Essay About The Province (Notes About the Lack of Power in Modern Russia)

In this article, the author using sketches of Russian culture, tries to understand, how institutions of power can function in the Russian province, and how they can be perceived by the society. The power is distributed unevenly, and this has a full effect on its deficit in relation to provincial political discourse. The Russian example is not an exception. From the author’s point of view, modern practices may have significant cultural grounds, hiding in a special relation to the province, which traditionally accompanied political discourse. The author sees this attitude in various sketches from the texts of Aleksandr Pushkin, Andrey Platonov, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin and other Russian classics. The author’s interpretation of the problem required an appeal to the theoretical works of political philosophers, such as Giorgio Agamben, Albert Camus, Niklas Luhmann, Michel Foucault and Max Scheler. The author believes that in the space of the Russian province there is an objective deficit of institutions of power, which speaks, on the one hand, of a certain disregard for the province, and, on the other hand, testifies to the strength of resistance to local initiatives and legal nihilism that has become part of the political philosophy of the Russian provincial. In turn, the provision of a person to himself, affects a fairly critical attitude toward the political power. A person is not more capable of trusting the authorities and seeking support from them. His being increasingly assumes an existential character. The policy of the federal government in modern Russia gives rise to serious gaps between the center and the province, which can forms affect the specific perception of power itself, and also affects the formation of anarchic attitudes.

Discussive Aspects of the Issue of Legal Myth

The axiological aspects of legal myth and mythological perception of reality were analyzed and it was found that several interrelated properties of the studied myth can be identified, which allow to assert the thesis about its own and instrumental value. In particular, the intrinsic (ontological) value of legal myth is manifested in the formation of a certain sign system, which is a reflection of legal reality in the minds of man (or society). Mythological perception of reality, in our opinion, is authorial, selective, to some extent biased. Instead, the instrumental value of legal myth is observed in the processes of human cognition of the world and legal reality, in the process of identification and self-identification of man. In particular, the legal myth is not just a means of knowing and identifying the phenomena of legal reality, but serves as a reliable apologist for the value and moral choice of man and his behavior, such a sign system that has a certain „indulgence” for any human action (inaction). The instrumental value of the legal myth is not limited to the framework of the epistemological process, the tasks of observation and cognition, but has a powerful potential for influence and transformation of legal reality. Awareness of this potential of the legal myth opens a wide space for its application in order to root in the legal consciousness of man and, ultimately, society as a whole, the relevant legal (or anti-legal) values. The principles of interaction of the legal myth and the modern state are determined. Any legal myth seeks to spread, social support, wider recognition, in the most ambitious end – official recognition and legitimacy, which is impossible without a strong state function. The legitimation of the legal myth occurs through its spread in society, receiving social support and rooting first in the legal consciousness of individuals, and gradually – in the public legal consciousness. It can be argued that legal myths permeate all levels of legal reality of the modern state, from legal consciousness (man and society), and ending with the processes of lawmaking, law enforcement, interpretation.

The Category of “Legitimation” in the Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal – Constructive Semantic Conditions

This paper aims to analyze the Constitutional Tribunal’s (CT) jurisprudence regarding the term “legitimation” to reconstruct its definition and compare it with its lexical meaning. Despite its varied use across multiple contexts, the jurisprudence lacks a uniform definition of legitimation. This situation necessitates reliance on diverse semantic intuitions. A doctrinal-legal method combined with logical-linguistic analysis was employed, analyzing 100 CT rulings that used the term “legitimation”. The CT’s jurisprudence shows that the application of the term is not limited to legal legitimacy but also includes broader contexts such as social perception, alignment with the values of the legal system, or the sovereign’s will. It is used in contexts that align with previous lexical findings, suggesting that legitimation can be viewed both as a state and a process. The analysis confirms the need for a terminological distinction, which could help organize discourse around this concept.