Soviet of Nationalities in the context of "Yuri Gagarin"

The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union's federal government and CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide.

The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of 15 top-level republics that served as the homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics already departing the Union and Gorbachev continuing the waning of centralized power, the leaders of three of its founding members, the Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian SSRs, declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. Eight more republics joined their declaration shortly thereafter. Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991 and what was left of the Soviet parliament voted to dissolve the union the following day.

The electoral system of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was varying over time, being based upon Chapter XIII of the provisional Fundamental Law of 1922, articles 9 and 10 of the 1924 Constitution and Chapter XI of the 1936 Constitution, with the electoral laws enacted in conformity with those. The Constitution and laws applied to elections in all Soviets, from the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the Union republics and autonomous republics, through to regions, districts and towns. Voting was claimed to be secret and direct with universal suffrage. However, in practice, between 1936 and 1989, voters could vote against candidates preselected by the Communist Party only by spoiling their ballots, or by voting against the only candidate, whereas votes for the party candidates could be cast simply by submitting a blank ballot. A person would be given a ballot by a clerk, and could immediately walk to the ballot box, and while there were booths in which one could strike the candidates they voted against off the ballot, this was easy to record and was not commonly done by voters.

A 1945 decree allowed for members of the Red Army stationed outside the Soviet Union to vote for both chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (the Soviet of the Union and Soviet of Nationalities) in special 100,000-member districts. These were first enacted in the 1946 legislative elections and continued through the next decades as the Red Army continued its presence in the Eastern Bloc.

The Soviet of the Union (Russian: Сове́т Сою́за, Sovet Soyuza) was the lower chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage in accordance with the principles of Soviet democracy, and with the rule that each deputy would represent the same number of voters. Under the 1936 Soviet Constitution, there was one deputy for every 300,000 people; this was changed by the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which provided that both chambers would have an equal number of members. Although the party gave general guidelines on nominations, such as the ratio of the social composition of the nominees, much of the work was left to local bodies and people's representatives. As opposed to the upper chamber, the Soviet of Nationalities, the Soviet of the Union represented the interests of all of the people of the Soviet Union no matter what their nationality was.

The Soviet of the Union had the same rights and competence as the Soviet of Nationalities, including the right for legislative initiative. In practice, until 1989, it did little more than approve decisions already made by the top leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After the 1989 elections the Soviet of the Union acquired a much greater role, and was the scene of many lively debates.