1918 Constitution of Soviet Russia

It put into the law the results of the October Revolution of 1917 and gave the name to the state: the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.

This constitution, which was ratified soon after the Declaration Of Rights Of The Working And Exploited People,[1] formally recognized the working class as the ruling class of Russia according to the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, therein making the Russian Soviet Republic the world's first constitutionally socialist state.

The constitution explicitly denied political power to higher classes of Russian society or to those who supported the White armies in the Civil War (1918–21).

(The Sovnarkom had exercised governmental authority from November 1917 until the adoption of the 1918 constitution July 10 by the Congress of Soviets.)

One of the first Soviet iterations of a perennial biblical phrase appeared in Article 18, which declares labour to be the duty of all citizens of the Republic, and sloganeers: 'He who does not work, neither shall he eat!'