.
.+-
Description
The first country to build and achieve socialist society, the USSR, led the pathway for the proletarians and oppressed peoples all throughout the world in making a social environment fit for human beings. And today, when we are grappling with the old constitutional order, the experience of such a new constitutional order is always fresh in our minds. The 1936 Soviet Constitution, also known as the Stalin Constitution, was the most democratic in the world for its time, guaranteed the working people definite rights and the means to exercise them for the first time. Take freedom of speech — in the bourgeois countries, freedom of speech for the working people is a farce because they have no access to means which express themselves in a widespread manner, everything which people consume is controlled by the monopolies. This Constitution guaranteed this right by providing the working people their own implements of production for printing presses, etc. This is only one matter in which the then Soviet Constitution was far superior to the ones we deal with today.
Also included is Stalin’s 1936 speech On the Draft Constitution of the USSR, where he lays out what the Soviets had accomplished since 1924 (the year their last Constitution was codified), the significance of the new Constitution and assessing some amendments which were put forward. Of note in this regard is that the version of the Constitution in this version is the 1951 edition, meaning there are slight changes from the original 1936. However, the content has not changed in essence.