Understanding Russian Legal Realism in the Modern Science

Abstract

This paper is devoted to modern researches on the Russian realistic jurisprudence. The relevance of the topic of this paper is determined by growing interest in legal realistic movements in general and Russian legal realism in particular. Current approaches to the analysis, reconstruction and criticism of legal realism are being developed by leading scholars that indicates the importance of the realistic paradigm in law. The approaches to understanding Russian legal realism considered in the paper especially in the context of classic American and Scandinavian realistic movements allow analyzing the trends in the further development of the theory and practice of legal realism in Russia. The subject of the study is the approaches of modern scholars to the phenomenon of Russian legal realism. The purpose of the work is to clarify the reasonableness of the identification of the Russian realistic movement in law. The novelty of the topic consists of the analysis of works that have appeared in the last decade on the subject of Russian legal realism including a comparison of the principal opinions available in science about the representatives of this movement and the prospects for its recognition as a “classic” realistic movement along with American and Scandinavian legal realism. Descriptive, formal logical and comparative legal methods were used as the key research methods including the analysis of the works of the authors of the English-language collective monograph “Russian Legal Realism” (2018, Springer) and the comparison of American, Scandinavian and Russian realistic movements in jurisprudence. The main conclusions of the paper are the necessity for further research of Russian legal thought of the late 19th–early 20th centuries and its development in the 20th–21st centuries in order to distinguish more clearly the Russian version of legal realism among diverse psychological and sociological theories as well as to compare presumably realistic ideas in Russia with the already acknowledged classic movements of legal realism in the USA and Scandinavia. The significance of such a comparative analysis for justification the existence of a specific Russian movement of legal realism is emphasized. Despite many methodological difficulties an understanding of Russian legal realism is provided that distinguishes the works of its predecessors at the end of the 19th century and supporters (theorists and practitioners) in the 20th century: the proposed understanding also actualizes their significant influence on Russian legal realities in the 21st century.