Russia Does Not Recognize Any Right to Revolt Even if State Blocks Other Means of Redressing Grievances, ‘First Department’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 4 – The First Department organization, a community of lawyers and journalists who fight against Russian government secrecy, says that the Russian constitution does not give anyone the right to revolt if other avenues for seeking the redress of grievances are blocked by the state.

            Instead, it notes, the Russian Criminal Code declares that participation in any revolt is a crime that will be penalized by up to 20 years behind bars (dept.one/memo/pravo-na-vosstanie/). But even to ask this question publicly and describe the alternative arrangements in other countries is to open the door to something the Kremlin very much wants to keep closed.

            Russian courts “do not consider resistance to the regime as a form of lawful behavior, First Department says; and the Russian constitution, Russian laws, and Russian courts “allow only peaceful forms of protest” – and even then they do not always allow even that if the state opposes such actions.

            That stance means, the group continues, that “even the actions of the 1905 or 1917 revolutions, which were subsequently officially recognized as ‘just’ in the USSR, have no legal continuity in the laws of the Russian Federation today. Instead, now, any form of violent resistance is treated as a criminal offense.

            The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which Moscow is a signatory don’t refer to any legal right to revolt, “but in the preamble [of that 1948 document] it suggests that people have the right to revolt as “a step of last resort.”  But of course, “this is a moral formulation and not a legal norm.”

            A few countries do recognize the right of revolt as a means of last resort to seek redress of grievances. Among them are Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain and Iran. Some others mention the right of revolt in their basic laws but do not include it in their Constitutions or legal codes. Among these are the United States and France.

            According to the First Department writers, the arguments in favor of revolt being a right include the way it can become a guarantee against tyranny, the precedent that such revolts have set in many countries, and the way the existence of this right serves to protect other rights people have to defend their situations.

             Arguments against the right to revolt, the portal continues, include the idea that “the right to revolt is a right to the use of force and its legalization can lead to destabilization, civil wars and misuse,” the difficulties of determining who’ll decide when people have the right to revolt, and the ways the right to revolt conflicts with the principles of a law-based state.