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Sally W. Stoecker, an executive editor of Demokratizatsiya, is a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
In the United States, we tend to take "legal consciousness" for granted. The law protects us and defends our liberties in a just and reliable way. Sure, we laugh about the proliferation of lawyers, moan about lawsuits, and cringe at the politicization and publicity of some high-profile criminal and civil cases, but on the whole we respect the law and the judicial system that underlies it. We trust that the system is fair and that it will serve our best interests. The situation is much different in the Russian Federation. Laws were abused and/or ignored by Soviet leaders throughout the Soviet period, and no semblance of trust developed among the citizenry; rather, apathy or ridicule of the law was the norm. 1
For Russia to evolve into a democratic state that respects and upholds civil liberties, Russian citizens must develop and sustain legal consciousness (pravosoznanie). Legal consciousness, to my mind, refers not only to one's respect for the law, but to an innate confidence in the law's protective powers and due process. In short, it is a belief that the judicial system will defend the citizen's rights and assist her when violation of the law occurs. Unfortunately, legal consciousness is still undeveloped in Russia, as numerous interviews and polling data reveal. Only 2 percent of respondents in one survey felt fully protected by the law, whereas 70 percent felt "somewhat" protected by the law, and 13 percent felt no protection whatsoever. Moreover, 65 percent of respondents reported having had their rights violated, especially in the area of employment and compensation; the frequency of such violations was blamed on the citizenry's overall passivity and ignorance about the laws on the books. They also report skepticism and cynicism about the law and its application.
Cynicism about the Russian judicial system is prevalent because persons and institutions in power continue to abuse it or acquire immunity from it. Recent court decisions illustrate this phenomenon quite vividly. In summer 2002, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of naval journalist Grigory Pasko for treason in conjunction with his reporting and "intention" to pass to Japanese journalists classified information...