12 December 2024
by Lev Shlosberg
Source: Facebook
On 12th December 1993 after much hesitation, I voted against the draft Russian Constitution.
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I didn’t like the fact that the Constitution was adopted at the same time as the elections for the State Duma, which were organized on the fly after the dissolution of the former parliament; there were no grounds whatsoever for me to pay any heed to it.
The second year of reform went by, and I saw how the supporters of democracy became its opponents, having not seen it materialize.
The 1993 crisis wasn’t just about a struggle for power, but rather a crisis of the government itself, which failed to cope with reforms and lost its sense of society. Furthermore, the Constitution should be a social contract.
Such a social contract was not concluded in Russia in 1993. There was no agreement between the authorities and the people on the state structure of Russia. The draft Constitution was the construct of the authorities, not society.
Verifying what the actual vote count was is futile: all national polling stations were dismantled immediately after voting had ended, and no one can attest to the accuracy of the figures, which according to some recollections Boris Yeltsin wrote down on a sheet of paper in a tete-a-tete with the then chairman of the CEC [Central Electoral Commission], Nikolai Ryabov after the voting had ended.
The Constitutional window in 1993 was like that of a parliamentary window that had been smashed by a shell. The lifetime of the Constitution would be equal to the term in office of the power that stemmed from it.
But the first and second chapters of this Constitution born in the days of state collapse remain our personal shield on days of powerlessness.
When the time comes for a reset of the Russian government, the experience of the Constitutional Reforms of 1993 will be important as an experience of a grand design that did not take root in a crumbling society. The 1993 Constitution was not an achievement society had helped to shape, and it didn’t defend society from the state’s will.
That’s why the 12th December remains a day of remembrance for a Constitution that was dreamed of, yet never materialized.
Translated by Nathalie Wilson
