On October 7 at 2:00 p.m., a protest rally will take place on Tverskaya Street. Yesterday, an appeal by the newly elected head of the Tverskoy municipal district, where this rally will be held, was published. We are reproducing the full text of that appeal below.
Dear friends!
Forty years ago, on October 7, 1977, the final version of the Constitution (the Fundamental Law) of the USSR was adopted at the extraordinary 7th session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Article 50 of the USSR Constitution guaranteed, among other things, freedom of assembly, rallies, street processions, and demonstrations in the interests of the people. In fairness, the earlier 1936 version of the USSR Constitution also provided for these rights (Article 125).
The exercise of political freedoms was to be ensured by the state through making public buildings, streets, and squares available to workers and their organizations, through broad dissemination of information, and through access to the press, television, and radio.
Later, in 1993, the current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted. In it, the right to freedom of assembly is guaranteed by Article 31 and by Part 2 of Article 55, according to which laws abolishing or diminishing the rights and freedoms of individuals and citizens must not be enacted.
Nevertheless, laws restricting human rights and freedoms have now been adopted, ALTHOUGH under Part 3 of Article 55 of the Russian Constitution, this may be done ONLY to the extent necessary for the purposes of:
protecting the foundations of the constitutional order, morality, health, and the rights and lawful interests of others; and ensuring the country's defense and state security. Of course, first and foremost this refers to Federal Law No. 65-FZ of June 8, 2012, which introduced Article 20.2.2 into the Code of Administrative Offenses. Under this article, the “mass simultaneous presence and/or movement of citizens in public places,” if it “created obstruction to pedestrian or vehicle traffic,” constitutes an administrative offense.
The very fact that such federal laws have been adopted, along with the selective enforcement of the above-mentioned provision of the Code of Administrative Offenses and the authorities’ unjustified refusals to allow public events, takes us back to the last century, when the key rights of Soviet citizens enshrined in the fundamental law were not observed in practice. At that time, the main dissident slogan became the appeal: “Observe your own constitution.” History remembers the “Glasnost Rally” (a public protest for openness and civil rights) of December 5, 1965, during which 28 people holding signs with that slogan were detained.
For eleven years after the adoption of the 1977 Constitution, citizens could not exercise the right to freedom of assembly because no corresponding legal act existed. With the onset of Perestroika (the Soviet reform period of the late 1980s), public life also began to thaw. In 1986–1988, several hundred large unauthorized rallies and demonstrations took place, involving more than 35,000 people in total.
On July 28, 1988, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted the decree “On the Procedure for Organizing and Holding Assemblies, Rallies, Street Processions, and Demonstrations in the USSR.” The decree required organizers to apply for permission to the executive committee of the local Soviet of People’s Deputies.
The bright future has arrived, but it has turned out to be darker than the past, because the only thing that distinguishes today from the events of thirty years ago is that permission is now granted not by Soviets of Deputies, but by the Moscow city government. Moreover, refusals are often given without justification, and no alternative venues are offered.
In this connection, on the eve of October 7, the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of the USSR Constitution, and on behalf of the residents of the Tverskoy municipal district in Moscow, I am compelled to make an open appeal to the law enforcement and judicial authorities with a slightly revised version of a half-century-old call:
Observe OUR Constitution!
I hope that the authorities will hear me, and that the rights and interests of citizens will not be violated either this coming weekend or in the future.
Yakov Yakubovich, Head of the Tverskoy Municipal District in Moscow
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