The draft Declaration was written by Vladimir Lenin. The Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People was one of the first and most important constitutional acts of the Soviet Republic, which was aimed at legislating the achievements of the October Revolution and proclaiming the basic principles and tasks of the socialist state. The Declaration was adopted on (12) 25 January 1918, by the Third All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies’ Soviets. This document consisted of four sections.
The first section established the political foundations of the Soviet State as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The second section defined the main mission of the Soviet government – destruction of all exploitation of man by man, complete elimination of a social classes division, suppression of the resistance of the exploiters and establishment of a socialist organization of society.
In the third section, the Declaration defined the main principles of foreign policy – struggle for peace, abolition of secret treaties, respect for the national sovereignty of all peoples, a complete break with the barbaric policy of the bourgeois states, cancellation of foreign loans concluded by the Tsarist and Provisional governments.
The fourth section proclaimed the exclusion of the exploiting classes from participation in the administration of the Soviet State.
On Vladimir Lenin’s proposal, the Declaration was included as an introductory section in the first Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918.
Source: http://www.calend.ru/event/6506/
© Calend.ru
Translated by Elizaveta O. Ovchinnikova
