It de jure legalised a political union of several Soviet republics that had existed since 1919 and created a new federal government whose key functions were centralised in Moscow.

[citation needed] In spring of 1922, Lenin suffered his first stroke, and Stalin, still being a People's Commissar for Nationalities, gained a new official chair as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.

In January 1922, Georgy Chicherin, the then People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, sent an official inquiry to the authorities of the Russian SFSR about the possibility of representing the legal interests of other republics.

Stalin took the position that the Russian SFSR should represent the other republics in the field of foreign policy (including at the Genoa conference in 1922), although there was no legal act that would grant it such powers.

[5] The line went directly in conflict with both proponents of korenizatsiya and some of the local governments, most notably in Ukraine (where it was opposed by Christian Rakovsky) and Georgia (where the dispute gave rise to the Georgian Affair).

Thus, the treaty can be viewed as a compromise between the different groups within the Bolshevik camp to satisfy the aspirations of large minorities (the named examples of Georgia and Ukraine) and also to allow for potential expansion, as well.

[citation needed] At the same time, it created a new centralised federal government in which key functions would clearly be in the hands of Moscow.

The original document included a cover sheet, the declaration, the treaty (containing the preface and 26 articles) and the signatures of the delegations that signed it.

According to the narrative, there are now two distinct camps, an "exploiting" capitalist with colonialism, chauvinism and social and ethnic inequalities and a "free" socialist one with mutual trust, peace and international cooperation and solidarity.

First of all, the aftermath of the Civil War left many of the republics' economies destroyed, and rebuilding in the new socialist fashion is proving difficult without closer economic cooperation.

Finally, the ideological factor, that the Soviet rule is internationalist in nature and pushes the working masses to unite in a single socialist family.

Moreover, unlike other ethnic borders of the former Russian Empire, which were delimited during the Tsarist days (for example, Transcaucasia lost its feudal administration by the mid-19th century), the Soviet authorities inherited two provinces that were de jure never part of Russia proper, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva.

To settle the issue, in line with the korenizatsiya policy a massive programme of national delimitation in Central Asia was undertaken.

It also tied together most of the authorities and most significantly affirmed the role of the Communist Party as the "driving force" behind the Soviet Union's working masses.

With regard to the original Treaty, the adoption of the Constitution re-organised the make-up of the Union moving from seven to eleven SSRs.

Doctor of Law Pyotr Kremnev believes that the treaty had an international legal character and was in effect from the moment of its adoption until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

He makes the following arguments: "The treaty on the formation of the USSR in 1922 was not an international legal, but a constituent act of a domestic nature.

"[13] On March 15, 1996, the State Duma of the Russian Federation expressed its legal position in relation to the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR in "The denunciation of the Treaty establishing the Soviet Union" as the wrongful, unconstitutional act passed by a grave violation of the Constitution of the RSFSR, the norms of international law and then in force legislation.