Ilya Nikolaevich Strekalov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Free Researcher, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“Letters to power” of Soviet Citizens During the Creation of the Constitution of the USSR in 1977: “Breaking” the Template and Unexpected “Revelations”
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-6-12
The article is devoted to the analysis of non-standard appeals of the Soviet citizens about the structure of the state and society in the 1960s–1970s in the “letters to power”. This subject of research was considered in connection with the constitutional reform, e.g. the process of creating the third Constitution of the USSR, officially held from 1962 to 1977. The work draws attention to the non-standard approach of Soviet citizens to the creation of a new Basic Law of the country, to discuss not only socio-economic, political and other issues that were of particular interest to them. Citizens’ letters to the Constitutional Commission, considered by employees of the apparatus of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, as well as letters from the sub-department of letters of the General Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU were studied. Through the introduction of these sources into scientific circulation, it is possible to expand the ideas of researchers about the limits of thinking, creativity and the variety of approaches to constitutional reform. Once again, the analysis of constitutional correspondence indicates the impossibility of applying certain concepts and terms in relation to the entire Soviet society as a whole, testifies in favor of the existence of differences in Soviet society, the desire of a number of Soviet citizens to abandon standard appeals to power and even their commitment to “revelation” in dialogue with it.
Publishing: 28/12/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 14/04/2022
How to cite: Strekalov I.N. “Letters to power” of Soviet Citizens During the Creation of the Constitution of the USSR in 1977: “Breaking” the Template and Unexpected “Revelations” // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 6 (26), pp. 154–163. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-6-12.pdf]
The article was prepared as part of the RFBR grant project No. 20-09-00218 “Practices of Interaction Between Government and Society in the Late Soviet Period (1956–1985)”.
Links: Issue 6 2022
Keywords: Constitution; Soviet society; Soviet Union; N.S. Khrushchev; L.I. Brezhnev; different thoughts (raznomyslie)