Reisner vs. Stalin: The RSFSR Constitution of 1918

• Author: S. Shakhray - K. Krakovskiy
• Position: Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia) - Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (Moscow, Russia)
• Pages: 78-99

BRICS LAW JOURNAL Volume VI (2019) Issue 3

REISnER VS. STaLIn: THE RSFSR ConSTITuTIon oF 1918

SERGEY SHAKHRAY,

Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia)

KONSTANTIN KRAKOVSKIY,

Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy

and Public Administration (Moscow, Russia)

https://doi.org/10.21684/2412-2343-2019-6-3-78-99

In 2018, the centenary of the Constitution of the Russian So cialist Federative Soviet

Republic (RSFSR) was celebrated. Scholarly debate over this legal and political document –

Russia’s rst constitution – has continued across time up to the present day. The process

of drafting the Constitution of 1918 has received very contradictory coverage in the

historical and legal literature. Writers’ assessments of the works on this topic have often

been inuenced by political circumstances. In particular, for a long time the role of the

famous Soviet legal scholar and lawyer Mikhail Reisner in the preparation of the draft of

the rst Soviet Constitution was hushed up. This article examines Reisner’s contribution

to the creation of the draft of the rst Soviet Constitution and his confrontation with

Joseph Stalin over the issue of federation in the Constitutional Commission. These two

men proposed diametrically opposed approaches to the principles and foundation of

the Soviet Federation. If Stalin believed that the Soviet Federation should be built on

the national-state principle, Reisner considered this principle bourgeois and oered

to abandon the national principle and build a Federation of Russia as a multi-stage

Federation of Soviets. The article then analyzes the content of the draft of the Constitution

prepared by Professors Reisner and Goikhbarg (the “professorial project”) and identies

its provisions, borrowed by the authors of the nal text of the Constitution of the RSFSR of

1918. Additionally, the article describes a number of the provisions of the draft prepared

by Reisner and Goikhbarg and distinguishes it from the nal text of the Constitution of

the RSFSR of 1918.

Keywords: legal history; Soviet constituti ons; cons titutionalism ; Russia; federatio n;

Reisner; Stalin.

SERGEY SHAKHRAY, KONSTANTIN KRAKOVSKIY 79

Recommended citation: Sergey Shakhray & Konstantin Krakovskiy, Reisner vs. Stalin:

The RSFSR Constitution of 1918, 6(3) BRICS Law Journal 78–99 (2019).

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Mikhail Reisner’s Project on the Federal Form of Government in Russia

2. The “Professorial Project” (Reisner-Goikhbarg)

Conclusion

Introduction

After the October Revolution, well-known constitutional legal scholar and, at

the same time, member of the Bolshevik Party Mikhail Reisner, at the suggestion

of Vladimir Lenin, became the head of the department of legislative projects,

a department which he himself created under his own initiative at the People’s

Commissariat of Justice. In 1918, it was precisely in this post that Reisner participated

in the drafting of the rst Soviet Constitution.

Questions about the preparation of the rst Soviet Constitution have been

analyzed in the literature quite widely, and not without criticism. Various aspects of

the Constitution of 1918 were discussed shortly after its adoption1 and debate over

the document still continues to the present day.2 Taking into consideration the fact

that the historiography of the issues relating to the rst Soviet Constitution is quite

extensive,3 and the key subject of this article, we will appeal only to the history of the

drafting of the rst Soviet Constitution, Reisner’s participation in this process and his

1 Крупская Н.К. Конституция Российской Социалистической Федеративной Советской Республики

[Nadezhda K. Krupskaya, The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) (Moscow:

Publishing House of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Councils of Workers, Soldiers,

Peasants and Cossack Deputies, 1918); Глебов Н.П. Наш Основной Закон. Разъяснение Конституции

Российской Социалистической Федеративной Советской Республики [Nikolay P. Glebov, Our

Basic Law. Explanation of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic] (Moscow :

Publishing House of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers,

Peasants and Cossack Deputies, 1918).

2 Плотников А.А. Конституция РСФСР 1918 года (историко-правовое исследование): Дис. … канд.

юрид. наук [Andrey A. Plotnikov, The Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918 (Historical and Legal Research):

Thesis for a Candidate Degree in Law Sciences] (Moscow, 2003); Земцов Б.Н. Конституционные основы

большевистской власти (первая советская Конституция 1918 г.) // Отечественная история. 2006.

№ 5. C. 65–74 [Boris N. Zemtsov, The Constitutional Foundations of the Bolshevik Government (First Soviet

Constitution of 1918), 5 The History of Russia 65 (2006)].

3 Historiographical review is given in the work of O.I. Chistyakov (Чистяков О.И. Конституция РСФСР

1918 года [Oleg I. Chistyakov, The Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918] (Moscow: Moscow State University

Publishing House, 1984)) and the dissertation of A.A. Plotnikov (Plotnikov 2003).