Legal Foundations of the Working-Class Formation in the BSSR in the 1950s–1970s

The article presents a modern approach to the formation of the working class in the 1950s and 1970s explaining the main legal and socio-cultural features of this process in the Belarusian SSR. The final institutionalization of individuals employed in production as a class of the Soviet-Belarusian society took place in a special way. This took place due to the specifics of the socio-demographic situation, certain action of the basic laws, patronage of the Communist Party and its cells in all spheres of society. The Constitutions of the BSSR at the legal level fixed the division of Soviet society into classes, separating workers into a separate group and maintaining the special status of manual workers. But transformations in the socio-economic sphere that began in the post-war period in Soviet Belarus required a large number of laws and legal acts. Relevant resolutions and decisions of the Central Committee of the CPB of Belarus formed the response to the request that, having the force of law, were promptly implemented. The author believes that the promise formulated by the constitutional acts to separate the working class from society began to be realized in the BSSR at a slow pace and mainly due to the decisions and resolutions of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus. The process of forming the working class in Belarusian society was fraught with many difficulties and it was often implemented without taking into account local peculiarities, but it was quite successful. The Constitution of 1978 fixed the accomplished fact of differentiation of Soviet society and mentioned the classes of workers, peasants and the formed intelligentsia.

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