A Draft Constitution for the Russian Federation

The draft constitution presented here was prepared to assist an ad hoc committee of Russian academics, politicians, and businessmen in their attempt to write a constitution for the Russian Federation that would overcome the deficiencies of the current constitution and existing official proposals for a new constitution. Russia's current constitution, ratified in 1978, amended over two hundred times in the last two years, and designed almost as if it were intended to generate constitutional crises, requires immediate replacement. A year and a half after it was formed, Russia's Constitutional Reform Commission has not crafted an acceptable alternative. Its proposals include a bill of rights clouded with qualifications that render those rights unenforceable or non-existent. Rights are combined with socialist guarantees that obscure the distinction between limits on the state and social aspirations, and articles are prepared under the premise that constitutions constrain not only the state but citizens as well, including their behavior in such areas as child-rearing and property ownership.