Decree on the Abolition of Estates and Civil Ranks

Last updated

The Decree on the Abolition of Estates and Civil Ranks was a decree approved by the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies at its meeting on November 23, 1917 and agreed to by the Council of People's Commissars on November 24, 1917. Published on November 25, 1917 in the Newspaper of the Provisional Workers and Peasants Government and Izvestia , [1] on December 21, 1917 published in the Assembly of the Laws and Regulations of the Workers and Peasants Government. [2] The decree contained a provision (Article No. 7) on the entry into force "from the date of its publication".

Contents

The decree was intended to abolish the estates and estate legal instruments — classes, titles and civil ranks of the Russian Empire on the territory of Soviet Russia, to introduce the legal equality of all citizens of the new state.

History

Before the October Revolution, in the Russian Empire there was an institute of allegiance, which enshrined the legal inequality of the subjects, in many ways it has developed in the feudal Middle Ages.

By 1917, the subjects of the Russian Empire were subdivided into several categories (classes) with a special legal status:

Imperial legislation related to the belonging to one or another category of subjects by very significant differences in rights and duties. For example, four groups of natural subjects were divided into persons of taxable and non-taxable status. Persons of non-taxable status (noblemen and honorary citizens) enjoyed freedom of movement and received indefinite passports to live throughout the Russian Empire; persons of the taxable state (burghers and peasants) did not have such rights. [3] Belonging to the estate was inherited, the transition from one class to another was rather difficult.

The decree contained the following basic provisions:

1. All the estates and class divisions of citizens that existed before in Russia, the estate privileges and restrictions, the estate organizations and institutions, as well as all civil ranks are abolished.
2. Any titles (nobleman, merchant, tradesman, peasant, etc., princely, county titles, etc.) and the name of civilian officials (secret, state and other advisers) are destroyed and one common name for the entire Russian population is established — citizens of the Russian Republic.

According to article 3 of the decree, the property of the noble-class institutions, merchant and petty-bourgeois societies was transferred to the respective local and city governments.

Characteristic and significance

Decree Abolishing Classes and Civil Ranks abolished estates and estate legal instruments — classes, titles and civilian ranks of the Russian Empire on the territory of Soviet Russia, and also introduced the concept of Russian citizenship. For example, on its basis, on April 5, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a Decree "On the Acquisition of the Rights of Russian Citizenship", [4] which allowed an foreigner living within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to become a Russian citizen.

The decree affected all subsequent legislation of the RSFSR and the USSR on citizenship.

See also

Related Research Articles

The ten years 1917–1927 saw a radical transformation of the Russian Empire into a socialist state, the Soviet Union. Soviet Russia covers 1917–1922 and Soviet Union covers the years 1922 to 1991. After the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), the Bolsheviks took control. They were dedicated to a version of Marxism developed by Vladimir Lenin. It promised the workers would rise, destroy capitalism, and create a socialist society under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The awkward problem, regarding Marxist revolutionary theory, was the small proletariat, in an overwhelmingly peasant society with limited industry and a very small middle class. Following the February Revolution in 1917 that deposed Nicholas II of Russia, a short-lived provisional government gave way to Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. The Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (RCP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian nobility</span> Upper class in Russian society before 1917

The Russian nobility or dvoryanstvo arose in the Middle Ages. In 1914, it consisted of approximately 1,900,000 members, out of a total population of 138,200,000. Up until the February Revolution of 1917, the Russian noble estates staffed most of the Russian government and possessed a self-governing body, the Assembly of the Nobility.

A People's Commissariat was a structure in the Soviet state from 1917–1946 which functioned as the central executive body in charge of managing a particular field of state activity or a separate sector of the national economy; analogue of the ministry. As a rule, a People's Commissariat was headed by a People's Commissar, which is part of the government – the Council of People's Commissars of the appropriate level.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Podpolkovnik</span> Military rank

Podpolkovnik is a military rank in Slavic and nearby countries which corresponds to the lieutenant colonel in the English-speaking states and military.

In Latvia, Russians have been the largest ethnic minority in the country for the last two centuries. The number of Russians in Latvia more than quadrupled during the Soviet occupation of Latvia when the size of the community grew from 8.8% of the total population in 1935 (206,499) to 34.0% in 1989 (905,515). It started to decrease in size again after Latvia regained independence in 1991 falling to 23.4% at the beginning of 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Government reform of Peter the Great</span> Reforms in Russia (1696–1725)

The government reforms of Peter I aimed to modernize the Tsardom of Russia based on Western European models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belarusian nationality law</span>

Belarusian nationality law regulates the manner in which one acquires, or is eligible to acquire, Belarusian nationality, citizenship. Belarusian citizenship is membership in the political community of the Republic of Belarus.

Social estates in the Russian Empire were denoted by the term soslovie (sosloviye), which approximately corresponds to the notion of the estate of the realm. The system of sosloviyes was a peculiar system of social groups in the history of the Russian Empire. In Russian language the terms "сословие" and "состояние" were used interchangeably.

The Council of Labor and Defense, first established as the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense in November 1918, was an agency responsible for the central management of the economy and production of military materiel in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later in the Soviet Union. During the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922 the council served as an emergency "national economic cabinet", issuing emergency decrees in an effort to sustain industrial production for the Red Army amidst economic collapse. In 1920–23 it existed on the rights of the commission of the Russian Sovnarkom and after 1923 of the Soviet Council of People's Commissariats. The Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union abolished the council on 28 April 1937. Its functions were split between the Economic Council of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union and the Defense Committee of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union.

<i>Peregrinus</i> (Roman) Provincial inhabitant of the Roman Empire

In the early Roman Empire, from 30 BC to AD 212, a peregrinus was a free provincial subject of the Empire who was not a Roman citizen. Peregrini constituted the vast majority of the Empire's inhabitants in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. In AD 212, all free inhabitants of the Empire were granted citizenship by the Constitutio Antoniniana, with the exception of the dediticii, people who had become subject to Rome through surrender in war, and freed slaves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian citizenship law</span>

Russian citizenship law details the conditions by which a person holds citizenship of Russia. The primary law governing citizenship requirements is the federal law "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation", which came into force on 1 July 2002.

The government of the Soviet Union followed an unofficial policy of state atheism, aiming to gradually eliminate religious belief within its borders. While it never officially made religion illegal, the state nevertheless made great efforts to reduce the prevalence of religious belief within society. To this end, at various times in its history it engaged in anti-religious persecutions of varying intensity and methodology. Believers were never officially attacked for being believers, but they were officially attacked for real or perceived political opposition to the state and to its policies. These attacks, however, in the broader ideological context, were meant to serve the ultimate goal of eliminating religion, and the perceived political opposition acted as a legal pretext to carry this out. Thus, although the Soviet Union was officially a secular state and guaranteed freedom of religion in its constitutions, in practice believers suffered discrimination and were widely attacked for promoting religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Passport system in the Soviet Union</span>

The passport system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an organisational framework of the single national civil registration system based upon identification documents, and managed in accordance with the laws by ministries and other governmental bodies authorised by the Constitution of the USSR in the sphere of internal affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lenin's First and Second Government</span> Heads of Soviet ministries

Following the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin became the head of the new government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. It was known officially as the Council of People's Commissars, effectively his cabinet. Ten of the council's fourteen members would later be killed during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1918 Constitution of Soviet Russia</span> First constitution of Soviet Russia

The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic from 1918 was the first republican constitution of Russia. It put into the law the results of the October Revolution of 1917 and gave the name to the state: the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. This constitution, which was ratified soon after the Declaration Of Rights Of The Working And Exploited People, formally recognized the working class as the ruling class of Russia according to the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, therein making the Russian Soviet Republic the world's first constitutionally socialist state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">All-Russian Congress of Soviets</span> Supreme governing body of the RSFSR (1918–1937)

The All-Russian Congress of Soviets evolved from 1917 to become the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 until 1936, effectively. The 1918 Constitution of the Russian SFSR mandated that Congress shall convene at least twice a year, with the duties of defining the principles of the Soviet Constitution and ratifying peace treaties. The October Revolution ousted the provisional government of 1917, making the Congress of Soviets the sole, and supreme governing body. This Congress was not the same as the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union which governed the whole Soviet Union after its creation in 1922.

Serfdom has a long history that dates to ancient times.

Merchant guild was a form of organization of merchants in the Russian Empire. Since the late 18th century, membership in a guild was virtually compulsory for a trader to have the formal status of merchant. The guild system ended formally in 1917.

Soviet nationality and citizenship law controlled who was considered a citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and by extension, each of the Republics of the Soviet Union, during that country's existence. The nationality laws were only in rough form from about 1917 to 1923, taking more definite form in 1924. There were several major changes in the nationality law, especially in 1931, 1938, and 1978. Soviet law originally expanded the bounds of jus sanguinis and citizenship by residence more than was common among European countries, before tending to gradually retract from that over time. Soviet citizenship law was also used as a political tool to expand the number of Soviet citizens globally, increase military conscription pools, and punish dissenters or even entire ethnic groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies</span>

The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was held on November 7–9, 1917, in Smolny, Petrograd. It was convened under the pressure of the Bolsheviks on the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the First Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

References

  1. ↑ Valk, Sigismund (1957–1997). Decree Abolishing Classes and Civil Ranks. Politizdat. ISBN   5-250-00390-7.
  2. ↑ Collection of Laws and government regulations for 1917-1918. Administrative Department of the People's Commissars of the USSR. 1942.
  3. ↑ Kutafin, Oleg (1996). Constitutional law of Russia. Lawyer.
  4. ↑ On the Acquisition of the Rights of Russian Citizenship
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.