Do we need a new “recipe for salvation” of criminal law? (Mournful reflections about A.S. Alexandrov’s and I.A. Alexandrova’s article)

This article presents a response to the work of A.S. Alexandrov and I.A. Alexandrova entitled «Proceduralstrategy for the development of criminal law in the XXI century». These authors state the decline of the Russian doctrine of criminal law, characterized by its «archaism» and the impossibility of rejecting «dogmas». They offered a very original «recipe for salvation» of the domestic science of criminal law through its «procedural revolution». The author of the article gives a number of arguments against the reasoning of Professors Alexandrovs. In particular, it is emphasized that the overwhelming majority of modern specialists in the field of criminal law do not raise the question of his «seniority» over the criminal process. Further, if the question of the criminality of an act is decided by the court and/or by the prosecution side authorities then practically any act of behavior can be arbitrarily declared criminal (or vice versa). Finally, some of the «dogmas of criminal law» that Professors Alexandrovs were talking about are simply absent in the doctrine. In particular there is no principle of «inevitability of criminal liability» as a mandatory punish-ability of any crime, the postulates of «invariability of the criminal legal basis» of responsibility, of «social justice» of criminal punishment. The article indicates that professors Alexandrov’s (deliberately or unknowingly) distorted doctrinal positions on a number of problems of criminal law (for example, on the assessment of «white-collar» crime, on the «fragmentation» of norms on fraud). A general conclusion about the inadmissibility of the «procedural revolution» of Russian criminal law is made.