[MUSIC] In Russia, as in many other democracies, as in many other countries, the doctrine and the practice of law insist on some exceptionalism. And Russian exceptionalism is a kind of searching for own constitutional identity. We will try to describe in general how it works in the Russian case, and I will try to argue why it appeared in Russia, and how it developed. So the first idea which I would stop on is, what is the typology of constitutional systems, and where is the place of Russia there? To look for own identity means that a state, a constitutional system, differs from the others. And if it does not, it is just a way to put on some shelf on the part of classification and to describe a certain case through a characteristic of its general time. For Russia, there is an obvious difficulties with making classification or typology of constitutional system. And there are a few causes for this. So the first to mention is to say that the typology of constitutional system does not usually allow to take into consideration the difference between formal and factual state of situation. So if the Russian constitution declares some principle or declares some institutions, it doesn't mean in each time that all these principles and institutions do really exist. And do really play those role which they supposed to play according to the text of the constitution. So if we will try to judge on the constitution text only, we could make typical accusation of the Russian constitutional of the Russian government system as samely parliamentary republic. While the president has the right to appoint prime minister only on consent of federal parliament, of State Duma. But, in fact, it doesn't mean that State Duma do really play crucial part in the procedure of appointment of prime minister. So that is why it is quite hard to make a clear and definite typical accusation basing on the formal text of the constitution only. The other difficulty is that the typology, any typology actually, will take into consideration quite a static rather than dynamic situation. And it means that in this very moment, we can classify the Russian constitutional system in one way. But in a year or in a decade, the situation will change and we will need to make another assessment of what the Russian constitutional system is. So this is the second difficulty to make clear typology of the Russian constitutional system. And the last point which I would like to mention is that any typology makes a very rough and very general description. And sometimes does not pay proper attention to those specific of a constitutional system or governmental system, which is sometimes quite substantial and quite crucial. So for the Russian constitutional system, we cannot put it in a certain place of general typology. Sometimes because of the lack of self-identity inside the Russia and inside the Russian constitutional scholarship and political system. In Russia, since the beginning of 19th century, there is a part of political and public discussion about what Russia is on the world map. And do we need to follow some way which was done by Western democracies in the legal, political, economic development of Russia or we should seek for our own way? The first approach was supported by those who were called Zapadniks, means zapad, like west, in Russian. And they tried to argue that Russia does not make anything original, but just to follow the other countries in general development of constitutional, legal, and political-economical system. But the others, who were called Slavyanofils, they insisted on priority of specific of the Russian social system, the Russian society in general. And they tried to argue that Russia should find its own original way, its own original system. Those disputes, this discussion, is still on agenda in Russia. Maybe they are not now called like they were called in 19th century. But still, this public discussion about liberals who argue for development like in Western democracies. And those who try to protect the specific of orthodoxy, Russian specific political, legal, and economic system. It is still the discussion which we see in the newspapers, in TV, in political debates, etc., etc. So today we see that Russia has no clear self-identity. While we can find some tendencies and we can see that today we hear more arguments in favor of specific of Russian way of development. Rather than protection of ideas to follow the Western economic or political systems as a sample. And the last point I would like to stop on is how to classify the Russian legal system precisely. If we talk about Russian society in general, we can doubt what the Russian identity is. But the legal system is a more formal and more static object for classification. But when we try to make classification typology of the Russian legal system, we find some other difficulties. And namely those which concern the fate of the Soviet legal system and its rudiments in the modern countries. Today, we can find in many scholar publications, in many scientific articles, the question is the Soviet law dead or it is still a part of those legal system which exist in former Soviet countries. Russia is one of these and we can try to discuss when the Russian law deviated from the development of the Soviet system far enough to say that today we have very specific, but still already not Soviet system. I would say that in public law, at least formal side of way, like formal institutions, or formal principles are written down in the constitution. They are very unlike those principles and institutions which were in the Soviet constitutional system. But today we cannot say that the way of thinking, the way of argumentation, the system of values, and other quite more deep things of legal system of regulation is really far from those which were of the Soviet system. And classification of legal system sometimes is based only on formal and surface view on legal institutions. But when we think about more substantial thing, it is very hard to put Russia on the map of different legal systems of the world.
