Parkhomenko, R. N. Russia and West: Law Against Morals?

Abstract: The author of the article analyzes similarities and differences in spiritual and legal spheres of life of Russia and Western countries, first of all, Germany. For example, the cultural singularity of Europe is well proved by the fact that it developed as an integral Catholic world after the failure of the Western Roman Empire. In Western European countries Church established the unified system of regulations and the common space of values. That process was autonomous and did not depend on nonreligious social institutions or government. This is what created pluralism in Europe and dependence of relations between different institutions and social organizations on legal regulations. In Russia the absence of the bourgeois class, insufficient development of the legal sphere and political immaturity of the population resulted in the ‘special’ path of our country and created a special position of Russia between the Western civil society and Oriental despotism. The author of the present research article in detail views different points of view on the problems of cultural and historical features of Russia compared to the West and concludes that in the course of the historical development Russia created its own specific version of liberalism when legal guarantees of personal freedom were replaced with humanist ideals including the ideal of ‘truth’. Therefore, a specific feature of the Russian mentality is that Russian liberal ideology and legal regulations are in many ways based on morals and moral appraisal.

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