The article reveals the author’s attitude to the problem of relations between Russia and Ukraine, the Ukrainian movement towards Westernization, transition away from historical realities towards the utopia of unrealizable democracy, as well as a deliberate break with the Russian world. In addition, the author analyzes the leaders of the two States concerning this issue. To understand the current situation, the author believes that it is necessary, first, to comprehensively examine the events that continue to unfold around Ukraine. Judging by the French press, the observers’ comments indicate, first of all, their complete blindness or, at least, their poor eyesight. The author believes that foreign experts are in thrall to their own whims. Since they read too carefully, their vision of things is distorted. They only see a piece of paper, which they touch with their nose, and which prevents them from seeing what is happening around.

The relevance of this article is associated with the need to counter attempts to falsify the history of the Second World War and the desire of a number of foreign politicians to rehabilitate Nazism, to create ideal conditions for the next («digital») segregation of the world’s population using the latest information technologies. The article examines the main provisions of social Darwinism that allowed the Nazis to «justify the expediency» of mass killings of the mentally ill. The author provides us with the data on the forms of destruction of psychiatric patients in nazi Germany and in the occupied territories. The paper analyzes the views of German psychiatrists, criminologists, geneticists who provided official science and healthcare in Germany in the twenties and forties of the last century. The empirical basis for this study was the publications of Western European and Russian authors devoted to the current problems of German forensic psychiatry and criminology during the reign of National Socialism. As a result of the analysis, a number of conclusions are drawn, in particular, the position is substantiated that any segregation (including those carried out on the basis of the severity of mental pathology or taking into account the level of intellectual development of the subject, his «social rating», nationality, income level, etc.) leads to massive violations of human rights, discrimination. In addition, the functional unity of morality and law is broken, and the law itself is deprived of the most important moral properties, namely; freedom, equality, justice. The idea is justified that in the era of «post-truth» only an objective understanding of historical experience can help humanity avoid the tragic mistakes of the past, strengthen the positions of opponents of ultra-liberal, neoconservative, etc. ideas, defend the system of traditional values.

The article attempts to analyze the events of the Great Patriotic War in the context of the existing model of power at that time. At the same time, the model of power is considered as a manifestation of political tradition, which is why it can remain unchanged when changing state forms. According to the author, the model of power associated with the Soviet system had a positive impact on the mobilization of human and material resources during the war. This was facilitated by its economic basis in the form of nationalization of all means of production. At the same time, during the war, the repressive state machine continued to function, which did not contribute to the struggle for the independence of the country. The article focuses on the fact that state arbitrariness continued even after the Great Victory, an example of which is the «Leningrad case». According to the author, the main direction of scientific research devoted to the Great Patriotic War should be the determination of the price of victory, all its victims. In this regard, it is necessary to bear in mind the influence on the events of the wartime state administration, characteristic of the then existing model
of power.

The article analyzes the original concept of the intersection of law and morality in the works by Joseph Vikentievich Mikhailovsky (1868-1921), a well–known Russian jurist, professor at the Imperial Tomsk University. I. V. Mikhailovsky did not share a single doctrine comparing law and morality in the field of social regulation wide-spread in legal science (In particular: the theory of identification of law and morality, the theory of differentiation of law and morality, the theory of law as part of morality). The article proves that V. I. Mikhailovsky proposed a new approach to the problem of the correlation of law and morality. Mikhailovsky came to the conclusion about the existence of absolute principles of morality, which have the characteristics of primordiality, eternity and immutability, which did not exclude personal subjective views on morality and the existence of public morality as the embodiment of absolute principles understood by society in one way or another. He believed that the legal, moral and religious regulatory systems, being independent (mismatched, but overlapping), are manifestations of the highest ethical order. Law without moral content is a form without content, meaning and value. The law is designed to regulate human freedom in the external sphere; to determine the limits and spheres of power; to strive for external results. Morality is designed to determine the limits of inner freedom, regulate a person’s relationship with the Absolute, and strive for inner transformation. Law and morality, he believed, serve the Good as a single system of absolute rational and ethical principles. Mikhailovskiy considered the mutual influence of law and morality to be unconditional, and considered the principles of their interaction, on the one hand, the inadmissibility of anti-moral legal prescriptions; and, on the other, the unacceptability of prescriptions for moral acts.

The article analyzes the category of bureaucratization of law, which is considered as a process of increasing the number, volume and detail of normative legal acts, rationalization, formalization and concretization of the normative array, aimed at constructing the maximum possible in the conditions of this socio-cultural chronotope of a seamless and conflict-free legal reality. An attempt is made to study this category not only ontologically, but also axiologically. This made it possible to identify the relationship of the bureaucratization process with the national system of legal values and to conclude that the nature and direction of the bureaucratization of law are determined not only by the internal logic of the development of the legal system, but also by value factors, among which the normative type of legal understanding prevailing in Russia and the legal archetype of statism characteristic of Russian society should be named first.

The article is devoted to the historical and legal evolution of the institution of private prosecution in the Russian legal system. The purpose of the study is to trace the development of the human right to protect the individual, his interests in the judicial process in a historical and legal perspective. Judicial reform in Russia has been more than 30 years old, it was announced by the Government of the RSFSR in order to democratize procedural legislation in accordance with the transformations in the country and the need to improve the legal culture of citizens, law and order. Further, the judicial reform was embodied in a system of legal documents for the implementation of the state strategy. The study highlights certain successes in the development of law-making, the peculiarities of the application of criminal procedural norms, which makes it possible to actualize the consideration of the institution of private prosecution in the modern criminal procedural legislation of the Russian Federation, as the development of the adversarial principle and the implementation of the principle of equality of the parties.

The article considers the evolution of the institution of private prosecution in the criminal legislation of the country from the moment of formation in the Old Russian legislation, the development in the court books of 1497, 1550, the Cathedral Code of 1649 and the first Criminal Code of the Russian Empire of 1845. The author identifies four chronological stages in the 20th century: 1917 — 1923; 1923 — 1960; 1960 — 1997 and the modern stage with the adoption of the Criminal Procedure Code in 2001. The historical and legal review made it possible to analyze the evolution of the institution of private prosecution into a separate type of criminal procedural activity for the protection of individual rights and freedoms, the realization of the right to defend their interests in court.

The article analyzes the problem of the designation of absolutism of the early Modern period in historiography, which brings us closer to understanding how the political and legal reality of the French absolutist society was combined with its ideological justification. The truth is achieved through the study of the transformation of the institutions of the state and social system at different stages of the development of this form of government. In the historical context, all the advantages and disadvantages of the estate structure of an absolutist society, as well as bureaucratic schemes of government, are revealed. Despite the process of centralization, tightening and streamlining of governance, the French monarchy gradually lost its progressive features, and the successes of the competent policy of the country’s best governments turned out to be temporary. Restraining the rapid development of capitalism, the kings continued to protect the remnants of the obsolete feudal system, and the socio-economic situation of the overwhelming majority of the population was deteriorating more and more.

Considering various approaches to the interpretation of absolutism, it is possible to trace both vertical and horizontal connections of the absolutist society. In addition to studying internal social processes, it is no less important to assess the role of the state machine in them. The work of the apparatus of officials in the era of absolutism became the final in the history of French feudal society, because the population itself, brought to an extreme degree of discontent, eventually took the liberty of overthrowing the institutions of the form of government in question. Returning again to the prerequisites that influenced the formation and subsequent strengthening of the absolute monarchy, it is fair to note that the unlimited power of the head of state has become a special phenomenon of the transitional era, combining the traditions of the «old order» and new principles of governance. History simply turned out to be so that it was France that, earlier than other European states, embarked on the path of transition to absolutism.

The article presents an overview of domestic and foreign doctrinal concepts, as well as the author’s view on the problems and features of the definition construction, as well as the determination of the signs and legal nature of a sports dispute as an independent legal category. The elements of the scientific novelty of this study consist in an integrated approach combining theoretical and legal and practical analysis conducted on the basis of modern provisions of the doctrine of sports law, current norms of relevant legislation and current positions of law enforcement practice, during which an attempt is made to make an author’s contribution to the development of ideas about sports dispute as a legal phenomenon, its legal nature and signs. According to the results of the study, a semantic connection was established between a social conflict and a sports dispute, which explains the legal nature of public relations that constitute the subject of this category of legal disputes. Additionally, the main features of a sports dispute arising from the features of the structure, subject composition, object and subject of sports legal relations are formulated. The author’s definition of the legal category «sports dispute» is proposed as the resulting component. Based on the above, the definition of the concept of «sports dispute» proposed by the author by its design completely assimilates to the already established rhetoric of legislation in the field of physical culture and sports, does not contradict the current domestic legal foundations and leaves room for further reforms on this issue, in connection with which a proposal was additionally formulated to legally consolidate this concept in the profile federal law. This addition is seen as methodologically necessary and multi-aspect important, both from the theoretical and legal and law enforcement points of view, and from the substantive and procedural sides of the phenomenon under consideration.

The analysis of judicial practice, normative legal acts and doctrinal sources allows the authors to identify the grounds for invalidating a transaction made under the influence of threat or violence. The article examines the concept of threat in doctrine and in judicial practice, and also provides a detailed analysis of what courts understand by the commission of violence when considering such cases. The lack of a clear line between the two types of these transactions on the basis of the presence and compliance of the will with the expression of will, complicates the activity of the courts in the administration of justice on this issue. The authors provide a list of certain criteria that can contribute to a more objective consideration by the courts of claims for recognition of transactions made under the influence of threat or violence as invalid. The article also draws attention to the relationship between criminal and civil legislation on this issue, thereby illustrating the importance of a verdict in a criminal case for the court to decide a case in civil proceedings. According to the results of the study, taking into account the importance of this institution for civil turnover, the authors concluded that the concepts of threat and violence in transactions, clear criteria for determining these offenses, as well as grounds for recognizing such transactions as invalid, need to be normalized in Russian civil law. Moreover, it is proposed to introduce and develop new rules and regulations governing the complex relationships of participants in such transactions, based on the characteristics of the psychological connections between them, as well as the difficulty of proving the illegal actions of the offender in this process.

The existence of a gap in the legal regulation of the procedure for concluding a settlement agreement on class actions in civil proceedings requires the development of mechanisms to eliminate it as soon as possible due to the fact that the existing model of group proceedings regarding the commission of this administrative action prevents the balance of interests of all participants in the process. In search of an optimal balance, the author suggests several mechanisms for resolving the problematic issue. First, the author indicates the need for legislative consolidation of the possibility of approving the conclusion of a settlement agreement by the person conducting the case in the interests of the group with its members, describes several options for approval, depending on the nature of the material legal relations on the basis of the dispute (approval by the majority of the members of the group with the homogeneity of public relations or unanimous approval with an indivisible legal relationship). In continuation of the goal of observing the interests of each member of the group, the problem of taking into account the will of persons who disagree with the terms of the settlement agreement (when applying the majority criterion) is solved by determining for them the further path of development of the process and the fate of the stated requirements. There are categories of disputes in respect of which the conclusion of a settlement agreement is possible only by its approval by all members of the group. In conclusion, it is proposed to supplement the norms of the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation regarding the procedure for concluding a settlement agreement in proceedings on the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of a group of persons.