In the Soviet Union, the principle "man exists for the benefit of the State", was legally secured and religiously carried into life. The Constitution of the Russian Federation on the other hand, is founded on the principle "the State exists for the benefit of man." However, this principle does not work.
Certain human rights violations that were typical for the Soviet system are almost completely stifled. Persecutions for conscience are over. Censorship is destroyed. The right freely to leave one's country and come back there unrestrictedly is realized.
There is no discrimination due to one's national origins when seeking employment. Freedom of associations, demonstrations and meetings is observed. Nevertheless, the expanded access of information has unveiled those domains of life, which used to be hidden from the citizens' scrutiny and where human rights had been violated in the USSR and are still being violated in Russia.
We are talking about the ecological situation in the country which endangers the health and sometimes the very lives of the people of many cities or even regions. We are talking about tortures and humiliation of human dignity of men going through their mandatory 2 years of army service.
We are talking about the situation of children in orphanages, foster homes and other children's institutions. The violations of rights of specific categories of citizens have grown even stronger if compared to the Soviet times. This statement is true in relation to the discrimination of soldiers.
Today, the so-called "dedovsh'ina"--i.e., tortures and beatings of young soldiers by their commanders--became mass phenomenons. The discrimination of women has intensified. Dismissals from work wedded other earlier existing forms of discrimination of females. With almost each employer, women nowadays are first to be laid off.
Finally, in Russia, a new category of people suffering of constant violations of their rights has appeared. It is the one of refugees and forced migrants. Also, a completely new form of human rights violation has emerged--the greater part of the country's population endures systematic delays in payments of wages, pensions, and all kinds of state benefits.
Despite the overwhelming variety of human rights violations in Russia and their truly mass character, one key problem exists. Russian human rights activists perceive that the contemporary major problem is not in the domain of political persecutions the way it used to be in the USSR, but instead in the phenomenon of legal nihilism of all the state officials, from the most powerful ones to the most insignificant ones.
In the contemporary Russian Federation, the state officials have basically privatized their positions, and many of them use the power that their position gives to them, neither in the interests of the citizens, as the Constitution demands, nor in the interests of the State, nor the law.
They actually use it with the purpose of their own enrichment or sometimes just to exercise their petty tyranny over people and over the law itself. In the Russian Federations, laws are not observed and do work nowhere at all--neither at industrial enterprises, nor in the financial sphere, nor in the children's institutions, nor in the executive power bodies.
But the most terrible thing is, they do not work within the framework of law-enforcing organs, like police and prosecutors' offices. It is even more outrageous that Russian courts make one corporation with these "law-violating" organs.
Once a man is brought to a police station for the most trivial reason, or sometimes for no reason at all, he has to face an absolutely real danger not ever to leave it alive or to leave it already convicted of a terrible crime, like murder, of which he is perfectly innocent.
Every time regional human rights activists get together for seminars and conferences, they all express the following opinion--scorn for the law, corruption, and criminality of courts and law enforcing organs became the most substantive danger for the State and its citizens.
Human rights organizations and public legal offices more often than not have to face the following situation: a case concerning the violation of human rights of a citizen who asked them for help because his rights had been violated, is taken through all the legal instances all the way to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Then, the Supreme Court only confirms the unjust original verdict.
Verdicts are either blindly approved, or basically stamped, at each judicial stage or put off for additional investigation, while the accused, whose guilt is not proven, is kept in custody, sometimes for years to no end.
Police, prosecutors' offices, and courts have merged into one corporation, primarily preoccupied by the task of protection of their own interests and of the honor of the uniform, already tainted by the bulk of unjust actions.
Protection of law and order is something they are not concerned with. The paralysis of the power branches in the domain of protection of law and order has already reached the degree, when it is necessary to proclaim that our Motherland is in danger.
Human rights activists, who constantly face the law enforcing organs and have a realistic view of the overall situation in the country, believe ever more strongly that it makes no sense just to critique the authorities for violating the Constitution and the Law, because the authorities do not have the power to force the officials to abide by the law.
The only way to correct the situation, which is most dangerous for the very existence of the society and the State, is to establish the institution of public control over all the domains of human life related to human rights.
The citizens and society have to aid our weakening authorities. The efforts of the authorities and the society have to be united with the purpose of restoring law and order. Fast expansion and maturing of the human rights movement testify to the fact that the society is already conscious of the necessity to become active to the adherence of the law.
Unfortunately, Russian officials mostly do not realize that public control over their actions is indispensable. The realization of this necessity seemed to have flashed in the President's last address to the Federal Assembly in which the President called for "working out the mechanisms of interaction with human rights organizations` as so to "use the potentials of public organizations for the benefit of practical protection of the citizens' rights."
But the road from good intentions reflected in the President's address to the actual realization of public control will be quite long and difficult.
Will then, Russian society be capable of forcing the gang of officials to abide by the law before the dissipation of the State becomes inevitable? This is what the future of all the people that live in this country depends on. We want to succeed so very much.
Thank you for your attention.