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Государство и право: метаморфозы российской законности за 300 лет
The comparative analysis of different legal cultures and traditions is an important
target of jurisprudence in the epoch of globalization regarding such
issues as common and original aspects of various legal systems, norms and
institutions, their evolution in history and cross-cultural influences. The substantive
part of this research strategy includes clarification of value-systems,
legal stereotypes, and even prejudices of different nations as represented in
a long-term historical evolution and modes of its evaluation by domestic
and foreign observers in contested narratives. The book under review demonstrates
an interesting and controversial approach to this subject by using a
de facto anthropological reconsideration of the Russian legal tradition covering
the significant historical period from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin.
The author postulated the original character of the Russian legal tradition
describing its essence as the eternal reproduction of a very specific form of
legality, namely, functional or administrative-legal regulation of society by
the state. He argues that this functional paradigm codified in the soviet theory
of state and law, in reality, reflects the genuine structure of legal thinking,
mechanism of power and ideological ground of the Russian statehood
during the periods of Empire, Soviet dictatorship and Post-Soviet government.
Thus, for the author of the book, it seems to be a formula of power
symbolizing the historical continuity of the Russian legal culture as well as
its main difference from the Western law-based state. The author of this review
demonstrates the positive and the negative sides of this scheme of the
Russian legal tradition: while it is a logical explanation for the evident and
undisputable priority of the state over society in Russian history, this theory
of functional legality leads to the apparent oversimplification of country’s
complex legal evolution and its place in comparative perspective. From the
anthropological point of view, this concept provides a very clear image of
the dominant Anglo-Saxon narrative of the Russian legal past and present
with all its stereotypes, shortcomings, and beliefs. Reconsideration of these
historically formed mental stereotypes on a neutral and value-free base
could be helpful for the reliable understanding of the paths of Russia’s legal
transformation in the new globalized world.