1946 Yugoslav Constitution
The 1946 Yugoslav Constitution was the first constitution of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. It came into effect at its promulgation on January 31.
This first constitution was modeled on the Soviet constitution of 1936. Like the Soviet constitution, it promised expansive civil rights, such as freedom of speech and of the press, which it did not provide.[1]
Commentary
In his address to the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, President Josip Broz Tito referred to several articles of the Constitution to demonstrate its liberal nature.
Let us take only Article 1 of the Constitution, which says: "The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia is a federal national state of republican structure, a community of peoples enjoying equal rights, who on the basis of the right to self-determination, including the right to secede, have expressed their will to live together in a federated state."
There, that is how national equality is settled here, that is how it is codified and put fully into practice.
Consequently, the Constitution has only confirmed, or rather codified, what was won during the war, that is to say the power of the people, the power of a real people's democracy.[2]
Further, how is the question of power settled in the Constitution and in practice in this country?
In Article 6 it is stated: "In the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia all power derives from the people and belongs to the people. The people exercise their power through the freely elected representative bodies of state authority, from the people's committees which, from the local people's committees up to the assemblies of the people's republics and the People's Assembly of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia originated and developed in the People's Liberation War against Fascism and reaction and which are the basic achievements of that struggle."
References
External links
- 1946 Yugoslav Constition at worldstatesmen.org