Russia and International Human Rights Law

Abstract

Russia’s human rights problem has been pronounced for a number of years. The European Court of Human Rights found that it had violated human rights 1,948 times up to 2016. Its decisions are often improperly executed. Furthermore, the Russian Constitutional Court has obtained a power to overrule them. However, most discussion on human rights in Russia focuses on all types of rights in general with no specification, or personal and political rights in particular. Other rights, such as socioeconomic rights, are often excluded from the discourse. This chapter aims to fill this gap in scholarship. While the Soviet Union has inspired many socioeconomic rights developments, modern Russia, surprisingly, is unable to catch up with these rights demands in the present, set out primarily by the European Convention of Human Rights. The chapter argues that this paradox was not accidental. Its hypothesis is that the Russian approach to human rights has, from the early twentieth century, been suited to a particular type of human rights cases: positive economic rights which are collective in nature. Formed using Marxist scholarship, this view of human rights was distinct from the western approach, and hence the Russian assimilation into western model has proven to be difficult. While social rights have gained in importance, the development of them was distinct from that envisaged by the Soviets. The current model represents a mixed approach influenced by liberalism and the ideas of the free market, which has resulted in confusion in relation to both political rights and some social rights in modern Russia. This theoretical struggle between individualist and collectivist, capitalist, and socialist understandings of the role of socioeconomic rights in the legal system has led to practical difficulties in application of human rights law in modern Russia.