“Every Line of the Draft of the New Constitution Is Imbued with Concern for Soviet People”: Ideas of Justice and Morality in the Discussion of the 1977 Draft Constitution
Authors:   Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow, Russian Federation), Strekalov Ilya. N. , Fokin Aleksandr A. ,   University of Tyumen (Tyumen, Russian Federation)
Published: March 2021

The national debate on the 1977 Constitution was one of the mechanisms for interaction between the authorities and society. The analysis of citizens’ proposals shows that there were many groups and points of view in Soviet society. This serves as a basis for criticizing the popular concept of Homo Sovieticus. The concept of Homo Sovieticus presupposed the presence of passive and noninitiative people, who were objects rather than subjects of public life. Within the framework of the methodology of the history of everyday life, it is worth paying attention to the voices “from below”, which will reveal multiple points of view on the Soviet system, and show the activity and subjectivity of Soviet citizens. The source base of the study was the archival materials of the National Discussion of the Draft Constitution of 1977, kept in the funds of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR State Archive of the Russian Federation and in the Latvian State Archive, which allows looking at the situation from a regional perspective. There were no mass popular uprisings within the framework of the discussion of the 1977 Constitution, but many amendments bear the traces of socialist order violations. In the opinion of a considerable number of citizens, the new Constitution, as the main law of the country, was supposed to correct those aspects of the Soviet everyday life that did not fit into the idea of what was right. Most of the proposals concerned changes in specific aspects of life within the system, rather than its fundamental restructuring. People saw the main problems in the discrepancy between their ideas about the correct and fair structure of Soviet society and the elements of reality they faced in everyday life. In the opinion of a significant number of citizens, the new Constitution, as the basic law of the country, was supposed to correct those aspects of Soviet daily life that did not fit in with the idea of what was right. Among the popular topics were: equality of all citizens of the USSR, gender gap between men and women, economic justice, etc. Archival materials show that the National Discussion of the 1977 Draft Constitution was perceived by the population as an effective mechanism for interaction with the authorities and an opportunity to solve pressing problems. A significant part of the population actively participated in the ideological campaign: they did not limit themselves to ritual phrases, but proposed to fix in the text of the Constitution their own ideas about how the Soviet society should be organized. In most cases, these proposals were related to the authors’ personal experience. That is why we see quite a wide range of ideas that were circulating within the Soviet society. Soviet people were not passive objects; they perceived themselves and acted as subjects of the Soviet system. Although in practice not all proposals of the population were reflected in the final text of the 1977 Constitution, but the party and state apparatus received data about problems and expectations of the population, which later on were reflected in the adoption of laws.