ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the first year’s experience of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics federal legislative system and argues that the new legislature indeed proved to be a “school of democracy”—but for the Soviet leadership as well as citizenry. Critics of the emerging presidential system pointed to the federal legislative bodies, the Supreme Soviet and Congress of People’s Deputies, as prime culprits. The Constitutional Amendments Law expressly stated as its primary aim the “development of socialist democracy, self-government by the people.” The Supreme Soviet rules expressly recognized deputies’ lawmaking primacy by revoking the presidium’s power to issue binding legislative norms. The major goal of Soviet legislative reform was to create effective bodies capable of producing an appropriate statutory framework for successful accomplishment of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika program. Equally importantly, the federal legislature offered a powerful illustration of a genuinely democratic institution sacrificed on the altar of national emergency.
