Rupert Matthews is a freelance writer who has had over 150 books published, mostly on historical subjects. He was recently one of the MEP candidates in the East Midlands for the Conservative Party. Here he expands on a subject raised last month by Tim Montgomerie.
Over the past few weeks there have been some postings on ConHome, and elsewhere, that have referred to the European Union not as the EU but as the EUSSR. The use of the term was denounced by some and defended by others.
So in an idle moment I thought I would compare the two states to see if the tag was justified.
At first glance, of course, there are both similarities and differences. The EU is and the USSR was a multi-national conglomeration of states. On the other hand the EU has no counterpart of the NKVD or KGB that goes around murdering hundreds of thousands of people without trial.
It came as something of a surprise to me when I started reading the Constitution of the USSR that it was amazingly democratic. The citizens of the USSR were granted the right to freedom of speech, to freedom of assembly and to freedom of relgion and the freedom of the press was guranteed. All elections were on the basis of universal suffrage and all votes were by secret ballot. Not only that but the Constitution granted a number of rights not generally known elsewhere – such as the right to work, the right to artistic integrity, the right to housing, the right to health care and the right to enjoy national culture.
Moreover, all positions in the government structure were democratically elected. There was a well-defined balance of powers between the member states and the Union which gave wide ranging and impressive powers and freedoms to the states. The institutions of the central Union were set up and their powers described, all of them most democratic.
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