Regulation by Law of the Consular Service in the USSR (The New USSR Consular Regulations of 1976)

Abstract

New Consular Regulations of the USSR have been instituted by edict of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, June 25, 1976. (1) The edict went into effect on September 1, 1976. It replaced the Consular Regulations promulgated by the Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on January 8, 1926, which had been in effect for fifty years. The fact that the USSR Consular Regulations of 1926 were operative for so long a period - and moreover with only minimal changes instituted over that entire period - is persuasive confirmation of the sophistication of Soviet consular legislation, a fact upon which both Soviet and foreign writers commented even in the first years during which the 1926 regulations were in effect. It should be emphasized that the Consular Regulations of 1926, designed on consistently democratic and progressive principles, had a major influence on the development of all consular law, particularly the consular regulations of certain other countries adopted at later dates. Many major