United States Of Russia.

Based on "libertarian Russia" idea from the other thread...

WI wi9nners of the Russian Civil War in 1923 aren't Bolsheviks, but a party that
1) Adopts US constitution with all amendments as of January 1, 1918.
2) Common Law, with American cases before January 1, 1918 being valid precedents.
3) Did not receive any foreign aid so it has no obligations other than tsarist government had (and they may or may not default on them, as Bolsheviks did.)

Initial states being St. Petersburg, Karelia, White Russia, Don Republic, Russia, Siberia, Ukraine, Crimea and District of Moscow. (or some other similar division)
 
Why would any Russian party adopt the US Constitution and legal precedent verbatim? Surely, even if inspired by say the US, the leaders of the party would want to try to improve on it, and adapt it to local conditions too?
 

Stalker

Banned
They will also have to adopt English as the official language of this new Russia of yours. C'mon, let's think big!:D
 
They will also have to adopt English as the official language of this new Russia of yours. C'mon, let's think big!:D
:)

What I really wanted is to discuss more effects of US-like Russia without need to make up details of it's government on the spot. Ok, it appears my idea didn't work as planned...
 

Typo

Banned
The US is a federal republic because there are things to federate (the 13 colonies were somewhat seperate entities). It doesn't make sense to divide up Russia to give something to federate.
 
True, but Russia was not in control of most of those places in 1918
Well,I said in the OP that although it adopted 1918 LAW the year the "US Constitution Party" won was 1923, the same year USSR was formed.

(I know, that date shift is very confusing way to avoid Eigteenth Amendment. THAT certainly won't work in Russia (nor it did in the US.), I also wanted to "fix" the Second amendment so that it would unambiguously mean both militia and private use, but decided that that would be too much of exactly the sort of tinkering I wanted to avoid. )
 
Why would any Russian party adopt the US Constitution and legal precedent verbatim? Surely, even if inspired by say the US, the leaders of the party would want to try to improve on it, and adapt it to local conditions too?

Good questions. Especially since I've yet to find any proof that there were politicians especially inspired by the US Constitution or the Common Law in Russia prior to 1917. In order to make them adapt a Foreign Constitution without they definitely should have had a sudden change - or even loss - of mind.

One should consider there was a certain liberal tradition in Russia by the 1910's, so there already were proposals for Liberal Constitution and reforms which were much better adapted to local conditions. The Kadets - a party which considered the Constitutional question of such an importance to name themselves Constitutional Democrats - initially worked with Leo Mechelin, considered the "grandfather" of the Finnish Constitution. Therefore it's likely that if some sort of a non-revolutionaly, liberal government had been formed in Russia, the Constitution probably would have resambled that of Finland . It's also much more likely that the judicial system would have been reformed within the Civil Law traditions than it would have been bluntly changed to the Common Law one.
 
Therefore it's likely that if some sort of a non-revolutionaly, liberal government had been formed in Russia, the Constitution probably would have resambled that of Finland .

Interesting idea. Frankly, I don't know anything of Finland's Constitution, but it might work... OTOH, by 1923 there wasn't any love lost between Russia and Finland and I suspect butterflying Bolsheviks won't change that much, which may create problems of its own...
 
Interesting idea. Frankly, I don't know anything of Finland's Constitution, but it might work... OTOH, by 1923 there wasn't any love lost between Russia and Finland and I suspect butterflying Bolsheviks won't change that much, which may create problems of its own...

Of course, the Russians couldn't have adopted the Constitution as such. For instance, that there would have been some sort of a federal element to likely even because of the sheer size of the country. But there would have been certain similarities, given the influence - he died in 1914 - of Mechelin. In any case, there is an early draft for a republican Constitution by some of the Kadet leaders from the days before the party was even formed. It could be interesting reading if one wants to know which kind of a Constitution a liberal, republican Russia might have had in 1923.
 
That was more of a quasi-federal state, with heavy centralization all the way to the top in Moscow.
Not really, if we are speaking of USSR, - formally it was as much of a federation as the US. The Party was centralized like you say though, and since you couldn't do any career in politics without being a member, there was unwritten limit on how that autonomy was used. But if some republic wanted something like different school curriculum, or slightly different wording of some law, or it's own list of endangered species, t5he Party did rarely object.
 
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