Personality, Interests, «Rules instead of Laws»: Standpoint of a Young Professor of Jurisprudence (To the 200th Anniversary of the Great Russian Educator K.D. Ushinsky)

Abstract

The author analyzes K.D. Ushinsky’s views on personality, its numerous and multifaceted interests, cameralism and civil law from the little-known legal works written by K.D. Ushinsky in the first years after graduating from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University, namely three years of his serving as a professor of the Demidovsky Law Lyceum in Yaroslavl. In this regard, the general conditions of teaching at that higher educational institution and the range of disciplines taught, the few surviving sources of Ushinsky’s lecture activity of this period and his speech «On cameral education» at the solemn meeting of the Demidovsky Lyceum are briefly considered. Special attention is given to Ushinsky’s astute conclusion that convenient rules took the place of laws in German cameralistics of that time. This opinion is especially relevant today, because it shows that the desire of Western countries to start living not according to the norms of international law, but according to the rules established by them, did not arise today. The modern political, diplomatic, legal, and economic reality is literally oversaturated with facts of illegal sanctions, asset freezes, property seizures, and other illegal actions of the United States and a number of other Western countries against Russia and other independent states, as well as citizens of these states. Ushinsky’s analysis of German cameralism clearly shows that the use by Western countries of «rules convenient for them» instead of laws is by no means a modern «invention», but a constantly developing process, the foundation of which was laid by Western political and legal thought several centuries ago.