Building democracy: a letter from Moscow.

• Author: Keeping, Janet
• Position: Feature on Democracy

Russia has moved from a clear-cut dictatorship during the years of the Soviet Union to something else. Precisely what else is very much in doubt, although there is still hope that a democratic form of government will eventually emerge from the continuing tumult of the post-Communist years.

One of the many institutions that required deep reform, from the beginning of perestroika in the mid-1980s, is the law. The basis of the Russian legal system was imported several centuries ago from Germany and is a civil law system, more akin to that used in Quebec, rather than the common law system of the rest of Canada.

In the Soviet Union, law was subservient to Communist Party ideology. The ideology might change from time to time--and it did--but always had priority over law when the two collided. While he was leader of the country, Nikita Krushchev called to complain of a court decision. When the judge concerned replied that the law required the decision given, Krushchev was appalled: did the judge not realize that responsibility to the Party always took precedence over the law?

Even when there was no direct conflict between loyalty to the Party and the law, the law still played a very second fiddle. The Party's tentacles extended into every aspect of public life and into much of private life as well. There was simply not much room left for the law. As a result, both the institution of law and its practitioners were held in very low regard. Of the three branches of government--executive, legislative and judicial--the judicial was widely considered the weakest.

But it was early recognized that if Russia was to become democratic, then law had to become one of the fundamental building blocks of the new state. How have the reforms been going? And is there anything that we can learn from them for democracy in Canada?

The matter is a complicated one. But first, we have to recognize that in a country like Russia achieving democracy requires turning the basic idea of all previous governance on its head: from a state that treated people, at best, as cogs in the machine and, at worst, as virtual or actual slaves--murdered through execution, neglect, cold, or hunger--to one whose purpose is to serve the public. This is a fundamental difference: in totalitarian states, people exist to serve the interests of the state (in reality, the interests of the ruling elite); in democracies, the government exists to serve the interests of the people. And while it follows that it is in the interests of the people concerned to embrace the...