A Change in the Nomination System of Legislative Texts with Reference to the Soviet Constitutions

Abstract

This article describes the system of nominations in the texts of the Soviet constitutions reflecting the reconsideration of the provisions of internal policy over the course of sixty years of the existence of the USSR. The author analyses the Constitutions of 1918, 1924, 1936, and 1977 considering several thematic groups of vocabulary: 1) a system of nominations of subjects of law expressed by nouns: государство , гражданин , личность , народ , общество , совет , трудящийся , человек , член (Eng. state , citizen , personality , people , society , union , worker , person , member ); 2) the idea of the structure of society in the nominations of social groups and strata: трудящийся , рабочий класс , крестьянство (Eng. worker , working class , peasantry ); 3) nominations of management tools and economic terms: власть , выборы , партия , собственность (Eng. power , election , party , property ); 4) the phrase иметь право (Eng. have a right to ); 5) the use of the adjective свободный (Eng. free ) and noun свобода (Eng. freedom ); 6) the peculiarities of characterisation means: государственный , народный , общественный , советский (Eng. state , people , public , Soviet , etc.). The authors of the constitutions prefer the nomination гражданин (Eng. citizen ), which supersedes the substantivised participle трудящийся (Eng. working [person] ). In the constitution of 1918, the social structure is not exhaustively represented. In the constitutions of 1924, 1936, 1977, there are no terms used by the authors of the first constitution: паразитические слои (Eng. parasitic strata ) and беднота (Eng. the poor ). An analysis of the word usage makes it possible to identify three mechanisms of ideological camouflage: a) the replacement of an ideological nomination in which a new neutral name is chosen with the same denotation: the phrase советская власть (Eng. Soviet power ) is replaced by the construction государственная власть (Eng. state power ); b) the inclusion of the unit in the official name of the country, institution or authority Совет министров (Eng. Council of Ministers ); c) abbreviation of the Советский союз to Союз ССР , СССР (Eng. USSR ) (the inclusion into the onym and abbreviation is accompanied by a desemantisation of the word).