Russian Advocates: Before, during, and after Perestroika

Abstract

The advokatura includes all Russian lawyers or advocates whose primary purpose is to advise and represent the interest of private citizens, and it was the nearest thing to a self-governing profession to be found in the Soviet Union. On the face of things, it should have been a major beneficiary of Gorbachev's pravovoe gosudarstvo, or law-governed state. Was it? And what now is to become of it? Is it on the threshold of a heroic age in which its words and actions will have a decisive impact on Russian politics much as those of the imperial advokatura did in the final decades of tsarist rule? Or is it on the brink of collapse? Will it disappear when Yeltsin's proposed reforms become law? No legal profession in the world, it is safe to say, faces quite such starkly contrasting futures. Robert Rand's study of Moscow advocates in the heady days of glasnost, perestroika, and pravovoe gosudarstvo provides a good vantage point from which to reflect on its present problems and speculate about its prospects. Rand's study is based on personal observation and unstructured interviews. It is part investigative journalism and part ethnography-rather more of the former, perhaps, but then most of what we know about Soviet lawyers has come from such efforts. It was conducted, in the main, at Legal Consultation Bureau No. 21 between November 1987 and June 1988. Moscow has 30 legal consultation bureaus, and all advocates are obliged to