RUDN Journal of Law (Dec 2022)
The Soviet Union as a composite state structure: education, development trends and causes of disintegration
Abstract
This article is devoted to a critical comparative-legal analysis of the process of formation, development, transformation and disintegration of the first multinational political-territorial entity with a republican form of government of the “Soviet” type, which over time has become a clear example for such complex European states as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. This theme is unique not only in terms of solving the ethnic issue, but also as the “model” of territorial structure since the basis of one federation, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, formed another federation, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which integrated, along with traditional administrative units, national political-territorial entities in the form of autonomous republics, regions, and districts. The article emphasizes the fact that one of the consequences of the appearance on the political map of the Soviet Union, which defeated Nazi Germany and its numerous satellites in World War II, was not only the formation of “popular democracy” countries and the so-called “socialist camp” that existed for over forty years and represented a civilizational alternative to the capitalist path of social development, but also the collapse of the colonial system and acquisition of independence and sovereignty by the peoples inhabiting the regions of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Soviet model of the state structure and democracy institutions as antipodes to bourgeois populism and liberal demagogy facilitated an accelerated transition from declarations of constituent and constitutional documents proclaiming human and civil rights and freedoms to their practical implementation in the economic and political sphere in countries that had associated themselves with Western-style democracy; it resulted in a more socially oriented role of state and its structures. The Soviet experience clearly demonstrates what real results the state and society can achieve in solving the women's issue, elimination of total illiteracy, and growth of the well-being of citizens. At the same time, manifestations of authoritarianism and totalitarianism that took place at certain stages reveal that the power mechanism was subject not only to voluntaristic tendencies or official personification, but also to relapses into a personality cult, one of the most negative consequences of state disintegration and local civil wars within its former territory.
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