RUSSIA The imperfect constitution of Russia

Zjuganov’s communists have once again submitted a bill to the Duma for a Constituent Assembly to approve a series of changes to the Basic Law. But the Kremlin is preparing for plebiscitary votes on the 2020 amendments and the 2024 presidential elections, without the need for further bureaucratic complications.

Moscow () – The communist deputies of the KPRF in the Moscow Duma have signed a bill “On the Constituent Assembly”, which is the eleventh attempt, according to observers’ calculations, to apply article 135 of the Russian Constitution , a requirement to approve the most important changes to the Basic Law and which has never been applied in the thirty years of the post-Soviet period. This is fueling a controversy, actually not very incisive, by some opponents, who argue the illegitimacy of the re-election of Vladimir Putin, who took advantage of the annulment of previous mandates under the 2020 amendments, without even the shadow of an assembly.

In reality, the norm was not approved or applied in 1993, with the first Elysian variant, with no other explanation than the widespread belief that the assembly “brings bad luck”, recalling with superstitious suggestion Lenin’s constituent assembly after the revolution. , which was immediately dissolved because the Bolsheviks were in the minority. And in general the feeling prevails that if you change even just one comma, you run the risk of not being able to stop and twisting the entire text in one direction or another.

The communists led by the elderly leader Gennadij Zjuganov have decided to take the initiative for the umpteenth time, the fourth in the last ten years, remembering the solemn constitutional revisions that each party secretary carried out when ascending to power, so that in the USSR The Leninist, Stalinist, Christoceneite and Brezhneite constitutions followed one another. Now that the Yeltsinian one is in force, interpreted and revised in Putin’s style, the KPRF wants to give a signal of a “return to legality” against the new totalitarianism.

The last time the communists had made the same request was in the fateful year 2020, but Dmitri Medvedev’s Government rejected it as ‘unnecessary’, using futile technicalities as justification. Even now there seems to be an appeal to inaccuracies and incomplete details, as if it were not possible to settle everything in parliamentary debates. Other alternative proposals have been on the agenda of the Duma for years, which contemplate the popular election of the members of the constituent assembly, or the formation according to quotas of the different branches of the central and regional administrations.

Behind the assembly project there is also a suggestion that takes us back to late medieval Russia, today very fashionable in the recovery of “traditional values”, remembering the Zemskij Sobor established in the 16th century, the “Council of the Russian Lands” that It brought together nobles, clerics, merchants and peasants, and at the beginning of the 17th century gave rise to the dynasty of the Romanov tsars. The Kremlin advocates a plebiscite on the 2020 amendments and the 2024 presidential elections, to affirm the popular bribery that embodies the spirit of ancient Russia, without the need for more bureaucratic complications.

All the more so since the current trend of warmongering Putinism leads to the idea of ​​abolishing all links with international law and affirming the superiority of Russian laws over any other “foreign influence”, as insisted by the laws on the matter that Russia also extends to neighboring countries such as Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. This goes back to even older texts, such as the Domostroj, the “Rule of the House” drawn up in the first half of the 16th century by the protopop Silvestr, advisor to Ivan the Terrible, who imposed the tsar’s censorship of any excess of opposition. in the boyar circle.

The constituent assembly, according to the original wording, also had to be convened to approve extraordinary decisions, such as the state of federal emergency or the proclamation of the state of war in the country. In this sense, reality has already far exceeded the weak pretensions of the Russian communists, and also all the laws that have been drafted and approved, which only pursue a regime that certainly does not question its legitimacy. As the head of the group of parliamentary experts, Konstanti Kalacev, responds, “if there is Putin there is Russia, without Putin there is no Russia.”