Methodological prerequisites for recognising the balance of public and private interests as a principle of modern Russian criminal procedure

The drafters of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation attempted to implement the idea of restructuring criminal proceedings following the Anglo-Saxon model. To this end, the principle of adversarial proceedings was introduced into the Code at the pre-trial and trial stages. As a result, the judicial proceedings were brought into conformity with the constitutional rule on the mandatory exercise of any justice based on adversarial principles (Part 3 of Article 123 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation). The content of pre-trial proceedings, where the investigator was a full-fledged “master” of the case, remained unchanged in principle. The situation in which the adversarial nature declared in the General Part of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation was not ensured in pre-trial proceedings by an appropriate procedural mechanism, led to further reform of the Code and constant additions and amendments to it. This did not lead to substantive changes in the existing continental criminal procedure of mixed type and its transfer to the Anglo-Saxon adversarial form, but revealed the main criterion for reforming the current and creating future criminal proceedings, which is the balance of public and private interests.