An Evolving Legal Framework

The Soviet Union disintegrated as a political and legal entity in 1991. Following the Accords on the Commonwealth, signed in Minsk and Alma Ata on December 8 and 21 of that year, the USSR was replaced by a fifteen-member Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In all the states of the new commonwealth, the Soviet Ail-Union legislation was discarded and its legal effects suspended except for certain laws and regulations that did not conflict directly with the new republican laws. Thus, every CIS republic started to develop its own distinct legal system.

The need for the sovereign Russian Federation to fill the virtual void of civil and commercial legislation to govern expanding market relations brought about an extensive production of new laws. But many of these laws were inconsistent and ambiguous, rendering the legal situation often confusing. Theory and practice of Russian law were also often at odds with each other, and thus the entire legal system remained in a state of flux – a situation likely to continue for many years to come. Uncertainties as to the government's capacity to continue reforms, as well as the struggles between the center, the republics of the former USSR, and the “autonomous” republics within the Russian Federation, further complicated the state of affairs. The Russian Constitution of December 1993, despite declaring all subjects equal, granted to autonomous republics the right to pass their own constitutions. The center-periphery conflicts over the ultimate redistribution of powers in the Russian Federation extended to the fifty-seven Russian regional oblasts and krais, which aimed to have the same status as the republics.