The Presidential Library opened an exhibition and launched multimedia “Constitution lessons”

December 12, 2013 more than 100 St. Petersburg students visited an exhibition timed to the 20th anniversary of the Constitution, which opened that day, as well as the country's first multi-media "Constitution lessons" in the Presidential Library.

In a playful way, using the latest computer-based, multimedia and 3-D technologies, children were told about the history of development of constitutional ideas in Russia. This kind of projects has never existed in the country until today.

Copies of archival documents and publications, posters and propaganda materials, photographic and documentary films presented at the exhibition, tell about the constitutional projects from the 18th century to the creation and adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1989-1993. Here you can see rare photos of the referendum and constitutional meetings in the Kremlin in 1993, the draft Constitution with revisions of the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin. He made corrections to the organization of work of the constitutional meetings, personally crossed the proposed site of the press center of the President, and wrote: "Marble Hall of the Kremlin." Boris Nikolaevich made an amendment to the article 83 saying that the president "has the right to preside at meetings of the Government of the Russian Federation."

In article 95, Yeltsin specified that the Federation Council is composed of two representatives from each member of the Russian Federation: one from the representative authorities and one from the executive bodies of state power.

 The exhibition also presents a draft constitution of Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev, which were not adopted, but prepared. These and other unique materials are on display in the Virtual Museum of constitutional history of Russia, which has been elaborated by the Russian Historical Society, M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University in conjunction with the Presidential Library. The main initiator of its creation was Sergei Shahrai, one of the authors of the current Constitution. The Virtual Museum and the Presidential Library website make available an audio-video project where judges of the Constitutional Court comment articles of the Basic Law, based on practice and personal experience. Preamble to the Constitution in the project was recorded by the Kremlin's chief announcer, People's Artist of Russia, Yevgeny Horoshevtsev.

On the 20th anniversary of the Constitution the website of the Presidential Library also launched a new collection "The Constitution of the Russian Federation. 1993," which includes digital copies of official documents, researches, journalistic works, memoirs, videos related to the final stage of drafting the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993.

The documents reflect the participation of the President of the Russian Federation in the drafting of the Constitution in May - November 1993, approval of the draft Constitution by the state authorities, local self-government, people’s deputies, experts, non-governmental organizations, business community. IThe collection includes materials related to the nation-wide vote on the draft constitution on December 12, 1993.

The collection contains media lessons, media comments and online lectures on the history of Russian constitutionalism by Sergei Naryshkin, Valery Zorkin, Sergei Stepashin, Sergei Shakhrai and other top government officials. The materials have been prepared by the State Duma of the Russian Federation and submitted for publication on the website of the Presidential Library.

The exhibition marking the 20th anniversary of the Constitution of the Russian Federation will run until April 11, 2014. It is expected that the students from about a hundred schools of the city will visit the Presidential Library to learn about the Constitution of the country more closely, using specific examples.

To visit the exhibition please pre-register by calling (812) 334-25-14 or send an email to: excursion@prlib.ru.