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Many socialist countries, including the USSR, had provisions in their constitutions for recalling deputies by voters/citizens.

For instance, 1977 constitution of the USSR has

Article 107. Deputies shall report on their work and on that of the Soviet to their constituents, and to the work collectives and public organisations that nominated them. Deputies who have not justified the confidence of their constituents may be recalled at any time by decision of a majority of the electors in accordance with the procedure established by law

Was recalling of deputies ever done in practice in the USSR using the procedure outlined in article 107?

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    I updated the question to be specific about the USSR and article 107 of Brezhnev constitution from 1977. If there are other countries or revisions of the constitutions under which this happened, I'd be happy to hear and can open another question about that - as such cases would now be out of scope for this question.
    – tuomas
    Aug 17, 2020 at 4:59
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    I don't know the answer, but are you interested in the period before 1977 in the Soviet Union as well? Provision for recall elections was one of Lenin's reasons (excuses) for dissolving the constituent assembly and replacing it with the soviets as the main governing body of the country. I would assume Stalin made use of these provisions to purge those who displeased him, but I don't know.
    – Ne Mo
    Aug 17, 2020 at 13:06
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    Sorry, didn't read your comment properly
    – Ne Mo
    Aug 17, 2020 at 13:06
  • Yeah, I am very much interested in earlier times as well, but I couldn't find similar clause from Stalin constitution so I picked 1977 version instead. I believe the purges were mostly extralegal or ad hoc processes instead of (even superficially emulated) popular actions based on constitution, but would be interesting to see if there's any documented cases of recall being used as first / primary means of removing unwanted deputies.
    – tuomas
    Aug 17, 2020 at 13:09
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    It's a shame you were compelled to narrow it so much. It's a pet peeve of mine that users get forced to close interesting questions as too broad, when they obviously aren't because no one knew the answer! All socialist countries might have been a tad vague, but if no one answers you after a while I would widen it to the whole of Soviet history
    – Ne Mo
    Aug 18, 2020 at 19:34

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All Soviet constitutions, starting from Soviet Russia Constitution of 1918 (link to article) had provisions to recall deputies.

However, it is mostly in 1920s and 1930s that these provision was actively used, according to this research, in 1931 10.1% of the deputies were recalled from the village councils, in 1932 - 17.0%. In some territories and regions, the percentage of those recalled was significantly higher (in the Leningrad region - 59%). However, most of the deputies were deprived of their powers “for inactivity” (79.8%), as “class enemies” - 3.3% of the deputies and for “distorting the party line” were recalled - 15.5%.

Deputy recall was not a grassroots-driven instrument, just like the elections was not open and free, in all cases it was a way for the party to punish those out of line and in the turbulent 1930s was likely used as one of the mechanism to purge "enemies of the people".

By the time of Era of Stagnation in 1970s purges were over and deputy recall was likely very rare (perhaps, with exceptions when deputies were convicted of criminal offenses, that were kept quiet from general public to avoid casting shadow on the official institutions). It is important to understand the larger political context in the USSR: the deputies in voted unanimously and in most cases gave rubber-stamp approval for decisions already made propagated top down from Politburo. enter image description here

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