The System and Structure of Russian Legislation: Its Past, Present and Lessons for the Future

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the development of the system and structure of the Russian legislation in the space-time continuum. The author demonstrates the defining role of economic, and more widely—social—factors, ultimately determining the vector for the development of law. The paper questions the idea of the supposed self-sufficiency of law that develops in compliance with its own rules. In recent years this approach has dominated the domestic legal science. In the Western doctrine, this approach has existed for quite a long time. Such a methodological platform fits into the general context of postmodern, where objective reality is replaced by preconceptions about it. In this regard, the need to prove any approach disappears because all opinions are declared to be equal. The author substantiates the statement concerning the necessity of studying law in the context of causal relations between legal and social factors. The analysis made by the author attempts to justify the fact that the economic reform carried out in Russia by means of privatization and shares-forloans auctions was not aimed at economic growth. The objective of the reform was to redistribute property, which became the basis of first oligarchic and, later, bureaucratic Russian capitalism, equally unpromising in the present and foreseeable future. To meet this objective, i.e. to redistribute property, a system of legislation was formed under immediate control of Western, mainly American, analytic centers. That policy resulted in creating the economy based on raw materials and off-shores. It is noted that the pandemic has seriously affected the system of values and benchmarks of social development. Therefore, the issue of a shift in the paradigm of social development will inevitably arise. The economic, political, social and legal doctrines of the past that were perceived largely uncritically, will lose their strength and will never be the intellectual basis of evolution. The author anticipates the orientation of nations at maximizing the demand of the domestic markets. Russia’s integration into the world economic system, the idea of which used to dominate in Russia, proved completely untenable, as did the myths of globalization in general. In this regard, the transformation of the system and structure of the Russian legislation is inevitable. The development of Russia’s legal system should be aimed at solving internal problems, which, of course, does not mean isolation of the country.