Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1947 by politician Nikolai Bulganin. Two Marshals were executed in postwar purges: Kulik in 1950 and Beria in 1953, following Stalin's death. Thereafter the rank was awarded only to professional soldiers, with the exception of Leonid Brezhnev, who made himself a Marshal in 1976, and Ustinov, who was prominent in the arms industry and was appointed Defence Minister in July 1976. The last Marshal of the Soviet Union was Dmitry Yazov, appointed in 1990, who was imprisoned after the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Marshal Sergei Akhromeev committed suicide in 1991 during the fall of the Soviet
Constitution of the Soviet Union political decisions in the country. During Perestroika in the late 1980s the constitution helped provide a framework for the emergence of extended democracy. Constitution of the Soviet Union There were three versions of the constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, modeled after the 1918 Constitution established by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the immediate predecessor of the Soviet Union. These three constitutions were: These constitutions had most provisions in common. These provisions declared the leadership of the working class and, in the latter two, the leading role of the CPSU in government and society. All the