Constitution is a written document that establishes the fundamental political rules and principles of an autonomous political entity. Constitution also establishes the ideological, political and legal aspects of the state. This document is the superior legal force; all the laws of the state are subject to it.

After the elections President of Russia swears on the Constitution of the Russian Federation. This moment is an important component of the President’s inauguration ceremony. The attributes of the ceremony are: flag of Russia, anthem of Russia and Russian coat-of-arms. If one wants to know everything about Russia the Constitution is the first thing to study.

The Russian Constitution started to develop at the beginning of the 19th century. The Plan of the State Reformation by count Mikhail Speransky (1809) and State Charters of the Russian Empire by Nikolai Novosiltsev (1818) played an important role in establishment of the Russian Constitution. Alexander I was the first emperor of Russia who decided to reform the political regime by adopting the Constitution. The State Charters of the Russian Empire was ready in 1820 but its approval was postponed. In 1881 Alexander II was killed when he was going to sign the Constitution. In 1905 during the rule of Nikolai II the Manifest was issued, however the process of the Constitution adoption was interrupted by the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The inauguration of Russian Presidents not always was the same. For instance, in 1991 President Boris Yeltsin swore on the special folds containing the text of the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic and Declaration of the state sovereignty of Russia. During the second-term Yeltsin’s inauguration in 1996 he swore on the Constitution of the Russian Federation a single copy of which was issued as a special edition. At the threashold of the Russian President’s inauguration of 2000 the acting President Vladimir Putin repealed the Edict of 1996 concerning the Presidential regalia. From then onward the copy of the Constitution ceased to be the symbol of Presidential power. 

At present time the main copy of the Constitution is reposited at the Library of the Presidential Administration in Kremlin where it is taken from once in four years for the ceremony of the Russian President’s inauguration.