We Need a Constitution

For over two years, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR painstakingly worked to create new laws. Committees, subcommittees and numerous experts met. A program to prepare 'perestroika' legislative acts by 1994 was developed. Some of the laws, which were either passed or readied for discussion by the deputies, were not too bad; others were developed enough to be called, as is now the fashion, European. But by then it was already clear that highly qualified, subjectively honest and democratic-minded specialists were working on a dead-end job, wasting their time and intellectual potential.


The disintegration of the Soviet Union was not swift, not the work of an hour -- but at the same time it is unlikely that anyone back then foresaw the collapse of Soviet legislation. Even so. Soviet legislators were clearly working in vain, creating new laws in the absence of a clear political strategy or solid legal foundation. It is well known that Gorbachev would not tolerate any questions aimed at defining the strategic tasks of perestroika even somewhat specifically. Upon hearing such questions he either winced outright or simply avoided answering them, hiding concrete thought in a flow of empty rubber-stamp words. Did Gorbachev even have a strategy? Or if he did, did he not want to share it with anyone?


There was no hope that the Brezhnev constitution lying at the base of the entire legal system would be changed. The composition of the Soviet parliament made radical changes in the constitutional order impossible. New laws had to be "adjusted" to the old constitution or immediately amended; amendments began to be counted by the dozens and threatened to be counted by the hundreds. The constitution started to look like a ragged blanket. Life outstripped legislation, and people started to look upon laws as if they were some sort of non-compulsory decorative facade.


This digression into recent history enables one to understand the situation today in the current Russian Supreme Soviet and in that strange and crowded forum called the Congress of People's Deputies. Russian legislation is being vigorously renewed, but this process has an essentially empirical and arbitrary character. Once again there is no political strategy that could help people figure out whether a new law or various drafts "work". But the main thing is that there is no new constitution to serve as the foundation for a complete renewal of legislation.


For the very same reasons that paralyzed the Soviet legislature, the Russian parliament is now unable to pass any radical version of a constitution that would open up new horizons for society. Given that some bill or other will ultimately be adopted, I believe that it cannot be anything but a compromise. But why should the country compromise now, when it is going through such huge socioeconomic changes, at the most dramatic, indeed fateful, stage in its history?


By guaranteeing the legislators that their status would remain unchanged until 1995, Yeltsin has bowed to political reality. In so doing, he has doomed us not only to unavoidable compromises but also to a lack of confidence in the stability of any of the new laws.


This includes privatization. Without a constitution that establishes an open society, that guarantees the stability of private property and does not permit any limitations on the press, any normative act can be changed at any time under the influence of the constantly changing political scene. This can happen through elections. By a whim of the parliament speaker. Or by presidential decree.


An unstable legal system is a paradox for which society always pays dearly.


Arkady Vaksberg is a prominent Moscow jurist and political observer for Literaturnaya Gazeta.