History shows another path existed. Does one remain?
Melanie Safka sang in 1970: "There's a chance peace will come in your lifetime, please buy one."
Mikael Wiehe responded: "Is it really peace we want at any cost? With peace comes friendship, forged with strong bonds. And these ties bind evil to good and false to true."
Two artists. Two questions about the nature of peace itself. Is it arrival without consequences? Friendship without compromise? Bonds without moral ambiguity?
This article explores what happens when we ask those questions about Russia today. About the constitutional work interrupted in 1993. About possibilities Ukraine might consider—possibilities rooted in Russian history, not Western imposition.
Aron Trainin's "Defense of Peace" (1944) provided theoretical grounding for Article 6 of the London Charter (1945): "Crimes against peace—individuals, not abstract states, commit crimes against international law."
Think about that shift. Not "Russia committed aggression." But specific humans bear responsibility, not nations or flags. Western scholarship overlooked Trainin compared to American, British, French colleagues. Historian Francine Hirsch's 2020 study "Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg" corrected that record. The contribution mattered. Just less recognized.
Fast forward to 2026. Who bears responsibility for Ukraine's invasion? Putin? The oligarchs? The generals? Or does the structural arrangement itself—the vertical power concentrating unchecked authority—constitute the crime?
Gorbachev's glasnost enabled constitutional commission work from 1990-1993. Three years of pluralistic debate about power balances. Federalism discussions. Regional rights protections. Presidential limitations through parliamentary oversight. Then October 1993. Shelling of parliament. Hundreds dead. New constitution drafted without genuine consultation. Super-presidential system codified.
Four figures carried forward this interrupted project. Trainin, the theorist establishing legal precedents. Rumyantsev, the practitioner witnessing both possibility and limitation. Zorkin, the judge balancing idealism against political reality. Shakhray, the reformer navigating institutional constraints. Each represents something different about the tension between constitutional aspiration and political pragmatism.
Today's Russia operates through strict vertical hierarchy. Jeltsin-Putin structure unchanged in essential form despite personnel shifts. Opposition emerges questioning this arrangement—not Putin personally, but the system enabling unlimited executive power.
The article suggests an alternative: reconnecting with those four historical figures creates continuity. Shifts focus from personality to structure. From Putin to the constitutional architecture allowing one man unlimited authority.
It's not the Russian nation facing moral judgment. It's the constitutional order interrupted in 1993 that must be restored—with clear-eyed awareness of what must be excluded.
Melanie hoped for peace arriving "according to plan." Wiehe questioned what that peace costs. The answer exists: The plan is already written. The cost is daring to rediscover it—with full awareness of what must be excluded.
Restoration requires knowing both what to preserve and what to discard. The 1993 constitutional draft contained possibilities worth reviving. Also contained ambiguities requiring correction.
The choice isn't between accepting Putin's Russia or dismantling Russia itself. It's between different Russias—different constitutional orders, different power distributions, different relationships between state and citizen.
Ukraine's role isn't choosing for Russia. Ukraine's role is creating conditions where Russians themselves might choose differently.
De Beauvoir's insight applies: freedom requires structural conditions enabling choice. Individuals cannot choose liberty without institutions making that choice feasible. What structures enable Russians to choose differently than Putin's system permits? What constitutional arrangements allow genuine pluralism without threatening territorial integrity? What balance between central authority and regional autonomy prevents both authoritarian concentration and separatist fragmentation?
These aren't Western-imposed questions. They're Russian questions, emerging from Russian debates, requiring Russian solutions.
The interrupted constitutional commission represents lost time. Lost possibilities. Lost years where democratic consolidation might have occurred instead of authoritarian entrenchment. But lost doesn't mean impossible to recover. The framework exists in archival records, in scholarly analyses, in the memories of participants still living.
The question for opposition movements: Dare you resume what was abandoned? For Ukrainians: Can you create space allowing that resumption without imposing outcomes? For the world: Will you support processes emerging organically, not schemes designed externally?
Peace comes according to plan. But plans require courage to implement. And courage requires believing alternatives exist.
The alternative exists. It waited 30 years. Waiting isn't infinite.
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