Constitutional reforms in the post-Soviet space: development trends

Introduction: the article provides generalization and analysis of the modern experience of constitutional reforms in the post-Soviet space. By the examples of certain states, the authors show the permanence and variety of constitutional reforms, prove that changes of the constitutional text can be of different importance, and the concepts “change of the Constitu-tion”, “constitutional amendment”, “constitutional reform” and “revision of the Constitu-tion” used in legal science are different. In the context of the latest practice of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe), the authors describe the modern constitutional reforms, which reflect the main directions of modernization in a number of countries being at the stage of deepening and strengthening the democratic foundations. Purpose: based on the analysis of the constitutional reforms im-plemented in several post-Soviet states over the past decades, to identify and demonstrate the specific features of constitutional reforms, their difference from ordinary modifications of the constitutional text which do not lead to the transformation of the fundamental principles of the state and society. Methods: formal-logical and comparative law methods, analysis, syn-thesis, comparison, and generalization methods were used. Results: it is impossible to charac-terize the constitutional reform with only one unique feature which would allow one to clearly distinguish it from a number of similar phenomena. Constitutional reform cannot be measured with quantitative indicators. Therefore, it is important to identify the conditions, or criteria, which will allow for referring some particular constitutional changes to the class of constitu-tional reforms. Most changes of the existing constitutions represent partial semantic correction of the text, not affecting the nature of the constitutional institutions. Modern constitutional re-form is a goal-oriented action or a set of uniform goal-oriented actions which are stretched over the time; it is always characterized by the scale and implications for the modern and de-veloping legal regulation as well as for the entire system of social relations within the constitu-tional impact. Constitutional reform is characterized by changes of the fundamentals of the state and society, goal-setting, adequate resourcing, and certain legal and factual results.