ARTICLE 125. In conformity with the interests of the working people, and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed by law:
a. freedom of speech;
b. freedom of the press;
c. freedom of assembly, including the holding of mass meetings;
d. freedom of street processions and demonstrations.
These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communications facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
1936 CONSTITUTION OF THE USSR
CHAPTER X
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS
[H/T Richard.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn might have questioned the efficacy of this article and others. See, for example, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One).
People today would be well served to question the efficacy of our constitution as well. The people of the Soviet Union “believed in the system” even when the NKVD was arresting 25% of entire towns. And even when tens of thousands of people “disappeared” in the middle of the night to never be heard from again.
Read our constitution and Bill of Rights and then look at our Federal Government. Then think about it. Then figure what you can and need to do to fix that. Then, do it.—Joe]
as the old Soviet joke went, everybody in the USSR had freedom of speech, but the law never guaranteed freedom after speech.
Just look at a, b, c, and d as “collective rights”, same as the current American Democrats and Republicans view rights, and it works perfectly– As the self proclaimed representatives of the people, the state functionaries have all those rights and the individual has the right to do whatever they say or be sent to the gulags.