ABSTRACT
I suggest here my interpretation of sham nature of democratic institutions under Stalinism – elections, constitution, soviets, and the Supreme Soviet – focusing on the constitution of 1936 but in larger historical national context. I argue that Stalin and the government succumbed to self-deception about successful socialist transformation of economy and society by the mid-1930s. They were dogmatically attached to Lenin’s vision of future socialist state (in the State and Revolution and later works) and subsequent full-fledged democracy, including Lenin’s critique of bourgeois parliamentarianism and his dreams about future forms of representative institutions. However, clash of this utopian thinking with reality on the ground and resulting conditions of recurring crisis made Soviet democracy a sham. The 1930s developments are placed in historical context of nominal Russian constitutionalism in the twentieth century from the token nature of 1906 reform exemplified in the first Dumas. In long term, this token nature is explained by duality of Russian life: a gap between representation and practice, between an ideal/intention (modernization by Peter the Great or Stalin) and pressure of reality in a backward country. This gap was probably a product, among other factors, of belated and “catch-up” mode of Russian modernization.
