Constitutional reform as a result of defeat in the Cold War

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Basic Law has hopelessly lagged behind the political reality of Russia. The 1993 Constitution describes a society established in an "open field" by people who are confident that their state was born in 1991, and who do not remember anything about the history of Russia.

Our Constitution is a useless legacy of the liberal 1990s. It became a statement of defeat in the Cold War and legislatively secured the non-sovereign status of that part of the disintegrated USSR, which, being its legal successor, was named the Russian Federation.

This strange document of our troubled past continues to hinder the development of our country. And the majority of the Russian population began to perceive the current liberal Constitution as outdated.

Two-thirds of Russian citizens are in favor of revising the Constitution

The Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) recently conducted a survey on the attitude of Russian citizens to the Constitution. The question was asked: "Should or should not, in your opinion, today revise the Constitution, make amendments to it?"

Two thirds (68%) answered positively. There has been an annual increase in those in favor of revising the Constitution. In 2018, there were 66% of them, and in 2013 - 44%.

At the same time, the number of those who oppose the introduction of any amendments to the Constitution is decreasing. In 2013, there were 25% of them, in 2018 - 20%, and in 2019 - only 17%.

The majority (47%) of the respondents believe that the Constitution “does not determine the life of our country”, that “this is a purely formal document”. In the older strata of the population, from 46 and over 60, the figure is 54%.

The same percentage (53-54%) is visible among these age groups and in the answers to the question: "Do you think the Constitution helps or does not help ordinary citizens, people like you, to defend their rights?" Most do not see any real help from the current Constitution in protecting their rights. That is, he considers the Constitution a law not of direct action, but a formal and declarative document.

An interesting fact is the critical attitude towards the Constitution of women. Today 71% of women and 63% of men are in favor of various amendments to the Constitution. With a large number of abstaining women 14%, men 15%.

A minority was in favor of leaving the Constitution in its present form.

It's time to make responsible decisions.

The modern constitution gives sovereignty to international law

Since the adoption of the Constitution in 1993, Russia has changed a lot. And a number of the most important articles of the Basic Law today no longer correspond to the realities of our statehood and the moods of our citizens.

For example, paragraph 4 of Article 15: "If an international treaty of the Russian Federation establishes rules other than those provided by law, then the rules of the international treaty are applied."

This article gives away most of the national sovereignty to external international law, recognizing its primacy over national law. This is absolutely unacceptable for an independent state.

Or directly harmful article 76, in clause 6 asserting that "in the event of a conflict between federal law and a regulatory legal act of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, issued in accordance with part four of this article, a regulatory legal act of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation is in force."

This is clearly a confederal norm. The Constitution recognizes the supremacy of the constituent entity of the Federation in disputes with the Federation, including denying the right of the federal government to change the territory of the constituent entities.

At the same time, as the head of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin correctly writes, “the rights of minorities can be protected to the extent that the majority agrees with it. It is impossible to impose on the entire society legislative normativeness that denies or calls into question the basic values of the common good, shared by the majority of the country's population."

But in the text of the Constitution itself there is no concept of "majority" or "Russian people". There is only the concept of "national minorities".

No less awful is Article 12, which declares that "local self-government bodies are not included in the system of state authorities." Here, the liberal Constitution lays down a confrontation between the administrative vertical of power and local self-government, creating an alternative local government. This is distilled, anti-state and absolutely non-working liberalism.

Article 62 is also strange: “1. A citizen of the Russian Federation may have citizenship of a foreign state (dual citizenship) in accordance with federal law or an international treaty of the Russian Federation. 2. The fact that a citizen of the Russian Federation has the citizenship of a foreign state does not diminish his rights and freedoms."

The constitutional article introduces a kind of "multi-patriotism", allowing individuals to be citizens of several states and have several patriotisms. Statistics say that we have about 900 thousand such “multi-citizens”. And many of them hold positions of responsibility in the civil service. For the remaining 145 million, such civil "polygamy" is offensive and very dangerous.

In this regard, I recall the words of the late Brzezinski: “I do not see a single case in which Russia could resort to its nuclear potential, while there is $ 500 billion in American banks belonging to the Russian elite. You still need to figure out whose elite it is - yours or already ours. This was said in 2013.

How much money is our elite abroad now? This problem cannot be solved with a policy of “multi-patriotism”. The civil service of Russia should not include people with foreign citizenship.

Necessary amendments to the Constitution

Sooner or later, the Constitution will definitely be changed. Better earlier. Important things must be done on time.

Our state must legislatively become a historically successive unity. Russia has long been founded by our ancestors and approved by nationwide sacrifices. The thousand-year history of the country should be indicated in the preamble of the new text of the Constitution.

Any society is created by the consciousness of its members. It is the living consciousness of the nation or the social organism of ideas. That is why the state must have a developed civic outlook. It is necessary to remove the ban on state ideology.

The main law (Constitution) of the country should reflect the basic national ideological attitudes:

1. It is necessary to legally enshrine in the legislation the national desire to unite all the divided parts of the Russian world into a single state. The split of the Russian people must first be overcome ideologically and legislatively.

This national desire can be enshrined in the Constitution, as was done, for example, in the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany after the division of the German people. Article 23 guaranteed all German states the right to join the united Germany and the extension of the Basic Law to the rest of Germany.

Our Constitution should record the same potential right for all Russian lands to become part of Russia. A constitutional statement is required that the general Basic Law "in the rest of the united Russia will come into force after their accession."

This will help accelerate the overcoming of the greatest national division in the Russian people, which occurred as a result of the ideas of revolution and the actions of Russia's geopolitical opponents.

2. It is necessary to legally remove all obstacles to the dominant and dominant position of the Russian language in the state. The Russian language is a national language and is obligatory in the army, in the navy and in all state and public institutions. It is also necessary to legislatively define the status of the Cyrillic alphabet as a state and mandatory for use in Russian and other languages of our state.

3. It is necessary to legally protect the family and place it under the special protection of the state. It is necessary to introduce into the legislation the wording that "marriage can be concluded exclusively between one man and one woman." And in the future, strive for a constitutional ban on the killing of babies (abortion) in the womb. Introduce a ban on the signing of any international treaties that would contain anti-family clauses.

4. The new version of the Constitution must spell out and legally secure the status of the Orthodox faith. It is necessary to return to the new Constitution the version of the 62nd article of the Basic Laws of the Russian Empire of 1906, which legally stated that the Russian Orthodox Church plays a special religious, moral and state role in Russia.

It would be just as important to return to the Basic Law the meaning of Article 63 (1906), which said that the head of Russia "cannot profess any other faith except the Orthodox", which would truly protect the Russian majority from the civilizational privatization of Russia whoever comes to mind.

5. Our state must certainly change its form from federal to unitary. The federal system is not viable and we inherited from the communist territorial construction. The collapse along the federal borders of the Soviet Union showed this clearly.

National republics and provinces should be unified in accordance with the principle of the country's administrative-territorial division.

In its history, Russia has never been a union of national republics, except for a short communist experiment that ended with the collapse of Greater Russia.

The new Constitution should not be liberal, it should become a document of a country that sees its future on the historical paths of its imperial greatness.