15. The Rights and Responsibilities of the People in the Russian Federation

Every state has a constitution. A constitution is a set of rules which define the relationship between the various organs of government and between the government and citizens of a country. Its purpose is to set the parameters of governmental power and the rights and duties of the citizens.

The beginning of constitutionalism in Russia may be traced to the moment in 1801 when Alexander I was enthroned. Alexander established a committee to prepare a draft of a Russian constitution that would have included a number of liberal provisions. The principle author of these constitutional reforms was Count Speransky, the brilliant Russian statesman. But reactionary opposition postponed the realization of Count Speransky’s Civil Code until 1905.

In 1825 two different projects were prepared by the Decembrists. One was a ‘Constitution’ written by Nikita Muravev; the other, prepared by Colonel Pavel Pestel, was called ‘Russian Truth’. Under Muravev’s ‘Constitution’, the rights of citizens would be guarded by the state, which would become a federation. Muravev considered a person’s political and legal rights and freedoms the main principle of his political system.

Pestel's project centered on the idea to establish a strong, centralized state structure whereby human rights and freedoms were to be subordinated to the main goal, that is, providing prosperity to the people through state power.

After their unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the tsar, constitutional reforms were again postponed.

The subsequent history of the constitutional process in Russia manifests the different modes of political development: reform through state action (1861-64); limiting the monarchy and the institution of the first Russian Duma (1905); establishing a republic (February 1917); and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which installed a dictatorship that led to untold suffering and misery for the Russian people.

That is why the First Constitution of Russia (the 10^th July 1918), the First Constitution of the USSR (the 31^st January 1924), the Stalin constitution (the 5^th December 1936), the Brezhnev constitution (the 7^th October 1977), did not recognize the existence of civil rights and liberties.

After the break-up of the USSR, in 1992-1993, as a result of a fierce confrontation between the Supreme Soviet and the then President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, during which an armed conflict took place (October 1993), the Constitution currently in force was adopted on the 12^th December 1993 and was formally approved by the majority of Russia's electorate.

One of the most important innovations of the Constitution is Chapter 2 - Rights and Liberties of Human Beings and Citizen (Article 17 to 64).

According to these Articles the basic rights and liberties shall belong to everyone from birth; all people shall be equal before the law; the state guarantee the equality of rights and liberties regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion or any other circumstance; everyone shall have the right to life, to privacy, to freedom, the right to elect and to be elected, the right to education and etc.

Questions:

1. What is a constitution?

2. What is a purpose of a constitution?

3. Who was the author of the first constitutional reforms in Russia?

4. How many projects of constitution were prepared by Decembrists in 1825?

5. Compare the projects. Which one was the most real to be adopted?

6. Name the model of political development within the constitutional process.

7. Did the Constitutions in Russia recognize the existence of civil rights and liberties?

8. When was the current Constitution adopted?

9. What are the most important innovations in our current Constitution?

10. What is told in Chapter 2 of the Constitution?