Constitutional Dilemma

The crisis of power in Russia, which was meant to be resolved by the April referendum, has become even more acute. The separate draft constitutions proposed by President Boris Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet are totally incompatible.


Hoping to build on his referendum victory, Yeltsin wants elections for the new organs of power by this autumn. The Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, on the other hand, which have been working at a leisurely pace on a new constitution since the end of 1990, only want a special "constitutional" session of the Congress to start discussions of the constitution in the autumn. They are hoping to delay the process so that elections to the new parliament only take place in the spring of 1995, when the mandate of the present Congress, elected in 1990, comes to its proper end.


The crisis of power in Russia, however, is only partly caused by conflict between the president and the parliament, neither of which are used to sharing power. The collective psychology of most ordinary Russians, who perceive political power as a coercive force rather than as something that must be subordinate to the law, is also to blame. Their attitude to state power is hardly surprising, given that they have never before lived in a representative democracy. The disappearance of the one-party Communist dictatorship (even in the "soft" form of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika) has effectively produced a paralysis of power, since the party was the main instrument of power in the Soviet Union.


After the collapse of the U. S. S. R. , neither the government nor the Supreme Soviet could create an efficient system of management for Russia. They successfully implemented a program to abolish previous restrictions and prohibitions (on trade, the press, traveling, morals, performance, etc. ), since people perceived this as the advent of "freedom".


At the same time, however, the institutions of the previous state collapsed spontaneously, including those that are so necessary for a democratic country like the army, the police, the military industrial complex, the scientific infrastructure, frontier guards and customs service, the financial system and others.


As a result of increasing anarchy at the "center", the autonomous "national" republics which form part of the Russian Federation, non-national administrative regions, and even large cities, have gradually been turning into mini-states, taking the local economic infrastructure and local organs of government under their own control.


In these circumstances, the two opposing draft constitutions should be judged not only on the basis of the structure of state power each proposes, but also according to whether either of them can halt the process of political and economic disintegration in the country.


In the 20th century, countries that have been transformed from totalitarian or dictatorial regimes to democratic rule (Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Portugal) have typically created strong parliaments that have completely controlled relatively weak governments and purely ceremonial heads of states. Convertible "hard" national currency was more important than hard rule. In France, on the other hand, the primacy of parliament led to a crisis in 1958 and to a new constitution that introduced an all-powerful presidency.


In Russia both these factors are present -- the transition from totalitarianism to democracy and the difficulties caused by the collapse of the empire. Moreover, they are complicated by an additional factor: the switch of the entire socio-economic system from socialism to capitalism. There are no historical examples of such a complete and rapid transformation of a society taking place by peaceful, constitutional means without a violent radical revolution.


From an economic point of view, the president's draft constitution is more radical than parliament's version. It declares that the right of private ownership is a 'natural human right' and extends it to the ownership of land and of any other property including natural resources.


The parliamentary draft is, on the whole, more extensive and more detailed, but it restricts the article on the right of individual ownership to an extremely short phrase: 'Everyone has the right to be an owner', which is open to various interpretations. The greatest discrepancy between the drafts, however, consists in the way they define the authority of the president and parliament. According to Yeltsin's draft, the president of Russia is the guarantor of the constitution and, with the exception of the prime minister who is proposed by the president but appointed by parliament (the Federal Assembly), he "directly makes appointments to the highest state positions". Moreover, if the Federal Assembly repeatedly refuses to confirm the president's candidate for prime minister, preventing the formation of a government, the president can dissolve the Federal Assembly and call new elections.


On the other hand, the president's draft constitution restricts the rights of the 20 autonomous republics which are part of the Russian Federation, since they are deprived of state sovereignty and the right to make their own independent laws which have primacy over federal laws. Furthermore, no right to leave the Federation is envisaged, although many of these republics included the right in their own constitutions in 1991-1992. Using these restrictions, Yeltsin hopes to prevent the further disintegration of Russia along ethnic divisions.


Zhores Medvedev, a biologist, political commentator and author, has livedin London since 1973.