Change of legal consciousness in pandemic conditions

Purpose: Revealing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the legal consciousness of Russian citizens. Methodology: Historical-legal and formally-legal method was used. Results: The article is devoted to identifying the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the legal consciousness of Russian citizens. In the conditions of self - isolation, the impossibility of people’s existence in the usual rhythm and established way of life led to significant changes in their consciousness, and as a result- in their legal consciousness. The authors used the A. Maslow model to analyze the current «pyramid of needs». It is noted that as a result of the transformation, basic, and above all, physiological needs came first, while social and spiritual ones took a back seat. In the context of the pandemic, the level of trust in the government and the state has also changed. The decline in the level of legal awareness is due in some cases to the destruction of social values, which led to an increase in the number of offenses. The danger of distortion of legal consciousness is the development of legal nihilism, which is a threat to the sustainable development of the state in a pandemic. Novelty/originality/value: Article possesses the scientific value as is one of the first attempts to consider the crisis of legal consciousness in the context of the coronavirus pandemic through the prism of the transformation of the pyramid of needs.