Speech by Joseph Stalin on the draft constitution, November 25, 1936. Extraordinary VIII All-Union Congress of Soviets of the USSRThe constitutions of bourgeois countries are usually based on the belief in the immutability of the capitalist system. The main foundation of these constitutions is the principles of capitalism, its basic pillars: private ownership of land, forests, factories, plants, and other means of production; the exploitation of man by man and the existence of exploiters and exploited; the insecurity of the working majority at one end of society and the luxury of the non-working but secure minority at the other end; and so on and so forth. They are based on these and similar foundations of capitalism. They reflect them and enshrine them in law.
In contrast, the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR is based on the fact of the elimination of the capitalist system, on the fact of the victory of the socialist system in the USSR. The main basis of the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR is the principles of socialism, its fundamental foundations, already won and implemented: socialist ownership of land, forests, factories, plants, and other means of production; the elimination of exploitation and exploitative classes; the elimination of poverty for the majority and luxury for the minority; the elimination of unemployment; labor as the duty and honor of every able-bodied citizen according to the formula: “those who do not work shall not eat.” The right to work, that is, the right of every citizen to a guaranteed job; the right to rest; the right to education; etc. The draft of the new Constitution is based on these and similar foundations of socialism. It reflects them and enshrines them in law.
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Bourgeois constitutions tacitly proceed from the premise that nations and races cannot be equal, that there are nations with full rights and nations with limited rights, and that, in addition, there is a third category of nations or races, for example, in the colonies, which have even fewer rights than nations with limited rights. This means that all these constitutions are essentially nationalistic, that is, constitutions of dominant nations.
In contrast to these constitutions, the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR is, on the contrary, deeply internationalist. It proceeds from the assumption that all nations and races are equal. It proceeds from the assumption that differences in skin color or language, cultural level or level of state development, as well as any other differences between nations and races, cannot serve as a basis for justifying national inequality. It proceeds from the assumption that all nations and races, regardless of their past and present situation, regardless of their strength and weakness, should enjoy equal rights in all spheres of economic, social, political, and cultural life of society.
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The distinctive feature of the draft of the new USSR Constitution is that it is free from such reservations and restrictions. For it, there are no active or passive citizens; for it, all citizens are active. It does not recognize any difference in rights between men and women, “sedentary” and “non-sedentary” persons, the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. For it, all citizens are equal in their rights. It is not property status, national origin, gender, or official position, but the personal abilities and personal labor of each citizen that determine his or her position in society.
Finally, there is one more feature of the draft new Constitution. Bourgeois constitutions usually limit themselves to establishing the rights of citizens, without concern for the conditions for exercising these rights, the possibility of exercising them, or the means of exercising them. They talk about the equality of citizens, but forget that there can be no real equality between the master and the worker, between the landowner and the peasant, if the former have wealth and political weight in society, and the latter are deprived of both, if the former are exploiters and the latter are exploited. Or again: they talk about freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, but they forget that all these freedoms can become empty words for the working class if it is deprived of the opportunity to have at its disposal suitable premises for meetings, good printing houses, a sufficient quantity of printing paper, etc.
The distinctive feature of the new Constitution is that it does not limit itself to establishing the formal rights of citizens, but shifts the focus to the question of guarantees for these rights and the means of exercising them. It does not simply proclaim the equality of citizens' rights, but also ensures that the elimination of exploitation and the liberation of citizens from all forms of exploitation are enshrined in law. It does not simply proclaim the right to work, but also ensures its legislative consolidation by establishing the absence of crises in Soviet society and the elimination of unemployment. It does not simply proclaim democratic freedoms, but also ensures them by law with known material resources. It is therefore clear that the democracy of the new draft Constitution is not “ordinary” and “generally accepted” democracy in general, but socialist democracy.
These are the main features of the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR.
This is how the draft of the new Constitution reflects the shifts and changes in the economic and socio-political life of the USSR that took place between 1924 and 1936.
"Pravda" newspaper. November 26, 1936
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