Declaration on the Establishment of the USSR

a historical document which, together with the Treaty on the Establishment of the USSR, formed the constitutional basis for the creation of the Union of the SSR as a multinational state.

The declaration stated the reasons necessitating the union of all existing Soviet republics into one united state. First of all, there was the need to restore the national economy, which had been devastated during World War I and the Civil War, and to reconstruct it on socialist principles. Ensuring the external security of the Soviet republics against international imperialist intrigues in conditions of capitalist encirclement, and thereby defending the gains made by the working people, likewise required that all the Soviet republics should join forces. The declaration stressed that the establishment of the Union of the SSR was a voluntary union of peoples with equal rights, whereby each Soviet republic retained the right to freely secede from the Union. The draft declaration was endorsed on Dec. 29, 1922, by a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR; and on Dec. 30, 1922, the declaration together with the Treaty on the Establishment of the USSR was adopted by the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR. It was included in the Constitution of the USSR of 1924 as its first part.