The role of the People’s Commissariat for nationalities in the development of the form of Russian state unity

Abstract

The consistent autonomization of Russia through the mediation of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities (hereinafter the Commissariat, People’s Commissariat or Narcomnats) offered priceless experience by 1924 in creating a unique form of the Soviet state unity and a reason for come back to its analysis in 2022. The active transformation of Russian Unitarianism entailed the enrichment of Soviet positive law: in January 1918, the Soviet government provided legal guarantees to the people to engage in «law-making». While systematizing the accumulated material the idea of writing a federal code appeared. The existing state entities needed, in addition to the Constitution, a different legal basis for development. The world’s first federal Code could bring legal certainty to the organization of the form of the state unity, which would give predictability of state development and, of course, greater security. The whole world could see that the RSFSR had become a guarantor of political stability. The Code could make it possible to combine the free “law-making” of people in the choice of autonomy with the state regulation of this process.

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