ABSTRACT
The process of dismantling barracks socialism, and the difficult transition to a market economy which followed this process, created the necessity for deep constitutional reforms. “The founding fathers” of the constitutional reform of 1988 tried to combine several elements of the congress system introduced by the Constitution of 1924, and some elements of North-American and French parliamentarism. Mikhail Gorbachev’s Supreme Soviet is elected by secret ballot by the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Representative institutions, which were established as a result of the reform of 1988, were condemned to political helplessness from the very moment of their creation. In fact, the transition to the presidency grew out of practical political problems. The establishment of presidential power in the Russian Republic in 1991 was of tremendous importance for the development of the presidential form of government.
