Transformation of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic into a Union Republic: Historical-Legal and Political Aspects

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the need for a profound rethinking of the Soviet model of federalism. Studying the processes of transformation of the ASSR into the SSR makes it possible to identify the internal contradictions of Soviet national policy, within which the formally declarative sovereignty of the union republics coexisted with the rigid over-centralization of the party-state apparatus. Understanding these mechanisms is extremely important for analyzing the disintegration processes of the late 20th century and the evolution of statehood in the post-Soviet space. The source base of the study includes a set of regulatory and legal acts of the Soviet state covering the period from 1924 to 1936. The analysis is based on constitutional acts and policy documents, access to which is provided through digital resources and electronic collections of historical documents. In addition, the work uses published archival materials from thematic collections of documents on the history of state-building in Central Asia, which makes it possible to ensure the representativeness of the sample without the need to access closed collections. The methodology of the work is based on the principles of historicism, scientific objectivity, and a systematic approach. During the study, a comparative legal method was applied, which made it possible to compare the scope of legal powers of the ASSR and SSR in the areas of legislation, budget, and governance. It was established that the process of transforming the ASSR into an SSR was strictly regulated both by formal legal criteria and by political expediency. The key stage in this transformation was the adoption of the 1936 Constitution of the USSR (the so-called “Stalinist” Constitution), during the drafting of which three mandatory conditions for granting an autonomy the status of a union republic were officially formulated: geographical location — the republic had to be a peripheral one, i.e., it had to border a foreign state. The union republic formally possessed the constitutional right to freely secede from the USSR, but an autonomy geographically “trapped” within the country could not exercise this right. Ethnic factor: the nationality that gave the republic its name (the titular ethnic group) had to constitute a more or less cohesive majority of the population in that territory. Demographic factor: the population of the republic had to be at least one million people, which was considered the minimum required to maintain a fully functional state infrastructure. Based on these criteria, the Kazakh ASSR and the Kyrgyz ASSR, which had previously been part of the RSFSR, were removed from its composition and transformed into union republics (the Kazakh SSR and the Kyrgyz SSR). A similar change in status had previously occurred with the Tajik ASSR (in 1929). The transformation of the autonomous republics into union republics was a complex and ambiguous process. On the one hand, this reform had enormous historical significance for national state-building. It stimulated the formation of national managerial, scientific, and cultural personnel and laid the administrative-territorial and legal foundations for future independent states. For regional elites, the elevation of their status to the union level meant strengthening their influence within the all-union hierarchy and expanding their control over local economic resources.