive called for a uniform
name—“consistory”—for all such diocesan boards.
An 1832 directive reiterated this directive for the
Kiev, Chernigov, and Kishinev dioceses. The re-
sponsibilities and rules governing the consistory
were finally standardized in 1841. This statute was
revised in 1883 and remained in effect until 1918.
Consistories were organized into two parts: a
collegial board (usually three to five members;
CONSISTORY
316
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
more if local circumstances demanded) and a
chancery office. The management of the consis-
tory’s day-to-day business fell to a chancery office
staffed by lay clerks and overseen by a secretary.
At first, members of the consistory’s board were
drawn mostly from the monastic clergy. By 1768,
that trend was reversed, and a 1797 directive in-
structed that at least half of the consistory’s mem-
bers be chosen from among married parish priests.
Deacons were not eligible to serve on consistory
boards. In theory, the bishop presided over the con-
sistory, and no decision could be put forward with-
out his ratification. In practice, however, the issue
of authority was not always so clear. For instance,
the diocesan bishop nominated members for the
board, but the Holy Synod confirmed them. Simi-
larly, while responsible to the bishop, the secretary
was nominated by the ober-procurator and con-
firmed by members of the Holy Synod.
The consistory oversaw a wide range of affairs.
These included the growth and preservation of the
Orthodox faith (and the teaching and preaching
that helped to achieve these ends); liturgical sched-
ules; the maintenance and decoration of churches;
the recommendation of candidates for clerical po-
sitions; the dissemination of episcopal and synodal
directives; and the collection of records from
parishes. As an ecclesiastical court, the consistory
was concerned with certain issues relating to mar-
riage and divorce; birth, baptismal and death records;
crimes and misdemeanors involving clergy; com-
plaints against clergy for negligence in their litur-
gical or pastoral responsibilities; and disputes among
clergy over the use of church property. Although
the consistory’s judicial concerns lay primarily
with clergy, laity became involved when the issue
of penance (epitemiya) arose.
The chancery processed numerous requests, pe-
titions, and reports by dividing them among vari-
ous “tables.” Members of the consistory’s board
were assigned to oversee these tables but, in prac-
tice, preparing a case for presentation and resolu-
tion depended largely on lay clerks. Once cases were
ready for review, members of the board, at least in
theory, were supposed to review and decide on
them collectively. The secretary oversaw the deci-
sion-making process and helped to resolve cases
that members could not decide unanimously. The
diocesan bishop was to review and ratify all deci-
sions.
The consistory became a subject of debate in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Churchmen often complained that the consistory’s
formalism and lack of efficiency caused ill relations
between parish clergy and laity on the one hand
and the diocesan administration on the other.
Churchmen were also concerned about the bu-
reaucratic quality with which serious issues of
Christian life were often decided, with seemingly
no attention to scripture or canon law. Low pay
for consistory employees did not help matters, and
complaints of bribes were not uncommon. Evalu-
ations of the consistory were determined in large
part by the evaluator’s perspective and under-
standing of episcopal authority, the relationship be-
tween the central, diocesan, and even more regional
church administrations, and the involvement of
laity in the management of diocesan affairs. Most
churchmen maintained that the consistory’s judi-
cial and administrative functions should be sepa-
rated and independently overseen, as they had been
in the civil sphere since 1864. In 1918, the All-
Russian Church Council carried out sweeping
church administrative reforms, and the consistory
ceased to exist. In its place, the Council established
a separate local diocesan court, a diocesan council
and a diocesan assembly.
See also: RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cunningham, James W. (1981). A Vanquished Hope: The
Movement for Church Renewal in Russia, 1905–1906.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Freeze, Gregory L. (1977). The Russian Levites: Parish
Clergy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Freeze, Gregory L. (1983). The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth-
Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter-Reform. Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Muller, Alexander V., ed. and tr. (1972). The Spiritual
Regulation of Peter the Great. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
V
ERA
S
HEVZOV
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
The All-Russian Constituent Assembly, which
opened and closed on January 5, 1918, was elected
to draft a constitution for the new Russian state.
Prior to 1917, most oppositionist parties agreed
that a democratically elected assembly should de-
termine Russia’s political future. Just after the Feb-
ruary Revolution, State Duma and Petrograd Soviet
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY
317
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
leaders who created the Provisional Government
specifically tasked it with prompt elections to the
Constituent Assembly. During 1917, virtually all
political parties indicated their intention to partic-
ipate in them and to abide by the results. Still, mod-
erate Provisional Government ministers, fearing the
results of democratic elections and preoccupied
with the war, postponed the elections, undercut-
ting the government’s legitimacy and precipitating
a shift of support to radicals. By the early fall of
1917, Bolshevik, Left Socialist Revolutionary (Left
SR), and other supporters of “soviet power” and an
“all-socialist government” proclaimed that only the
Provisional Government’s overthrow would bring
about the Constituent Assembly, still viewed as fi-
nal arbiter of Russia’s fate.
The elections, with over 60 percent voter par-
ticipation, occurred on November 12, 1917, after
the overthrow of the Provisional Government,
seemingly fulfilling the radicals’ predictions. The
elections awarded the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs)
a huge vote from the empire’s peasants. The Bol-
sheviks did well among urban laboring populations
and soldiers at the fronts, whereas the liberal Con-
stitutional Democrats received support from edu-
cated and prosperous middle classes. Far rightist
parties did poorly, as did the formerly popular
Mensheviks. Overall, the SRs and their Ukrainian,
Armenian, and other ethnic allies received more
than 50 percent of the votes cast, as opposed to the
Bolsheviks’ 25 percent. In response, the Bolsheviks
and Left SRs alleged that the SR Central Commit-
tee had undercut Left SR representation by placing
moderate SRs on party candidate lists.
The Constituent Assembly, with its effective
SR majority, met on January 5 in Petrograd and
elected the SR leader Victor Chernov as chair. Af-
ter lengthy deliberations and the withdrawal of the
Bolshevik and Left SR factions, the Leninist gov-
ernment declared the session closed and placed
guards around the locked building. Thus inglori-
ously ended Russia’s most democratic electoral
experiment until the 1990s. Presumably, the as-
sembly would have written a constitution in a so-
cialist and democratic spirit. Although some
Petrograd workers demonstrated in support of the
Constitutional Assembly (and were dispersed by
deadly fire), the nation’s population responded
weakly. This passive reaction reflected in part a
common misunderstanding of the assembly as a
government in competition with the still popular
Soviet government. Many SR delegates withdrew
to the Volga region, where, by the late summer of
1918, they formed a government in Samara, which
they hoped would be based upon a quorum of Con-
stituent Assembly delegates. Like other attempts by
moderates during 1918 at state-building, this
fledgling government, an alternative to the Com-
munist regime in Moscow, was crushed between
the militarily predominant Red and White ex-
tremes. Viewed by some as a footnote in the cre-
ation of the new socialist state, and by others as
the end of democracy for the Russian Revolution,
the Constituent Assembly’s demise was a perplex-
ing tragedy.
See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917–1922; FEBRUARY REVOLU-
TION; OCTOBER REVOLUTION; PROVISIONAL GOVERN-
MENT.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Radkey, Oliver. (1990). Russian Goes to the Polls: The
Election to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly,
1917. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Smirnov, Nikolai. (1997). “The Constituent Assembly.”
In Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution,
1917-1921, eds. Edward Acton, Vladimir Iu. Cher-
niaev, and William G. Rosenberg. London: Arnold.
M
ICHAEL
M
ELANCON
CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
The Constitutional Court was established in July
1991, prior to the breakup of the USSR. The Court
was to be made up of fifteen judges, elected by the
parliament for a limited life term (until age sixty-
five). However, the parliament could agree on only
thirteen of the nominees; leaving the other two
seats vacant. Modeled on the constitutional courts
of Western Europe, especially the German Federal
Constitutional Court, it is the only body empow-
ered to review constitutional questions.
Initially, the Constitutional Court, under the
leadership of Chief Justice Valery Zorkin, carefully
screened the cases it heard, thus attempting to avoid
sharp clashes with either the parliament or the
president. However, by 1993, Zorkin and several
other justices had aligned themselves with the par-
liament against President Yeltsin. On October 17,
1993, two weeks after his security forces clashed
with rioting protestors at the White House (Rus-
sia’s parliament building), President Yeltsin issued
a decree suspending the Constitutional Court pend-
ing the adoption of a new constitution.
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318
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
The Constitution of 1993 and a new “Law on
the Constitutional Court” of July 21, 1994, en-
larged the court to nineteen members. Under this
new legislation, judges were to be nominated by
the President and confirmed by the Federation
Council. In order to handle the rapidly increasing
caseload, the new law permitted the court to con-
sider multiple cases simultaneously. Under the pro-
visions of the new law, judges no longer served for
life; rather they have twelve-year terms. Retirement
was made mandatory at the age of seventy.
The Constitutional Court is charged with rul-
ing on the constitutionality of federal laws, presi-
dential enactments, republic constitutions, regional
charters, international treaties, and republic, re-
gional and local legislative and executive acts. The
court also has the responsibility to resolve juris-
dictional disputes between state and legislative bod-
ies at the federal and lower levels.
Access to the Court is relatively unrestricted;
most cases require no previous hearing. After hear-
ing oral arguments from interested parties, the
judges retire to draft opinions (and, more rarely,
dissenting options). Rendering a decision is a slow
process, often taking two to four weeks. Decisions
of the court are final and not subject to appeal. Al-
though the Court agrees to hear only a small por-
tion of all cases filed, it issues many determinations
(opredeleniya) that, although falling short of offi-
cial decisions, attempt to revolve disputes by refer-
ring to previously rendered decisions.
In contrast to the previous court, the Consti-
tutional Court of the Russian Federation initially
focused on cases involving the rights of the indi-
vidual. In the period from 1995 to 1996, more than
70 percent of the cases considered by the court dealt
with individual rights, while only 12 percent dealt
with separation of powers and 17.6 percent dealt
with questions of federalism. The court appeared
to be directing its attention to types of cases that
would bolster its legitimacy and solidify its place
in the judicial system, while avoiding conflicts with
other branches of government and with the pow-
erful regional governors.
With the election of President Vladimir Putin
in early 2000, the Constitutional Court adopted a
more assertive role again, especially in cases relat-
ing to Russia’s federal relations. The Constitutional
Court ruled that the constitutions of several re-
publics violated the Basic Law of the Russian Fed-
eration, forcing them to revise their constitutions
to bring them into line with the federal constitu-
tion. In contrast, the Court has, with a few notable
exceptions, prudently avoided clashing with the
President. The future legitimacy and credibility of
the Court will depend on its adroitness in avoiding
damaging confrontations with powerful state of-
ficials in which it cannot prevail, while still ren-
dering meaningful decisions that uphold the
primacy of constitutional principles.
See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; REFERENDUM OF DE-
CEMBER 1993
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sharlet, Robert. (1993). “The Russian Constitutional
Court: The First Term.” Post-Soviet Affairs 9:1–39.
Smith, Gordon B. (1996). Reforming the Russian Legal Sys-
tem. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Trochev, Alexei. (2002). “Implementing Russian Consti-
tutional Court Decisions.” East European Constitu-
tional Review 11:1–2.
G
ORDON
B. S
MITH
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY
The liberal Constitutional Democratic Party, or
Party of People’s Freedom (known as the Cadets,
from the initials of its name), was Russia’s largest
political party before 1917. Founded in October
1905, the party’s basic goals were embodied in its
name: transformation of Russia into a constitu-
tional, rule-of-law state and democratization of the
political and social order. Its program called for civil
rights for all citizens, including freedom of speech,
assembly, religion, and person; full equality of all
before the law; a legislative body elected by equal,
direct, universal suffrage (female as well as male);
separation of church and state; and greater local
self-government. The program also contained im-
portant social provisions, including labor protections
and the right to unionize and strike, mandatory
health insurance and state-funded old age pensions,
a progressive income tax, and a state land fund to
address peasant land hunger.
At its height, in 1905 and 1906, the Constitu-
tional Democrats had approximately 100,000
members and 346 local party organizations, and
was strongest in larger urban areas. Prominent
leaders included Peter Struve, Ivan Petrunkevich,
Prince Dmitry Shakhovskoy, Vladimir Nabokov,
Maxim Vinaver, Andrei Shingarev, and the party
head, Paul Miliukov. The composition of the Cadets
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
was diverse, consisting of educated professionals
(professors, lawyers, doctors, engineers), low-level
white-collar workers and teachers, petty traders,
artisans, shop clerks, and some workers and
peasants. The party’s commitment to cultural
self-determination for minorities was attractive to
elements of the empire’s large non-Russian popu-
lation, particularly Ukrainians, Jews, and Arme-
nians. Thanks to their relative indifference to
economic development, the Cadets attracted few of
the so-called big bourgeoisie.
The Constitutional Democrats enjoyed their
greatest success in March 1906 in Russia’s first-
ever national elections, from which they emerged
as the largest party in the First Duma with 179
seats. Mutual lack of trust and cooperation between
government and Duma resulted in a speedy disso-
lution, in July 1906. The Cadets again won the
largest number of deputies in the elections to the
Second Duma, although fiercer competition from
socialists reduced their seats to one hundred. De-
spite liberal efforts to make the Second Duma pro-
ductive and less provocative, the lower house was
dissolved on June 3, 1907. The government si-
multaneously issued a restrictive new electoral law
that disenfranchised many liberal voters, reducing
the Cadets in the Third and Fourth Dumas to
around fifty-five deputies.
Over the next seven years the party endured
government harassment, shrinking membership,
and the defeat of most of its reform bills. World
War I helped restore the party’s fortunes, as the
Cadets wholeheartedly supported the war effort
and played a leading role in the Union of Cities and
other relief organizations. In the summer of 1915,
the Cadets helped orchestrate the Progressive Bloc,
a broad, reformist coalition in the Duma that
sought to restore public confidence in the war ef-
fort.
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 elec-
tions to the Constituent Assembly. Much of the
party leadership joined the anti-Bolshevik move-
ment; after the Red victory in the Civil War, many
Cadets emigrated to Europe, where they reconsti-
tuted the party organizations and debated how to
end Bolshevik rule in Russia. The Constitutional De-
mocratic Party split into two separate organiza-
tions 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
M
ELISSA
K. S
TOCKDALE
CONSTITUTION OF 1918
Adopted on July 10, 1918, amid violent civil war,
the Soviet Constitution of 1918, the first charter of
the new Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Repub-
lic (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 nor-
mative. 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). Sub-
sequent 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 po-
litical and social organizations.
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Other parts of the 1918 charter differed radi-
cally 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 or-
gan of power,” despite the fact that most key leg-
islation originated in the CPSU(b) bills presented to
the congress were almost always passed and en-
acted unanimously. Moreover, the constitutionally
empowered Central Executive Committee, that is,
the perpetually meeting executive organ of the con-
gress, was empowered, through its Presidium, to
issue major decrees during the long interims be-
tween annual (later, less frequent) sessions of the
more than two thousand-member plenary con-
gress. Another governing body, the Council of Peo-
ple’s Commissars, whose chairman was head of the
government, or premier, likewise had the consti-
tutional 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 subse-
quent constitutions, became a “rubber-stamp,” or
pseudo-parliament whose powers were purely for-
mal.
The first Soviet constitution of 1918 contained
no formal listing of constitutionally guaranteed
rights. Yet when the rights were eventually item-
ized 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. Con-
stitutions in all sixteen (later fifteen) republics con-
tained 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.
A
LBERT
L. W
EEKS
CONSTITUTION OF 1936
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 “Brezh-
nev Constitution” on the 1936 document. At Josef
Stalin’s urging, the Central Committee of the Com-
munist Party had proposed to the Seventh Congress
of Soviets in February 1935 that the 1924 Consti-
tution be changed to reflect the profound trans-
formations in Soviet society wrought by the First
Five Year Plan (1928-1932). According to the So-
viet government, the main goals of the new con-
stitution were to reflect the successful attainment
of socialism in the USSR, to institute universal suf-
frage, 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 pro-
duction . . . shall constitute the economic founda-
tion 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 do-
mestic property; and inheritance of private prop-
erty. 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 So-
viet government based on direct elections and re-
shaped the federal structure of the Soviet Union.
In a marked departure from previous Soviet
political practice, a draft constitution was circu-
lated beginning in June 1936, and the population
was invited to take part in a “nationwide” discus-
sion 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 col-
lective 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 gov-
ernment 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 through-
out the 1930s, one of the most striking aspects of
the Stalin Constitution is the explicit enumeration
of the civil rights of the individual. The constitu-
tion guaranteed “universal, equal and direct suf-
frage by secret ballot” and created new legislative
bodies at the all–union, republican, and local lev-
els. The new Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the
supreme soviets of the union republics, and vari-
ous local soviets were all to be directly elected. Para-
doxically, 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 irre-
spective of gender, nationality, or race; freedom of
religious worship (but not religious propaganda);
freedom of assembly; freedom of association; free-
dom of the press; and inviolability of person and
of the home (Articles 122-128, 134). These exten-
sive guarantees remained only on paper, however,
as the Soviet government trampled on the civil
rights of its citizens through censorship, persecu-
tion because of religion and nationality, and wide-
spread illegal arrests and executions.
The transformations in the federal structure of
the Soviet Union brought about by the Stalin Con-
stitution were more substantive. The constitution
named eleven territories (Russian, Ukrainian, Be-
lorussian, Azerbaijan, Georgian, Armenian, Turk-
men, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz) as union
republics and granted other ethnic territories the
status of autonomous republics and regions. This
administrative structure created a hierarchy of na-
tionalities that gave some groups more privileges
than others. The constitution also enumerated a
new division of powers between all–union and re-
publican institutions. There is a scholarly consen-
sus that the constitution represented a move to-
ward greater political centralization at the expense
of the Soviet republics.
Analysts have sharply diverging views of the
importance of the Stalin Constitution. Because of
the egregious failure of the Soviet government to
respect the civil rights it guaranteed in the consti-
tution, most critics from the 1930s onward have
dismissed the constitution as mere propaganda or
window–dressing intended to woo Western Euro-
pean allies in the popular front against Fascism. In
the early 1990s, a new interpretation (Getty) sug-
gested that the constitution, and the elections that
followed in 1937, were a genuine but abortive at-
tempt to democratize the Soviet Union. According
to this view, the constitution was both an attempt
to tighten political control over the vast Soviet ter-
ritory and a potential turn toward democracy that
Stalin ultimately decided not to take. Stalin’s po-
litical intentions and the reasons behind the can-
cellation of contested elections in late 1937 after
several months of preparations for them may never
be known, but the remarkably contradictory na-
ture of the document and the disjuncture between
Soviet law and life are undeniable.
Scholars writing in the late 1990s have argued
that the constitution, despite its many contradic-
tions, should not be dismissed as mere propaganda
(Davies; Petrone). They suggest that the constitu-
tion introduced Soviet citizens to a new political
language and opened up spaces for the discussion
of such issues as justice, equality, and civil rights.
This political language offered Soviet citizens new
ways to articulate demands and means to negoti-
ate with state authorities. While the promulgation
of democratic ideals may have provided citizens
with ways of envisioning alternatives to Soviet po-
litical structures, these alternatives were crushed by
the intense repression of the late 1930s.
See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMUNIST PARTY OF
THE SOVIET UNION; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET;
STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davies, Sarah. (1997). Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia:
Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941. Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Getty, J. Arch. (1991). “State and Society under Stalin:
Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s.” Slavic Re-
view 50(1):18-35.
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