The place and role of constitutional provisions in the formation of military ideology: the historical experience of Russia.

Baldin Aleksandr Konstantinovich PhD in Law Associate Professor, Department of Civil Law and Procedure, N.I. Lobachevsky National Research Nizhny Novgorod State University 603022, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod region, Nizhny Novgorod, Prospekt Gagarina str., 23 akbaldin@unn.ru Other publications by this author

Throughout its history, mankind has repeatedly tried to give a legal, philosophical, moral and moral assessment of the category of "war" and to develop generally accepted approaches to understanding its essence. In the words of the outstanding Chinese thinker Sun Tzu, "understanding the essence of war is of vital importance for the state" ^{[1, p. 8]}. This is primarily due to the fact that war leads either to the destruction of the state, or, conversely, to its survival, to power and prosperity or decline. In this regard, one of the main directions of its activities in the international sphere is the defense function, relevant both in the old days and now. It should also be remembered that a sign and a necessary attribute of any state is the presence of an army that performs not only a number of foreign policy functions, but also participates in the internal mechanism of law enforcement. If the people are declared to be the bearer of the sovereignty of the state, then the armed forces are represented as its guarantor, ensuring the territorial integrity of the country and the inviolability of state borders.

The formation of the ideological principles of its activity contributes to the construction of a powerful army ready to perform any tasks. Ideology as a set of legal, political, moral knowledge, beliefs and values about the world around us and the place of man in it, by virtue of its substantial basis, covers all spheres of life of the state and society. An important component of ideology as a general social concept is the state ideology, which includes a system of views, ideas, representations expressing the interests, first of all, of the state at a certain historical stage. Taking into account that the priorities of the state and the people inhabiting it can change and transform over time, state ideology cannot be considered as a permanent category, it develops together with the state and reflects the model of its interaction with the system of public relations. The state ideology, expressing public ideals, values and beliefs, largely determines the direction of the country's development and forms its spiritual and moral foundation.

Analyzing the relationship, the mutual influence of the state and the army, with a certain degree of confidence, it can be argued that military ideology is an integral part of the state ideology, the main structural elements and essential characteristics of the first are easily projected onto the second. This position, in particular, is shared by Professor V. G. Olshevsky, who argues that "military ideology as an integral part of state ideology was constituted in the twentieth century" ^{[2, p. 123]}. Being a kind of ideology as a complex social phenomenon, military ideology is a form of public consciousness expressed in the system of views, assessments, beliefs, ideas that have developed under the influence of various foreign policy, historical, cultural and other factors, expressing the attitude of a person, society and the state to war as a socio-political phenomenon, and the army. According to E. A. Iukov, the existence of military ideology "is determined by the needs of the state as long as armies and military conflicts exist" ^{[3, p. 94]}. Despite the specificity of the type of ideology under consideration, the range of its bearers is not limited only to subjects of public relations directly involved in military activities. Taking into account the fact that the protection of the Fatherland is the duty and obligation of every citizen, taking into account the need for everyone to ensure personal security, the subject composition of potential carriers of military ideology should be considered more broadly without defining social boundaries. No matter how peaceful the state is declared, no matter how democratic its foreign policy course seems, issues of war and the organization of the armed forces are always present on the information agenda.

For a long period of time, many States have avoided and now continue to avoid using the term "military ideology", giving it an unconditional negative connotation. The experience of the world wars has formed an extremely negative attitude towards militarism, with which military ideology is often completely identified. At the same time, this idea of military ideology is simplistic and not entirely correct. It should be noted that the military ideology itself can be expressed in several categorical forms. Militarism is just one of these forms, characterized by the absolutization of the importance of military means in solving foreign policy tasks. The considered form is focused on the active use of the army and other military institutions, their unconditional dominance in the mechanism of the state over other political institutions, the militarization of the economy and other spheres of society. At the same time, in addition to the need to increase the size of the armed forces and the desire to join aggressive military-political blocs, the content of military ideology may include less categorical and more balanced concepts and ideas. For example, instead of waging wars of conquest and a maniacal desire to physically destroy the population of a State based on historical hatred, the military ideology of a state can be focused solely on protecting its territory and the population living on it. In this case, military means are used exclusively to perform defensive functions, and any possible military offensive operations are transformed from defensive actions. Thus, military ideology can express not only expansionist military ideas and beliefs, but also support peaceful humanistic values and aspirations. In order to avoid social "negativity" caused by the incorrect perception and interpretation of the category "military ideology" in the scientific literature, it is also proposed to use the concept of "ideology of the military sphere" as an alternative to this term ^[2].

Given the role of military ideology in the regulation of the entire military sphere of society, its legal fixation has certain features, one of which is the consolidation of the basic structural and substantive elements of ideology in the texts of the main legislative acts and policy documents of the state. Such sources include constitutions, military strategies, military doctrines, national security concepts and other fundamental acts of the doctrinal order, formalizing ideological principles in the military sphere at the highest legal level. Despite the fact that the current Constitution of Russia [adopted by popular vote on December 12, 1993] declares the absence of a state (and therefore military) ideology, this does not mean its denial, since the content of the Basic Law includes other legal concepts that can be fully considered ideological. There cannot be an ideological vacuum in any state that can lead to moral and value disorientation of the population. The situation is similar with military ideology, which is practically not represented in the constitutional text, but is being further developed and specified in other policy documents. Thus, the system of views on preparation for armed defense and armed defense of our country is contained in the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation [approved by the President of the Russian Federation on 12/25/2014], which, based on the analysis of military dangers and military threats, formulates key provisions of military policy, directions of military construction in order to ensure the defense of the state. The fundamental values and principles that form the military ideology are also fixed in the National Security Strategy [approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated 07/02/2021 No. 400].

The de-ideologized nature of the current Constitution does not at all indicate the formation of an appropriate legal tradition of the state's refusal to proclaim the ideological guidelines necessary for society, including in the military field. Although the constitutional development of Russia is not long in time, in comparison with many other states, it has its own peculiarities related to the specifics of the presentation and construction of ideological structures of the Basic Law in certain historical periods. The Soviet constitutions, which were ideologized legal documents, did not pay much attention to military issues. At the same time, they adequately reflected the transformations of the military-political structure of the country and the fundamental transformations that took place in the field of military policy and military construction. This was quite enough for a properly oriented political education of society and its consolidation in the face of possible external threats. As rightly noted by R. M. Timoshev, military ideology was considered "a part of Soviet ideology, the system of views of the Communist Party, the state and the workers on the tasks of the country and the ways of their successful implementation in the armed protection of the Soviet people and state interests from external imperialist aggression" ^{[4, p. 17]}. In connection with this circumstance, it is interesting to conduct a comparative legal retrospective study of the provisions of the constitutions of the Russian state containing elements of the state ideology of the military sphere.

The purpose of the adoption of the first Soviet Constitution of the RSFSR in 1918 [adopted by the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets in a meeting on July 10, 1918] was to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolutionary order in the state, as well as the normative consolidation of socialist ideas and Soviet statehood. Before the adoption of the document in question, a number of decrees were already in force in the country, which were of a constitutional nature, regulating fundamental transformations, including in the military sphere. A distinctive feature of the first Soviet Constitution is the presence in its content of the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People (section one), which was actually an ideologized structural element that defined the basic principles and directions of social, economic, military and legal policy. Thus, paragraph 3 of the Declaration decreed "the arming of the working people, the formation of a Socialist Red Army of workers and peasants and the complete disarmament of the propertied classes in order to eliminate any possibility of restoring the power of the exploiters." The significance of the Declaration is also determined by the fact that it formulated the foundations of a new statehood - the dictatorship of the proletariat and the system of soviets of workers, soldiers and peasants' deputies as its political basis. The Constitution itself, in Article 19, established universal military service as an instrument for protecting the conquest of the revolution and the socialist fatherland. The document proclaimed a new, class-based proletarian democracy, while depriving a significant part of the population of the right to defend the state with weapons in their hands, since this right was considered as a privilege of workers. The army was supposed to be a people's army and was supposed to serve, first of all, political goals, the main of which was the maintenance of the socialist system. In general, the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918, which is the constitution of the dictatorship of the proletariat, expressing the class relations of society, is assessed by scientists as "the most ideologized in comparison with all other (subsequent) Soviet constitutions" ^{[5, p. 187]}.

The Basic Law of the USSR of 1924 [approved by resolution of the II-th Congress of Soviets of the USSR on January 31, 1924], as well as the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1925 adopted a year later [approved by resolution of the XII All-Russian Congress of Soviets on May 11, 1925] emphasized the continuity of ideological concepts of previous constitutional acts. The formation of a new state was consolidated in the all-Union constitution, and the "Declaration on the Formation of the USSR" and the "Treaty on the Formation of the USSR" formed its substantive basis. The structural peculiarity of the USSR Constitution of 1924 did not leave the normative text without military-ideological provisions, although they are not directly formulated. At the same time, the Declaration contains an evaluative characterization of the "camp of capitalism", the elements of which are "imperialist atrocities and wars". These reasons largely prompted the Soviet republics to unite into a completely new type of union state. One cannot but agree with B. E. Roshchin's opinion that "the creation of the USSR was determined by the vital need to unite the scarce resources of the Soviet republics to counter an external threat (military, economic, etc.), consolidate and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat" ^{[6, p. 189]}. In such historical conditions, due to the need to ensure the protection of the socialist system, the state could not afford to completely abandon military-ideological principles. The ideological component in the military sphere is more clearly traced in the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1925, which legally fixed the experience of the creation of the USSR and reflected the historical path traversed by the Soviet state since 1918. The peculiarity of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1925 is expressed in the fact that, logically supplementing the content of the Constitution of the USSR of 1924, it also proceeds from the provisions of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918, in particular, its text identically reproduces the declaration on the establishment of universal military service in order to "fully protect the conquests of the Great Workers' and Peasants' Revolution and the protection of the socialist Fatherland." Armed protection of the state, as before, could only be carried out by workers for whom it was an "honorable right".

The Constitution of the USSR of 1936 [approved by the resolution of the Extraordinary VIII Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of December 5, 1936], popularly nicknamed "Stalinist", unlike other Soviet constitutions did not provide for programmatic provisions. Instead, she ideologically stated the construction of socialism in the state, clarified the socio-economic foundations reflecting the correlation of class forces, and declared the process of democratization of certain spheres of public administration and public relations. Due to the latter circumstance, the 1936 Constitution of the USSR is often characterized as the most democratic in the world at that time, moreover, according to the degree of democratization, a number of authors compare it with the current Constitution of Russia ^[7]. Thus, according to E. A. Shershneva, "when adopting the Constitution of the USSR in 1936, the mechanism of public discussion of the draft law with proposals, additions and amendments to it was tested for the first time, which is also used in modern Russia" [Shershneva E. A. Creation of the Constitution of the USSR in 1936: Abstract. diss. ... PhD in Law, 2011]. The "Stalinist" Constitution was broader in normative content than the previous Constitution of the USSR of 1924 and included chapters that were previously absent from the texts of the basic laws of the Soviet state. In particular, both the basic rights and duties of citizens of the USSR, which included the protection of the Fatherland, were regulated in detail. The basic law of "victorious socialism" played a very significant role in the formation of the military-ideological paradigm at this historical stage. According to Article 132 of the USSR Constitution of 1936, military service in the ranks of the Red Army was defined as an "honorable duty of citizens of the USSR", and the protection of the Fatherland was considered their "sacred duty". Universal military duty was now the law. Thus, significant transformations have occurred in the ideological understanding of the institution of military service as the basis of the military sphere of the state. If the previous Soviet constitutions considered this institution as an "honorable right" belonging only to workers, then the Constitution of 1936, taking into account the socio-political changes that took place, including those related to the elimination of the remnants of the "exploitative classes", proclaimed military duty as an "honorable duty" of every citizen of the USSR, equating it to the law. A distinctive feature of the Constitution under consideration can also be distinguished by the definition of treason as the gravest war crime and the most serious crime punishable to the fullest extent of the law. According to the tradition of Soviet state-building, following the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR, the Constitutions of the Union republics were adopted the following year. Most of the normative provisions of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1937 [approved by the resolution of the Extraordinary XVII All-Russian Congress of Soviets of January 21, 1937] verbatim reproduced the relevant norms of the all-Union Constitution adopted a year earlier. Thus, Chapter XI "Basic rights and duties of citizens" of the Constitution of the RSFSR fully corresponded to the similar Chapter X of the Constitution of the USSR, and the military-ideological formulations of the republican Constitution did not differ in any way from the declarations of the all-Union Basic Law.

The next stage in the further development of the military ideology of the USSR should be considered the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR of 1977 [adopted at the extraordinary seventh session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the ninth convocation on October 7, 1977]. While maintaining ideological continuity in relation to previously adopted Constitutions, the Constitution of the USSR of 1977, nevertheless, introduced a number of new structures, among which is conceptualization principles of public policy. Within the framework of the research, Chapter 5 "Protection of the Socialist Fatherland" of the Foundations of the social system and politics of the USSR is of particular interest. The defense of the socialist Fatherland was proclaimed the most important function of the state and the cause of the entire people. Universal military duty, which served as the organizational and material basis for the formation of the Armed Forces of the USSR, was still confirmed. The armed forces were assigned a key role in the system of guarantees of the country's security and defense capability. Thus, in comparison with previous Soviet constitutions, the Constitution of the USSR of 1977 formulated military-ideological provisions in a separate chapter of the first and key section of the Basic Law, which emphasizes their importance in the process of building a "developed socialist society" and a "national state". In addition to a separate special chapter, provisions of a military-ideological nature were fixed in Chapter 7 "Basic rights, freedoms and duties of citizens of the USSR". By analogy with previous constitutions, the protection of the socialist Fatherland was considered "the sacred duty of every citizen," which confirmed the inextricable link between the army and the people. After the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR, republican constitutions were adopted again, as before, generally repeating the main provisions of the Union document, but taking into account the peculiarities of republican development. In this regard, the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978 [adopted at the extraordinary seventh session of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR of the ninth convocation on April 12, 1978]. accumulated the ideological values of the Constitution of the USSR of 1977.

The importance of the Soviet constitutions in solving the issue of forming the attitude of man, society and the state to war and the army is extremely great. The basic laws of any administrative level - all–Union, union republics, autonomous republics - served as the basis for the legal education of the population in the context of love for their Homeland, respect for Soviet laws, awareness of the internal duty to protect the Fatherland, if necessary, with weapons in their hands. The army was considered a part of the people, its armed component, was in no way separated from it and, moreover, was not opposed. Despite the declared federal nature of the Soviet state, its national composition, the armed forces were unified all-Union. Citizens of the Union republics served in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the USSR, and not in their national republican armies. Any external attack on any part of the vast Soviet state was considered as an attack on every Soviet citizen, entailing an internal willingness to fight back against any aggressor. The presence of a unified army had a significant impact on ensuring the security and defense capability of a multinational state, strengthened its federal basis, and in some cases eliminated interethnic contradictions.

The 1993 Constitution of Russia, which consolidated a new model of the state, political, legal and socio-economic system, abandoned the previous ideological declarations set out in the text of the Basic Laws. The modern Russian state recognizes ideological diversity, which implies the impossibility of establishing any ideology as a state or mandatory one. A stable opinion has been formed that a state or compulsory ideology is an obstacle to the development of civil society and the rule of law, since it will certainly be "imposed" from above and eventually make freedom of thought, speech and a number of other personal rights of citizens impossible. Staying away from the eternal philosophical dispute about the necessity or meaninglessness of state ideology for modern Russia, it should be noted that the absence of a conceptually expressed ideological paradigm does not mean the complete absence of state ideology, because ideological diversity is also a public ideological attitude. Also, the declaration contained in Article 59 of the Basic Law of our state that "the defense of the Fatherland is the duty and obligation of a citizen of Russia" should be considered as an element of modern military ideology. In this regard, it is premature to characterize the current Constitution of Russia as a completely de-ideologized document, since, as previously noted, an ideological vacuum is impossible, and the political nature does not tolerate emptiness.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the historical and legal analysis of the constitutional development of the Russian state confirms not only the permissibility of the existence of the military ideology of the state, but also its importance for the formation of the necessary vector of public consciousness, the moral development of the citizens of the country. The importance of military-ideological provisions is emphasized by the mechanism of their consolidation in the texts of constitutions, which makes it possible to declare the possibility of considering military ideology as a significant element of constitutional ideology. In addition, even under the conditions of a constitutional ban and the absence of a state ideology, military-ideological constructions still seem necessary for the political and legal education of the population and the further development of the state.