State sovereignty of the USSR in 1919–1920

State sovereignty of the USSR was controversial in its content. De jure – in accordance with international treaties, the constitution of 1919 and the Union Workers’and Peasants’ Treaty between the RSFSR and the USSR of December 28, 1920 – the inviolability of the sovereignty of the Ukrainian SSR, which was recognized as a subject of international law based on the implementation of Ukrainian law, was proclaimed and established people [the proletariat and the poorer peasantry] for self-determination. De facto – the sovereignty of the USSR in the political and legal concepts of the RCP(b) and the CP(b)U was interpreted mainly as the formal independence of the subject of the federation for a transitional period before the establishment of a single proletarian state on the territory of the former Russian Empire. The recognition of the inviolability of state sovereignty and the legitimization of the international legal personality of the USSR were determined by the desire of the Communist Party leadership to use the independence of the USSR in its foreign policy interests. The real ability to exercise supreme power, i.e., the scope of sovereign rights, in the USSR in 1919–1920 was actually determined by the governing subject in the hierarchical structure of power. Such a governing entity was the party leadership – the Central Committee of the RCP(b) and the Central Committee of the CP(b)U. The highest bodies of state power and the Council of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies could not independently realize the sovereign rights of the state. They had no real power influence, resources (and often political will) and authority to make powerful decisions in the foreign and domestic political spheres, since all vital issues were decided by the party leadership – the Central Committee of the RCP(b) and the Central Committee of the CP(b)U. Sovereignty of the Ukrainian SSR in 1919–1920 implemented accordingly to the will of that political and legal concept of the core bodies of the ruling communist party and had declarative character. Key words: Ukraine, history of law, sovereignty, sovereign rights of the state, legal construction of sovereignty, Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, legitimacy of sovereignty of the USSR.