Legal History on ExcellentWiki - Legal Encyclopedia

Post-Soviet Legal Reform (1991–Present)

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 1993 Constitution and the Collapse of Soviet Institutions

The dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 left the Russian Federation without a functioning legal system adequate for democracy and a market economy. The Soviet legal order had been designed for a planned economy and a one-party state, and its categories, institutions, and personnel were ill-suited to the post-Soviet transition. The crisis of legal authority deepened through 1992–1993 as President Boris Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet (the legislature inherited from the Soviet period) struggled for control over the constitutional order.

Soviet Legal Theory and Practice

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Bolshevik Abolition of the Tsarist Legal System

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 initiated the most radical legal transformation in modern history: the complete abolition of the existing legal order and its replacement by a new “proletarian” law. The Decree on Courts No. 1 of November 22, 1917, abolished the entire tsarist judicial system — the Governing Senate, the judicial chambers, the district courts, the justices of the peace, the procuracy, the bar, and the forensic investigation apparatus. The Decree prohibited the application of tsarist laws “unless they have not been abolished by the revolution and do not contradict the revolutionary conscience and the revolutionary concept of justice.”

Russian Legal History: 9th–18th Centuries

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Russian legal history from the 9th to the 18th centuries traces the evolution from customary tribal law through the first written codifications of Kyivan Rus’ to the elaborate absolutist legal apparatus of the Russian Empire. This millennium saw the gradual displacement of personal law based on tribal affiliation by territorial law administered by a centralising state, the emergence of the serfdom system as a defining legal institution, and the first phase of Western-inspired legal modernisation under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.

Russian Legal History: 19th–20th Centuries

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed the most dramatic transformations in Russian legal history: the comprehensive codification of Russian law under Mikhail Speransky, the Great Reforms of Alexander II establishing an independent judiciary, the constitutional experiments of the early 20th century, the revolutionary abolition of the entire tsarist legal order and its replacement by Soviet law, and the post-Soviet reconstruction of a law-based state. This period saw Russian law oscillate between Western-inspired models of legality and autocratic or revolutionary alternatives.