Аннотация:The Soviet Constitution guarantees a right to secede.'The American Constitution does not.Although some secessionists in the American South, invoking state sovereignty, claimed to find an implicit right to secede in the founding document, it was more common to invoke an extratextual and nonjusticiable "right to secede" said to be enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.'In any case, no serious scholar or politician now argues that a right to secede exists under American constitutional law. 3 It is generally agreed that such a right would undermine the Madisonian spirit of the original document, one that encourages the development of constitutional provisions that prevent the defeat of the basic enterprise. 4 Eastern European countries are now deciding about the contents of proposed constitutions.They are often doing so in the context of profound cultural and ethnic divisions, both often defined at least roughly in territorial terms.These divisions have propelled t
