War of Laws

Sovereignty declarations and a divided legal order

The war of laws began in the Baltics. On 16 November 1988 Estonia's Supreme Soviet adopted a declaration of state sovereignty asserting the primacy of republican legislation over union law; Lithuania, Latvia and Azerbaijan followed in 1989. The union centre moved to strike these declarations down as unconstitutional but its rulings were not enforced in practice. In December 1989 the Second Congress of People's Deputies deleted the Communist Party's leading role from Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution and introduced contested elections, opening the institutional space in which republican governments could defy union law.

The Russian republic's war of laws

On 12 June 1990 the Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian republic adopted a declaration of sovereignty, and on 24 October 1990 its Supreme Soviet passed Law No. 263-I on the effect of USSR acts on Russian territory: union legislation would apply directly, but the Supreme Soviet or the Council of Ministers could suspend acts violating Russian sovereignty. By December 1990 every union republic had adopted a sovereignty declaration, and the conflict had spread across the union.

Acting on its declaration, the Russian republic claimed control over finance and the economy within its territory and deepened the confrontation. It cut its contribution to the union budget in early 1991, and in June 1991 created a directly elected Russian presidency. The conflict lay not in violations of union law, but in reforms taken without agreement with the union centre, which collided with the union legal order.

Outcome and a later, separate conflict

After the failed August 1991 coup the centre had no capacity left to reassert control. On 1 November the Russian Supreme Soviet gave priority to Russian laws on economic reform, and on 6 November presidential decree No. 169 halted the CPSU's and the Russian Communist Party's activity on Russian territory, dissolved their organisational structures and transferred their property to the state. On 12 December the Supreme Soviet ratified the Belovezha Accords and denounced the 1922 treaty that had created the USSR, ending the coexistence of union and republican law along with the union itself.

English Wikipedia also applies the phrase "war of laws" to constitutional disputes between the federal government and the republics of post-Soviet Russia in the 2000s. That dispute differs in period and subject from the events of the dissolution, and should not be conflated with them.