The State Duma remembered the 1993 elections and the adoption of the Constitution

The State Duma on Tuesday began its plenary session from speeches by representatives of factions dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the Constitution. Their assessments of the current Basic Law were mostly positive (only the communists criticized the authorities for not taking their amendments into account during the 2020 reform), while the deputies did not forget to praise their own parties for their great contribution to the constitutional process. And LDPR Chairman Leonid Slutsky and State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin recalled the special role of President Vladimir Putin in this process.

The first to rise to the podium was the Chairman of the Central Committee Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov began his speech with gratitude to the participants of the special military operation (SVO), and then transported his thoughts to 1993. And these thoughts turned out to be not very festive: “I experienced all the fear and horror after they shot the parliament, dragged through the Constitution, organized elections not according to the law… But despite this, we went to them, because it was necessary to save the country that NATO wanted boot into the abyss of history.” According to the memoirs of the communist leader, the Brezhnev Constitution “was recognized by all humanity as the most perfect document, guaranteeing all conceivable and inconceivable rights,” but Yeltsin’s “was written in Austria, France and America,” and yet it “did not save either from default or from Chechen massacre, for nothing.”

And when in 2020 “the president decided to correct the situation,” the communists took an active part in the constitutional reform, but the authorities did not listen to their key proposals, Mr. Zyuganov complained: “We made 15 basic amendments. They returned full sovereignty to us… Our amendments said: all mineral resources should work for everyone, and not for the pockets of the oligarchs. We would return the normal retirement age and guarantee free education for children.” Later, at a press conference in TASS, he recalled that the communists are working on their own draft Constitution, which includes 15 amendments that were not adopted in 2020.

Leader LDPR Leonid Slutsky admitted that he did not want “on the day of the 30th anniversary of the Constitution and the 30th anniversary of the victory of the LDPR in the State Duma elections engage in polemics,” but immediately took up it, turning to Gennady Zyuganov:

“Let’s remember the Stalinist Constitution: it did not prevent the executions. This platform is for telling the truth, and not for pre-election hype.”

The words of the liberal democrat that “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin returned the country to the fold of the Constitution” were greeted by the Duma with thunderous applause. Mr. Slutsky also noted that the Constitution in 1993 was necessary, and once again recalled the “incredible victory” of the LDPR in the 1993 elections: it “raised a fundamentally new political party into a higher orbit,” which “is still at the center of growth today.” .

Speaker from “A Just Russia – For the Truth” the head of the Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education, Sergei Kabyshev, said that, despite the initial pessimistic forecasts, the Constitution “stood and took place” and, moreover, “became a guarantee of the preservation of our sociocultural identity based on spiritual and moral values.” But it’s too early to rejoice, the Socialist Revolutionary warned, the country has a long way to go before the norms of the Basic Law, which define the Russian Federation as a social state, are actually implemented.

Leader “New people” Alexey Nechaev called the hero of the day “one of the youngest and most progressive constitutions in the world”: “There are countries that rely on the constitutions of past centuries. Great Britain, which loves to teach us, has no constitution at all. In some countries, the constitution states the priority of one nation or political force over others. The Constitution of the Soviet Union also suffered from this. The Russian Constitution is democratic and humane in comparison.” The deputy also assessed the 2020 amendments positively, but was wary of recent proposals to include a ban on abortion or the death penalty in the Constitution, or to enshrine the state ideology in it.

“Colleagues, let’s leave the Basic Law alone!” — the leader of the “New People” called on the parliamentarians.

Mr. Nechaev also called his party’s entry into the Duma following the 2021 elections “another evidence that we are moving in the right direction,” since parliament “needs renewal.”

Head of the faction “United Russia” Vladimir Vasiliev spoke about the consolidation that United Russia and the opposition showed in relation to the Northern Military District and the admission of new regions to the Russian Federation. In addition, he recalled that the constitutional amendments of 2020 strengthened the role of parliament, and cited the implementation of the people’s program of United Russia as an example of the effective work of parliamentarians in certain areas.

The last speaker on the “anniversary” topic was Vyacheslav Volodin. He said that the 1993 Constitution “played an important role in stabilizing the situation in the country and preserving territorial integrity,” but at first its provisions “were empty, they needed to be filled with specific content.” The situation began to change after Vladimir Putin was elected president in 2000, and in its current form the Constitution “guarantees support for people in any situation,” the speaker is sure. Finally, he congratulated his colleagues on Constitution Day and Parliamentarism Day, noting that “30 years is a small age, but sufficient to ask questions and carry out analysis and work on mistakes.”

Ksenia Veretennikova