The new constitution adopted in 1993, declared the freedom. The freedom of economic activity, the freedom of political activity, and this freedom was realized in this society like a permissiveness. So it was taken by the people who could not realize what is the true democratic freedom within the legal framework, as a possibility to do what they want to realize, their own interests, and to make sometimes illegal and unjust actions. During these years, after the adoption of the new constitution, the legal system and the social system was characterized by the flourishing of criminality, corruption, and other quite negative backside of the freedom. Federalism could be a good example of this process while getting the autonomy. The regional elites, the regional officials, use this autonomy, use their own new competence for corruption, and for nepotism, and for making quite a new system based on their own interest and not on the interest of the society. These situation required a reaction from the Federal Center. And the reaction was in making quite a stiff vertical of subordination. And it was centralization, which basically questioned the federal system as such. But it was a reaction on those behavior which was shown by the regional authorities during the 1990s. So, we could say that in 1990s, the state regulation was on the minimum level. But the politics and the economy was semi-criminal, and sometimes even criminal completely. The people were quite poor and the unemployment was very high. So the whole society was in a very bad position while the freedom did not mean the economic development and the good economic growth. The political crisis in 1998, and the economic crisis of the same year was partly a result of these situation. And this default of the Russian Federation in August of 1998 made possible for economic development. But still, it was very hard to realize because of a very ineffective and criminal, tax, financial, and the whole system of regulation. So in the beginning of 2000s, these situation started to change. And if we look on the history after constitution decades, we would see that in 2000s, the movement, the development was in the direction of making the order of building the vertical of power in making the state control over the people, over the economy, over the state officials. So, it was the making a new quite stiff and centralized, system of state administration which wears a measure to counterbalance all these negative, all these procedures which occurred in 1990s. In year 2010, it was the new stage of development. It was the seek for constitutional identity of the Russian state. And I would say that the turning point for this was not precisely year 2010, but rather later in 2014, when it was the war in Ukraine, and when the political crisis in Ukraine led to a coup d'état in this country. The reaction from the Russian Federation led to the great, quite keen conflict between Russia, and the United States, and the European Union, and many other world powerful states. This led to the new political approaches to the new Political rhetoric. And this made a new policy in creation of quite a regional specific type of democracy, the Russian type of democracy. At that time, quite unexpected. As a part of development, the same principles which were the ground for Western democracies in the Western countries. So, the development after the adoption of the constitution, whereas as we see quite divided in stages, first stage, from 1993 till the end of 1990s. And the second stage, from 2000 up to 2014. Here, today, we have the third stage which still goes on. In the development which was in 2000, we could see the reforms quite obvious and quite important for implementation of the constitutional principles. And this showed that those principles which were adopted and which were written down in the constitution were not completely realized in the change of legislation during the 1990s. So it was. The new quite important and remarkable reforms occurred in 2004, 2003. And this was the reforming of social privileges system, the making payments, monetary payments, instead of making privileges as the discounts on prices for transport, or for getting some home services by the people. And this measure was very important for economic development. It was also the measures taken to prevent administrative barriers for entrepreneurship and for economic development like making a new system of registration of property. Like making the strict regulations of state supervision and state control over entrepreneurs. And this was also the reforms of federal structure and the self government system in 2003, 2004. In general, these showed that, we could say, in years 2000, it was the continuum of implementation. Those principles, which constitution declared in 1993. Afterwards, we see that the reforms which occurred in 2000, and 2010, they were aimed to realize the basic principles of the constitution. And the fact of these reforms show that there were no complete realization of those principles. Still today, we see that some administration of state functions, till today, we see that the approaches to regulation of relations between the state, and the people, and the entrepreneurs is not in the course of the general principles of the constitution. So, we can still say that reforms are still on agenda in the Russian Federation. In the subsequent topics of our course, we will try to look in more detailed manner on fields of these reformings, and we will try to analyze how it goes.
