The Development of a New Russian Constitutionalism: Issues and Options in 1992

There is no current conception of the general framework of the new Russia constitutionalism chronology of the early 1990s. The author proposes one. The article is devoted to the second period of establishing constitutionalism which covers year 1992. During the first one (June 1990 - December 1991) the republican leaders started the state-building of Russia and started the struggle for power with the central authorities in the USSR era. The third period (1993) was the crisis of the duality of power which occurred because of the conflict between the president's team and the parliament and its settlement. The author employs historical, comparative, and behavioral research approaches to examine the pace of the constitutional reform in 1992, and the main trends, events, and actors that influenced it. After the collapse of the USSR, Russian authorities could pursue an independent policy. The main actors were able to map out their own action without referring to the Soviet government. The economic reforms performed by Egor Gaidar became the key issue of this period, they made great influence on all spheres, including political and social ones. With this background, the author is trying to relate them to the constitutional process. This approach seems relevant because, as early as in 1990, during First Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR, politicians said the 1978 Soviet Constitution of Russia was based on the principles that prevented the conduct of an appropriate economic policy. It is remarkable that in this period both economic and constitutional transformations used western patterns. The question arises if this way was compatible with national traditions especially in the context of the constitutional reform announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the beginning of year 2020 and the contemporary trend of the nationalization of law, economy, and establishment. This research shows that, by the end of the examined period, the irrelevance of imported ideas not only for economy, as stated by different authors, but also for the newly created Basic Law became obvious. This article is based on the published materials of the Constitutional Commission that worked in 1990-1993 and on interviews with its members. The author also uses memoirs of contemporaries of the examined events, research of Russian and foreign constitutionalists and economists on the Russian reforms of the early 1990s and the general-purpose analysis of the features of political, social, and economic transformations in different countries, including the late USSR and the post-Soviet Russia.

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