History of Russia: Exhibition “The Constitutional history of Russia. To the 20th anniversary of the Basic law of the country” opens in Moscow

10 October 2013
Source: The Federal Archival Agency

October 10, 2013 at the Exhibition hall of Federal Archives (Moscow) opens the exhibition “The Constitutional history of Russia. To the 20th anniversary of the Basic law of the country”.

The organizers: The Federal Archival Agency, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian Historical Society, the Academic Educational and Scientific Center RAS – the MSU Center for Constitutional Law and Public Law with the participation of: the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, the Press Service of the President of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts of the Russian State Archive of Cinema.

The exhibition features constitutional projects and all the constitutions of the Russian state.

For the first time it is exhibited the draft of the famous “conditions”, compiled by members of the Supreme Privy Court at night in the Lefortovo Palace and designed to limit the autocracy, and the Decembrists constitutional projects which were recovered by them during the investigation and thus survived up to the present time. The Original Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland created with the personal involvement of the Emperor Alexander I, and the Appropriation of the Russian Empire - a future Russian constitution, which he did not dare to sign. The infamous project of Count Loris-Melikov, which Alexander III called the Constitution, and the approved personally by hand of the last emperor of “Basic Laws of the Russian Empire” that made Russia the constitutional monarchy. 

The exposition included materials on preparation of the current Constitution, the 20th anniversary of which is celebrated this year.

Unique documents are added with newsreel of 1930-1990s and rare photographs.

The exhibited documents and materials are included in the constitutional history of the Virtual Museum of Russia, the presentation of which will take place during the opening exposition. A special place in the future virtual museum takes a unique film: the first and the only one in Russia and the world a filming about the opening ceremony of the State Duma in 1906.

At the opening of the exhibition it will be presented a new monograph of Doctor of Laws S. M. Shakhrai “On the Constitution”, where for the first time fully and deeply is explored a range of issues, not only on the history of its creation, but also made ​​a detailed analysis of its development in the coming years.