Disenfranchisement as a Constitutional Legal Liability Tool in the Early Soviet Period of the USSR History

Introduction. According to the RSFSR Constitution adopted in 1918, certain individuals and groups of the population who posed a threat to the Soviet power were deprived of their voting rights. Thus, in Soviet Russia, there appeared a group of people with politicaly and socially impaired rights, the so-called “disenfranchised”, which existed until 1936. Although in the scholarly literature of the Soviet period, the “disenfranchised” remained beyond the scope of scientific interest, in the post-Soviet period, the number of publications addressing this topic became huge. However, in the frame of the historical-legal approach, the following issues remained insufficiently studied: the relationship between the legal provisions regarding the disenfranchised persons enshrined in the Fundamental Law and then detailed in the directives of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, as well as in the by-law regulatory legal acts; the transformation of the disenfranchisement laws in the 1920s and first half of the 1930s; and implementation of the discriminatory norms towards disenfranchised into the sectoral laws. Based on the above, the aim of the article is to study the disenfranchisement as a tool of constitutional legal liability in Soviet Russia in 1918–1936.
Materials and Methods. The empirical basis of the study was formed by a set of legal documents of the 1918–1936 period, as well as by the published and archival documents of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (РГА СПИ /RSA SPH), the State Archive of the Krasnodar Territory (ГА КК/SA KT), the Taganrog branch of the State Archive of the Rostov Region (ТФ ГАРО/TB SARR). The research methodology included the general scientific and specific scientific methods, such as: historical-genetic, comparative-historical, historical-legal, legalistic (dogmatic) methods.
Results. It has been proved that the majority of people deprived of their voting rights under the RSFSR Constitutions of 1918 and 1925 were not those who had violated the Soviet Law or legally incapable (incapacitated) members of the society, but rather those who had the oppositional views and posed potential danger to the Bolshevik regime: the ones exploiting other peoples’ labor, living on unearned income, engaged in commerce, as well as the clergy, former police officers, gendarmes, and the like. Thus, the Soviet state had legitimized discrimination against certain groups of the population for the sake of struggling to build socialism. During the 1920s, new categories of the population (former White Guard officers, White Army officials, family members of the disenfranchised, etc.) were added to the disenfranchised persons, as a result, the number of disenfranchised reached 3.7 million by the end of the 1920s. Disenfranchisement not only prevented citizens from participating in local government elections, but greatly complicated their whole life.
Discussion and Conclusion. Disenfranchisement, as stipulated in the RSFSR Constitutions of 1918 and 1925, can rightfully be characterized as a tool of constitutional legal liability. Within the disenfranchisement laws of the 1920s and first half of the 1930s, the severity of sanctions applied to the disenfranchised could vary significantly depending on the changes in the internal Bolsheviks’ policy. Eventually, targeted pressure of the state on the disenfranchised persons led to a dramatic decline in their numbers, which allowed the legislators to abandon this tool of constitutional legal liability and no longer include it in the Constitution of 1936

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