The Constitutional Court will be asked to cancel the decree on the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR

The Scientific Council for Lawmaking under the Chairman of the Crimean Parliament will work on an appeal to the Constitutional Court of Russia (CC) to cancel the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 1954 on the transfer of Crimea from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian RSFSR. The Chairman of the Parliament Vladimir Konstantinov gave the corresponding instruction to the council, RIA Novosti reports. According to him, the Crimean authorities were constantly postponing the issue of repealing this act, “pitying the feelings of individual comrades,” but now it’s time to put an end to it.

“In political terms, of course, we did everything in 2014, but in legal terms… For this, it is necessary to give a legal assessment of the process of transferring the Crimean region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. This process was politically insignificant, it was carried out with the grossest violation of the Constitution of the USSR. Our return has already taken place, and this political and legal misunderstanding (by decree of 1954 – Vedomosti) must be put an end to once and for all, ”said Konstantinov. He clarified that the cancellation of the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the transfer of the peninsula would mean “the final closure of the page with the presence of Crimea as part of the Ukrainian SSR and independent Ukraine.”

The initiative to cancel the act of 1954 on the transfer of the Crimea was also made by the senator from the peninsula, Sergei Tsekov. “Given the lies that come from the state officials of Ukraine, this decision should be officially canceled. Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, has every right to do so. All speculation at the international level around the status of Crimea must be stopped once and for all,” he told the agency.

The Crimean region passed from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian USSR on February 19, 1954, the publication of the decree is associated with the personal initiative of Nikita Khrushchev, who at that time held the post of first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. The decision was explained by the “common economy, territorial proximity and close economic and cultural ties.” After the collapse of the USSR, Crimea remained part of Ukraine in the status of an autonomous republic. On March 16, 2014, after the coup d’état in Ukraine, a referendum was held in Crimea on joining Russia. 96.57% of voters supported the region’s accession to the Russian Federation, and on March 18, 2014 it became part of Russia. Ukraine did not recognize the results of the plebiscite.

In 2015, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation recognized the transfer of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR as unconstitutional. During this process, the Soviet authorities “forgot” about Sevastopol, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2018. According to him, Sevastopol was a city of central subordination, but neither in the resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of February 5, 1954 “On the transfer of the Crimean region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR”, nor in the decree of the same name of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR of February 19, 1954 g., there is not a single mention of him in the law of the USSR of April 26 of the same year.

Political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko told Vedomosti that the possible cancellation of the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the transfer of Crimea “is not a full-fledged argument for the international community, but it will not be superfluous in the piggy bank.” “I think this is a question of legal technique that has a right to exist,” he added. Aleksey Makarkin, First Vice President of the Center for Political Technologies, drew attention to the fact that the Constitutional Court “cannot annul documents”, but can “declare a certain document unconstitutional”.

“There is a problem here, because it raises the question of what kind of Constitution we are talking about. The Constitutional Court checks compliance with the 1993 Constitution, which was adopted almost 40 years after the transfer of Crimea [УССР]. Accordingly, in this case we can talk about a violation of the Constitution of the RSFSR, and not the latest one. And I don’t remember cases when the Constitutional Court dealt with the resolution of such historical issues related to documents that have not been in force for a long time,” he said. However, according to the expert, the Constitutional Court can give a “political and legal assessment” of the transfer of Crimea in 1954 in order to “close this issue forever.”