The concepts of "security" and "national security": some problems of legal terminology

Kuznetsov Mihail Sergeevich Student; Faculty of Economics and Law; St. Petersburg University of the State Fire Service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia named after Hero of the Russian Federation Army General E.N. Zinichev 194356, Russia, Saint Petersburg, 52 Lunacharsky Ave., 1, sq. 196 mike_seckret@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In order to protect the human and civil rights and freedoms established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and to comply with constitutional guarantees of such protection, the Federal Law "On Security" was adopted in 2010, replacing the Law of the Russian Federation "On Security", which had been in force since 1992.

Initially, the definition of "security" was contained in the Law of the Russian Federation "On Security", which defined it as "the state of protection of vital interests of the individual, society and the state from internal and external threats." The Federal Law "On Security" does not specify the content of this term, but it provides that the concepts of "security" and "national security" are synonymous.

Currently, the definition of national security of the Russian Federation is formulated in the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 400 dated July 2, 2021 (hereinafter also referred to as the National Security Strategy). It should be borne in mind that the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, in accordance with the Federal Law on Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation, "is the basic document in the field of planning the development of the national security system of the Russian Federation, which defines the procedure and measures to ensure the national security of the Russian Federation."

According to this Strategy, the national security of the Russian Federation is "a state of protection of the national interests of the Russian Federation from external and internal threats, which ensures the realization of constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens, decent quality and standard of living, civil peace and harmony in the country, protection of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity, socio-economic development of the country".

In the above definition, the key, in our opinion, is the protection of the national interests of the country. This includes not only protection from external threats and aggression, introduced back in the 1992 definition, but also an extensive list of security issues, including economic, information, environmental, and humanitarian security. In addition, starting in 2021, along with ensuring the realization of constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens, decent quality and standard of living, a new vector appears in the definition of national security: "civil peace and harmony in the country, protection of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity, socio-economic development of the country."

In addition to legislative norms, there are interpretations of scientists and specialists in understanding the essence of national security.

Thus, O.A. Belkov defines national security as "the state, development trends (including latent ones) and living conditions of society, its structures, institutions and institutions, which ensure the preservation of their qualitative certainty with objectively determined innovations in it and free functioning corresponding to their own nature and determined by it" ^{[1, c. 91]}.

N.D. Matrusov complements the above, who considers national security as "sufficient protection of national resources and values, as well as state, public and personal interests from internal and external threats" ^[2].

A similar definition is given by A.V. Vozzhenikov, who believes that security is "... a state of protection of vital interests of an individual, society and the state in all spheres of their life from internal and external dangers and threats, characterized by a country's position that ensures its integrity and internal stability, sovereign and progressive development.", the opportunity to act as an independent and full-fledged subject of international legal relations" ^[3]. There are also a number of authors who support this point of view, while simultaneously considering it from different aspects, namely: A.A. Galushkin ^{[4, p. 8]}, G.A. Barzykina ^{[5, p. 20-22]}, A.I. Gerasimova ^{[6, p. 187-190]}.

Analyzing the above arguments of N.D. Matrusov and A.V. Vozzhenikov, it can be understood that these authors have similar opinions, paying special attention to the protection of "the interests of the individual, society and the state" from internal and external threats. At the same time, A.V. Vozzhenikov reveals more fully the idea of protecting the state, paying attention to its integrity, stability and development, while N.D. Matrusov focuses on the protection of national resources and values.

In addition to these authors, other scientists have been engaged in the study of the problems raised in the article. Thus, M.S. Savchenko in his scientific work examines the evolution, content and structure of the concepts of "security", "personal security", "state security", "national security" ^[7]; O.Y. Karpysheva analyzes the relationship between the concepts of "national security system" and "national security system" ^[8] N.G. Kutyin in his work explores the concept of "security", and also analyzes the types of security in modern Russian legislation ^[9].

In addition to the aforementioned National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, approved by the act of the head of state, there are a number of legislative acts that provide their own definition of the concept of "security". For example, the Federal Law "On Fire Safety" interprets safety as "the state of protection of an individual, property, society and the state from fires." The Federal Law "On Road Safety" states that "road safety is the state of a given process, reflecting the degree of protection of its participants from road accidents and their consequences." Radiation safety of the population, as stated in the Federal Law on Radiation Safety of the Population, is "the state of protection of present and future generations of people from the effects of ionizing radiation harmful to their health." According to the definition set out in the Federal Law "On Industrial Safety of Hazardous Production Facilities," specified safety is "the state of protection of vital interests of the individual and society from accidents at hazardous production facilities and the consequences of these accidents." The security of critical infrastructure according to the Federal Law "On the Security of Critical Information Infrastructure of the Russian Federation" is considered to be "the state of security of critical information infrastructure, ensuring its stable functioning during computer attacks against it."

One of the latest laws that reveals the concept of safety in relation to a particular area is the Federal Law "On Biological Safety in the Russian Federation", which defines biological safety as "the state of protection of the population and the environment from the effects of dangerous biological factors, which ensures an acceptable level of biological risk."

We come to the conclusion that the presence of many definitions concerning, in fact, the same concept – security as a state of security (mainly the security of a person, people, and the population), indicates the imperfection of legislation in this area. When preparing draft laws concerning security in a particular area, the legislator tries to formulate a definition of security that is applicable exclusively to this area, which, in our opinion, is impractical. It is necessary to have a single definition common to all fields of activity, having fixed it in the Federal Law "On Security". This general rule will have to be used in other federal laws, possibly specifying individual features specific to a particular industry.

Let us turn to the concept of "national interests", the protection of which (along with other components) is mentioned in the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation. In addition, the said act defines the national interests of the Russian Federation as "objectively significant needs of the individual, society and the State for security and sustainable development" (paragraph 5).

In different parts of the Strategy, words are used that are different in spelling, but similar in meaning: personality, population, society, people, nation to one degree or another denoting the same thing – a person or people, their associations (groups).

For a correct understanding of the terms used in the definitions, let's turn to the explanatory dictionary. So, a "personality" is a person as a carrier of some properties, the concept of "population" refers to the inhabitants of a place or locality, and "people" is the population of a state, the inhabitants of a country (people and population in this case are synonyms); "society" is interpreted as a set of people united by historically determined social forms of living and working together; a "nation" is a historically stable community of people formed in the process of forming a community of their territory, economic ties, literary language, cultural characteristics and spiritual appearance.

Based on these interpretations, concepts such as "personality" and "society" should be used to define security, since the former concerns a specific person, while the latter is related to relationships between people (personalities) and is considered in conjunction with their history, interests, needs, desires, beliefs, behavior, and traditions. Undoubtedly, the concept of "security" should contain an indication of ensuring the security of the state, which is a political organization of society, which is designed to protect this society (population) in general and a particular person (personality) in particular, which corresponds to the constitutional norm (Article 2 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation).

The use of the phrase "national interests" literally means the interests of only those people who eventually formed the state, that is, exclusively citizens of the country. If we proceed from the policy pursued by the state, according to which "The Russian Federation encourages the acquisition of citizenship of the Russian Federation by stateless persons residing in the Russian Federation," then in this case, ensuring security in which national interests prevail is a conscious choice: first of all, the state provides protection to Russian citizens. This provision is vague, but corresponds to the norm of the Federal Law "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation", according to which "foreign citizens enjoy rights and duties in the Russian Federation on an equal basis with citizens of the Russian Federation, except in cases provided for by federal laws" (Article 4).

Security also includes protection from internal and external threats. However, the legislative acts do not contain information about what is included in this concept. It can be distinguished from a number of acts of the head of state that internal threats include the emergence and spread of terrorism in the Russian Federation and extremism, while external threats include military dangers and military threats.

In addition, there are other forms of understanding the "threat" in the scientific literature. When analyzing the legal component, a number of Russian scientists consider the concept in various aspects. All positions can be roughly classified into several categories: 1) threat is a type of mental violence ^{[10, p. 7]}; 2) threat is a type of mental coercion ^{[11, p. 58]}; 3) threat is a means of mental coercion ^{[12, p. 13-14]}; 4) a form of intent detection ^{[13, p. 13]}; 5) possible danger of criminal consequences ^{[14, p. 645; 15, pp. 152-153]}.

Turning to the linguistic basis, we see that the word "threat" (in the meaning we are interested in) means a possible danger, and the concept of danger is interpreted as "an opportunity, a threat of something very bad, some kind of misfortune," that is, these terms are synonymous.

At the same time, the above interpretation allows us to attribute to the content of the concept of "danger" emergency situations resulting from an accident, a dangerous natural phenomenon, a catastrophe, the spread of a disease that poses a danger to others, a natural disaster or another disaster.

An accident, as defined in the Federal Law "Technical Regulations on the Safety of Buildings and Structures", is a dangerous man–made accident that creates a threat to human life and health at an object, a certain territory or water area and leads to the destruction or damage of buildings, structures, equipment and vehicles, disruption of the production or transport process, damage to the environment. and the concept of "catastrophe" is explained only in the national standard, according to which a catastrophe is "a major accident that caused human casualties and damage to human health. and also caused serious damage to the environment," which in meaning coincides with the interpretation of this term in the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language: "an event with tragic consequences."

Gorenje also considers fires to be emergencies, which are known to be uncontrolled burning that causes material damage, harm to the life and health of citizens, and the interests of society and the state.

Russian Russian is considered to be the official language of the Russian Federation, taking into account the conducted small linguistic analysis, as well as the requirements of the Federal Law "On the State Language of the Russian Federation", which stipulates that when using Russian as the official language of the Russian Federation, including in the activities of federal government bodies and when publishing laws, the norms of modern Russian literary language must be observed (Articles 1 and 3), we come to the following conclusions:

First, the concepts of "security" and "national security" cannot have the same legislative definition for both terms.;

Secondly, when developing definitions of the concepts of "security" and "national security", terms should be used that most accurately define the positions that the legislator refers to as security or national security, and at the same time be concise in external form and deep in internal content.;

Thirdly, the first item in the list of positions that the state provides as a state of security should indicate the individual (person), his rights and freedoms, then society as a whole and the state created by society.

Considering the above, it is proposed to introduce the following amendments and additions to the legislative acts of the Russian Federation:

1) in the Federal Law "On Security":

a) add the second and third paragraphs to article 1, stating them in the following wording:

"Security is the state of protection of a person and citizen in the Russian Federation, society and the state from external and internal threats, including emergencies, and their consequences.

National security is the state of protection of citizens of the Russian Federation, society and the state from external and internal threats and their consequences.";

b) add a new paragraph to article 2 as follows:

"Ensuring the national security of the individual is focused on the observance and protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. Ensuring the security of foreign citizens and stateless persons is carried out in accordance with the international treaties of the Russian Federation.";

2) in federal laws that regulate security issues in various fields, rework the definitions of security, based on the concept of "security" proposed by the author.;

3) in the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation:

a) duplicate the proposed concepts of "security" and "national security", if they are included in the Federal Law "On Security", correcting the text of the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation accordingly;

b) add the following explanation to the paragraph defining the basic concepts:

"The state of protection of the state from internal and external threats means the protection of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity, and the socio-economic development of the country."

The formulated proposals confirm the need to study and critically analyze the concepts of "security" and "national security", taking into account the dynamics of the modern world and new challenges, which will be an important step towards strengthening the legal framework and improving the effectiveness of the security system in the state. This work reveals the essence of safety, and therefore can be used in the study of issues of national, fire and other safety.