Социальная справедливость как условие сохранения единства народов России: конституционно-правовой анализ выравнивания статуса субъектов Российской Федерации

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive constitutional and legal analysis of the principle of social justice in the context of equalizing the status of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The aim of the work is to substantiate the impossibility of preserving the unity of the peoples of Russia while maintaining formal and factual barriers that prevent equal access of citizens to social benefits regardless of the territory of residence. The research objectives include: analysis of the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation revealing the inadmissibility of discrimination on territorial grounds; consideration of doctrinal approaches to the essence of the social state and the constitutional status of the individual; identification of conflicts between federal guarantees and the regional practice of providing support measures to large families and other categories of citizens; as well as an assessment of the historical experience of the USSR and the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic as an extreme situation that exposed the asymmetry of regional development. The methodological basis consists of systemic, formal-legal, comparative-legal methods, as well as the method of constitutional interpretation. Key results: it is argued that the latent preservation of the institute of propiska through residency qualification and the substitution of regulatory acts of the center with advisory ones erode the constitutional identity of Russian citizens; it is proposed to consider the equalization of the social standard as a legal obligation of the state, derived from Articles 7 and 19 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The findings are focused on the need for a transition from a decentralized model of social policy to unified state guarantees of a minimum standard of well-being for every citizen of the country.