Russian constitutionalism considered in the historical and philosophical perspectives

Abstract

The author of the article examines the origins of the constitutional process in Russia. He shows that it is in the pre-revolutionary period when such problems as those of the abolition of serfdom, building a classless society, creating a state of law, ensuring social justice, protecting human rights were widely discussed in the Rus-sian society. It is stressed that all these prob-lems were considered in a creative dialogue with the constitutional ideas elaborated in Euro-pe, primarily with the conception of a state of common good, the principle of separation of powers, the ideals of democracy and civil soci-ety. The author analyzes the two main para-digms of Russian constitutionalism that em-erged in the 18th century: constitutionalism, which politically and legally restricts supreme power to protect the interests of a particular social group or class; constitutionalism, im-plying the necessity to limit the supreme power. The first paradigm originates from Anna Ioan-novna’s “Conditions” 1730), the second one refers to Catherine’s the Great “Instructions for the commission to make up a project of the New Code” 1767). In the context of the devel-opment of Russian constitutionalism, the politi-cal and philosophical views of A. N. Radish-chev, M. M. Speransky, A. I. Herzen, B. N. Chi-cherin, P. B. Struve, L. A. Tikhomirov, I. A. Il-lyin and others are analyzed. It is concluded that the modern Russian Constitution is the re-sult of a reasonable compromise between dif-ferent values and positions, as it takes into ac-count and develops all the constitutional ideas appeared in previous periods, both pre-revolu-tionary and Soviet.