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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 52-6-111
TITLE:             The New Constitution of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
BY:                George Cioranescu and René de Flers
DATE:              1978-6-28
COUNTRY:           Romania
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD Background Report/140

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RFERL

RADIO FREE EUROPE Research

RAD Background Report/140
(Romania)
28 June 1978

THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE MOLDAVIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC
By George Cioranescu and René de Flers

Summary: Although the Moldavian SSR's new Constitution,
adopted on 15 April 1978, is similar to the other Soviet
republican Constitutions in broad lines and conforms to
the Soviet Union1 s pattern, nevertheless it has some
peculiarities due to the Moldavian Republic's specific conditions
of historical development. These distinctions appear
especially in the sections dealing with administrative matters,
such as the changes in the number and names of the counties,
the increase in the number of urban areas designated as
cities, the change in the crest of the republic, etc..

The new Constitution grants Moldavian citizens the
possibility of using their mother tongue in education, the legal
system, and some cultural publications, but makes no mention
that the "Moldavian" language is a state language. Other,
purely formal stipulations -- such as the republic's right
to appoint its own diplomatic representatives or to secede
from the USSR; the citizens' right to free speech, press,
assembly, etc. -- remain. These and other, more positive
provisions, however, probably will be applied rarely, if at
all, in practice, and the official policy will most likely
continue to encourage the trends toward political-economic
centralization, and toward assimilating the ethnic Romanians
of the Moldavian SSR.

		+ + +

At its Extraordinary Session of 15 April 1978, the Supreme Soviet
of the Moldavian Socialist Republic unanimously adopted a new
republican Constitution, to replace the old Constitution of 12 January 1941,
including its subsequent amendments. The new Constitution consists of
a Preamble and 172 articles, and was prepared as part of the whole
project of adjusting all 15 republican Constitutions to the new
Constitution of the Soviet Union of October 1977. The Constitution of the

This material was prepared for the use of the editors and policy staff of Radio Free Europe.

[Page 2]

Soviet Union has been and will continue to serve as an obligatory
model for all republican Constitutions, which simply lift entire
chapters from the Fundamental Law of the USSR, merely replacing the Soviet
Union by the name of the republic in question.

The campaign to educate the Moldavian citizens -- to help them
become acquainted with the provisions and spirit of the Soviet
Constitution -- began as far back as June 194O, immediately after the Soviets
occupied Bessarabia, by means of a mass political campaign among the
local population conducted through lectures and circles for the study
of the Constitution. Over 32,000 circles -- including 2,385 in
Chisinau alone -- for the study of the Soviet Constitution and of the
Electoral Law were organized throughout Soviet Moldavia, and about
36,000 propaganda workers were engaged in the effort.

This drive and the holding of the first elections for the Supreme
Soviet of the Moldavian SSR on 12 January 1941 to adopt the first
Constitution "of the reunited Moldavian people" -- as Soviet historian
Lazarev put it -- met with difficulties "arising from the specific
conditions in the recently liberated territories," namely, the existence
of "exploiting classes," which had not yet been liquidated, the
existence of a large number of Churches and monasteries, and of religious
sects with large memberships. [1] According to Lazarev, the
"bourgeois-nationalist elements," the clergy, and the believers tried to
influence the electorate, "slandering" the Soviet system and making
attempts to put up their own candidates. The first Constitution of
the Moldavian SSR, based on the principles and provisions of the
Constitution of the Soviet Union, was adopted at the first session of
the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR. The "Moldavian" (ethnic
Romanian) deputies represented 56 per cent of the total number of
representatives, compared to a "Moldavian" population that made up 65
per cent of all inhabitants of the republic.

Although the republican Constitutions are similar to each other
in general outline and all conform to the pattern of the all-union
document, nevertheless, there are some differences among them due to
the specific features of each republic or the special conditions of
its historical development. These distinctions appear more clearly
in the sections dealing with administrative matters, such as Sections
III and IX of the 1978 Moldavian Constitution. The number of the
districts has been reduced from the 40 mentioned in Article 18 of the old
Constitution to 36 listed in Article 77 of the current one. The names
of 12 districts have been omitted from the new Constitution: Ataci,
Balti, Bender, Basarabi, Bratusani, Bulboca, Carpineni, Lipca, Olonesti,
Taraclia, Tiraspol, and Tarnov. On the other hand, the names of eight
new districts appear: Anenii Noi, Briceni, Grigoriopol, Donduseni,
Cantemir, Kutuzov, Slobozia, and Suvorov. Presumedly, these merely
reflect changes of name or the redrawing of some administrative
territories in the Moldavian SSR that resulted in the absorption of four
districts in the remaining eight, since, according to Article 14 (a) of
the old Constitution, the frontier between Socialist Moldavia and any
other union republic can be modified on the basis of mutual agreement.

------------------------------

(1) A.M. Lazarev, Moldavskaia sovetskaia gosudartsvennost' i
bessarabskii vopros (Moldavian Soviet Statehood and the Bessarabian
Problem), Chisinau: Cartea Moldoveneasca Publishing House, 1974, p. 608.

[Page 3]

Another administrative change has increased the number of cities
directly subordinate to the state administration of the Moldavian SSR
from four (Chisinau, Balti, Bender, and Tiraspol) to nine, by placing
the following urban centers in this category: Cahul, Orhei, Rabnita,
Soroca, and Ungheni.

The new Constitution has also made a slight change in the crest
of the republic, the hammer and sickle surmounted by sunrays and
framed by ears of corn. The coat of arms has now been "finished off"
with a garland of grapes and fruit -- products which, along with grains,
represent Socialist Moldavia's greatest agriculture wealth.
Viticulture is so crucial to the economy of the republic that frost damage
to the vineyards in the winter of 1976 caused a major shortfall in
Moldavia's plan fulfillment in 1977. [2]

The 1941 Constitution of Socialist Moldavia reflected some of
the republic's distinctive features; that arose from the substantial
differences between the levels of socioeconomic and political-cultural
development in the two regions that Stalin had "united" in 1940 --
Bessarabia (part of Romania since 1918) and the Autonomous Moldavian
SSR (formed as part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1924). Thus, side by side
with the socialist sector, the existence of a private capitalist sector,
represented by individual peasants and artisans, small private
industrial and commercial enterprises, was recognized in the republic. The
disappearance of the small individual peasant homesteads and the
completion of co-operativizing the artisans removed the initial economic
distinctions between Socialist Moldavia and the other Soviet socialist
republics, a change also reflected in the Constitutions. Nevertheless,
the wording of some chapters and sections varies from one Constitution
to another. The Preamble of the new Constitution of the Moldavian SSR,
for example, is shorter than that of the Constitution of the Soviet
Union, and there is no mention of "a new historic community of people
(which) has been formed -- the Soviet people." The statement that
the people of the republic recognized itself "an inalienable part of
the whole Soviet people," which appears in the Constitutions of the
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and of the Ukrainian and
Azerbaijan SSRs -- thus seemingly making the legal right of each
republic to secede null and void -- is also missing. [3]

The Preamble of the Constitution of Socialist Moldavia merely pays
homage to the October Revolution and to the Constitution of the Soviet
Union? it emphasizes the immense help granted by the Great Russians
and mentions "the state unity of the Soviet people" in the Soviet Union,
"which closely unites all nations and nationalities, in order to build
communism jointly." Emphasis is therefore laid on "the nations and
nationalities," which are placed on a more or less equal footing,
possibly to play down the position of the majority nation in the republic
bearing its name.

------------------------------

(2) See Ann Sheehy, "Economic Performance of the Union Republics in
the First Two Years of the 10th Five-Year Plan," Radio Liberty
Research Report/60, 20 March 1978.

(3) See Ann Sheehy, "The New Republican Constitution," Radio Liberty
Research Report/82, 18 April 1978.

[Page 4]

In accordance with the provisions of Article 34, the citizens of
the Moldavian SSR are given "the possibility of using their mother
tongue and the languages of the other peoples of the Soviet Union."
Therefore, there is no mention of a right, but merely of a possibility,
just as there is no mention of directly identifying the "Moldavian"
language (Romanian written in the Cyrillic alphabet) as the first
language in use in the Moldavian Republic, but merely as the mother
tongue of some of its citizens. This language is thus placed on an
equal footing with the approximately 130 other languages spoken in the
Soviet Union. [4] The Constitutions of only three union republics --
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia -- mention the language of the
titular nationality as the state language. Moscow made a concession to
national sentiment in these three cases only in the face of public
pressure. [5] The fact that this right has been granted to the three
Transcaucasian republics may have made some "Moldavians" more concerned
over the lack of official primacy of their language in their republic.
Nonetheless, at present the "Moldavian" language thus has merely a
limited official role, used in education, the legal system, and in
some cultural publications. Article 43 provides "the possibility of
school education in the mother tongue." Once again, however, it is
the possibility, not any specific right that is mentioned, and the
use of the term "Moldavian" language is again avoided, preference
obviously given to the more general wording of "mother tongue."

A Reuter correspondent noted that "the Russian language dominates
across the republic, and Moldavian fathers cheerfully admit to sending
their children to schools operating in the Russian language to give
them a better chance of getting top-level jobs when they become
adults," [6] thus reflecting a trend among many other nationalities
of the Soviet Union.

A New China News Agency correspondent provides a harsher account:

In their efforts to russify Moldavia, the old tsars tried
in every way possible to destroy Moldavian culture.
According to Volume 28 of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1954),
under the pressure of tsarist authorities the
Moldavian language schools, which had existed in the first half of
the 19th century, were closed, and Russian was proclaimed
the official language. The new tsars made use of similar
practices when they imposed Russian and stifled the use
of Moldavian under the banner of the two-language system.
According to the report of the first secretary of the
Moldavian Communist Party CC published in the daily
Sovetsakaia Moldaviia (27 April 1973), Russian was to be
taught at all educational levels -- from kindergartens to
institutions of higher education. The magazine Sovetskaia
Etnografiia (No. 5, 1975) called for the popularization of
the Russian language among the inhabitants of the Moldavian
Republic. This policy condemns, the Moldavian-language

------------------------------

(4) TASS, in English, 10 May 1978.

(5) See Ann Sheehy, "The National Languages and the New Constitutions
of the Transcaucasian Republics," Radio Liberty Research Report/97,
3 May 1978.

(6) Reuter (Chisinau), 19 December 1975.

[Page 5]

schools to an ever more all-encompassing decline. But
even the first secretary of the Moldavian CP CC could not
help admitting that there has been a certain amount of
success in national education in some areas of Moldavia. [7]

Chapter 3 of the new Moldavian Constitution, entitled Social
Development and Culture, does not mention the right to a "Moldavian" culture,
or even the possibility of having one. There exists a mass circulation
Romanian-language newspaper published 300 times per year, called Moldova
Socialista (which also appears in a Russian-language version), just as
there are youth, party, and literary periodicals printed in "Moldavian."
But the over-all trends in Socialist Moldavia were presented, if in a
predictably hyperbolic fashion, by the New China News Agency in the
following terms:

The number of Moldavian-language periodicals is diminishing.
According to the Soviet economic statistical yearbook, the
number of Moldavian-language dailies decreased by 50 per
cent during the 1960-1974 period, while the proportion of
books written in the Moldavian-language has dropped from
64 per cent of all books published in the Moldavian
Republic in 1950 to 33 per cent in 1976. The Soviet
revisionist authorities have even permitted themselves to forbid
the use of Moldavian terms, denouncing them as attempts
to replace unified internationalist scientific terminology
by terms entirely alien to the nature of the mutual
language relations among the Soviet peoples.

In its 27 September 1974 broadcast of the program
"Answering Our TV Audience," the all-union Soviet TV station
revealed that TV viewers have complained that the
indigenous language is virtually no longer used in Moldavia.
The book, The Results of the Census of the Entire Soviet
Union, published in the Soviet Union in 1970, admitted that
the number of Moldavians considering Moldavian as their
mother tongue has dropped in the 1959-1970 period. In
order to speed up russification and to increase their
domination over Moldavia, the Soviet revisionists have
transferred, under the pretext of reshuffling cadres, a large
number of Moldavians away from their native parts. [8]

In Socialist Moldavia legal proceedings are conducted in
"Moldavian," in Russian, or even in the language of the majority of the
population in a given locality. This provision, contained in Article 158,
and similar to that in the old Article 84, corresponds to articles to
be found in all other Constitutions of the Soviet Union. A codicil to
this provision reads that any person concerned with a law suit who
does not know the language in which the judicial proceedings are
conducted is guaranteed the right to become fully acquainted with the
evidence and all other pertinent material by being provided with copies
translated into his own language, and, if taking active part in the
case, to have the services of an interpreter, and the right to address
the court in his mother tongue. These rights, granted to every person

------------------------------

(7) Radio Peking, in Romanian, 20 February 1976.

(8) Ibid.

[Page 6]

concerned with a law suit, pertain only to individuals, irrespective of
their ethnic origin, but not to any ethnic group as a whole. Such
provisions can be found, however, in more or less similar form in the
current laws of all countries; for example, in the Romanian Penal Code. [9]

The Moldavian SSR is a sovereign state (Article 68) which enjoys --
at least in principle -- certain prerogatives of sovereignty.
According to Article 73, it has the right to enter into relations with
foreign states, to conduct negotiations with them, and to exchange
diplomatic and consular representatives; finally, it has the right to join
international organizations. The Moldavian Republic has not yet,
however, begun to apply this article (corresponding to Article 15(a) of
the old Constitution) in actual practice: it has not appointed
diplomatic representatives to any foreign capital, nor has it joined any
international organization. One can hardly, therefore, speak of a
Moldavian foreign policy. As a matter of fact, Article 28 of the new
Constitution emphatically specifies that "in its foreign policy, the
Moldavian SSR will be guided by the goals, tasks, and principles of
the foreign policy established by the Constitution of the Soviet Union,
which means that, in fact, the all-union authorities retain their
prerogatives so far as foreign policy is concerned.
 
Another right of sovereignty, the right to secede, contained in
Article 69 (corresponding to the old Article 14), states that "the
Moldavian SSR retains the right freely to withdraw from the Soviet
Union."

But since "the sovereign rights of the Moldavian SSR are protected
by the Soviet Union" (Article 75), exercise of them by the Moldavian
Republic itself is illusory. At the Extraordinary Seventh Session of
the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (4 October 1977), Leonid Brezhnev said
that a new historic community -- the Soviet people -- has emerged in
the USSR. Brezhnev added that some comrade, therefore, proposed that
the concept of a unified Soviet nation be adopted and written into
the new Constitution, thus putting an end to the formal sovereignty of
the union republics, and depriving them of the right to secede from
the USSR, and of the right to engage in independent foreign relations.
Although this extreme suggestion was not adopted and was attacked by
Brezhnev as "erroneous," the attribute of sovereignty in conducting
foreign relations by the republics, included in their Constitutions,
has remained a dead letter or is simply a utilitarian provision,
designed to give the Soviet Union larger representation in some
international organizations, such as the United Nations.

The Moldavian SSR has more comprehensive powers so far as
domestic sovereignty goes. It has the right to prepare and adopt its own
Constitution, to pass laws, to maintain order, to create and run
republican and local bodies, to establish a unified socioeconomic
policy, to run the economy, public education, and cultural agencies, to
protect public health, etc. (Article 71). But its new Constitution
does deprive Socialist Moldavia of one of its most important -- if
unused -- theoretical rights, contained in Article 15 (b) of the old
Constitution, which stated: "The Moldavian SSR has its own republican
military units." Article 29 of the new Moldavian Constitution

------------------------------

(9) Buletinul Oficial No. 58-59, 26 April 1973.

[Page 7]

transfers the right to defense to the armed forces of the Soviet Union,
which the Moldavian SSR helps to equip and train, according to Article
30. This major reduction in regional rights does not affect Socialist
Moldavia alone, for all the other union republics are also in the same
boat.

The all-union authorities now also have quite noticeably greater
rights in the economic field as well, for emphasis is put on the fact
that "the plan for economic and social development of the Moldavian
SSR is a component part of the States Plan for the Economic and Social
Development of the Soviet Union" (Article 139) . There was no such
phrase in the old Moldavian Constitution. The same stipulation is now
made regarding the state budget of the Moldavian SSR, which "is a
component part of the unified state budget of the Soviet Union" (Article
145) . Once again, these are not changes made in the Moldavian
Constitution alone -- they can be found in all the other republican
constitutions too.

Chapter 6, on the Rights, Freedom, and Fundamental Duties of the
Citizens of the Moldavian SSR, is one of the most extensive and
detailed chapters in the new Constitution. It prompted the prominent
Russian dissident Pyotr Grigorenko to say (obviously referring to the
Constitution of the Soviet Union): "The Constitution guarantees the
right to go to the movies, but avoids the crucial issues." [10] The
Constitution of Socialist Moldavia does mention: the right to work,
to rest, to protection of health, to a guaranteed income in old age,
to housing, to education, to make use of all cultural facilities, the
freedom of scientific, technological, and artistic creativity, the
right to participate in the management of political affairs, freedom
of speech, press, assembly, and conscience, the right to protect the
family, respect for the person, inviolability of the domicile, etc.
(Articles 37 through 67). The Moldavian Constitution does not, of
course, include among these numerous rights the right to strike, and
it especially does not provide the right to appeal, i.e., allowing a
citizen to challenge any infringement upon his Constitutional rights.
On the other hand, it does state that "recourse to these rights and
freedoms by the citizens should not harm the interests of society and
the state, or the rights of other citizens" (Article 37). But, under
the pretext of defending the interests of society and the state, all
kinds of abuses and infringements of civil rights have been committed
in the past.

The lack of acknowledgment o	f human rights in the all-union and
republican Constitutions of the USSR has aroused a certain amount of
criticism in the West. Since the problem of human rights remains one
of the fundamental issues in the contemporary world, and has been the
subject of international discussions at Helsinki and Belgrade, Brezhnev
counterattacked against these Western critics of the Soviet
Constitution, maintaining that their criticisms of the Soviet handling of the
human rights issue are "stereotyped inventions, shameless fabrications,
and blatant lies, which are a part of the general anticommunist
crusade." [11]

------------------------------

(10) UPI (Moscow), 8 October 1977.

(11) TASS, 4 October 1977. The speech in question was carried live
over Radio Moscow and Moscow TV and delivered before the Supreme
Soviet of the USSR.

[Page 8]

Although it lacks originality, the new Constitution of the
Moldavian SSR will be proclaimed as the foundation of the republic's
sociopolitical order and will govern the relationship between the citizen
and the state, for it will represent the ultimate legal authority.
Very likely, many of its positive provisions will be applied rarely,
if at all, in practice, just as it may be supposed that official policy
will continue to encourage the trends toward centralization and
assimilation, to the detriment of the national individuality of the ethnic
Romanians of the Moldavian SSR.

- end -

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