Legal Culture in Russia and the Specific Features of its Modernization: To the Centennial of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia

The Russian legal culture has been considered in the context of the western legal tradition since the moment of its origin and the following strengthening of the human rights ideal there. Considering this ideal, the author assesses the October coup of 1917 and the following communistic experiment and notes that the Russian revolution (namely the putsch plus the experiment) has slowed down perceptions and implementations of the human rights ideal in our country. The October, 1917 is the great tragedy of our people and a complete disaster both for the country in general, and for its legal culture, in particular. Our return to the human rights idea in the 90ies of the last century and its further development in this century takes place both in the context of challenges to the world’s legal grounds and as part of modern crisis of the western legal tradition and its human rights policy. For this very reason, the legal modernization, that Russia really needs, cannot focus on the specified crisis phenomena of modern western legal culture and has to rely on the ideals of Enlightenment – the time when the human rights idea was declared in the West and then blossomed there in the middle of the last century. The Russian legal modernization gains therefore unique and paradoxical character. Instead of the "catching-up" modernization type usual for different sectors, the legal modernization should seek for its goals regarding not today’s crisis western human rights samples but their yesterday's ideals as well as the objective requirements of our legal development. The latter calls for fostering the implementation of dignity and human rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993.However, these ideals still are not practiced sufficiently for a number of modern and historical reasons, including the complicated historical heritage, which we have inherited from the October 1917 and the following communistic experiment, undertaken in the country last century.