Public psychology of legal nihilism in Russia before and after the 1917 revolutions

The purpose of this research is to review the legal nihilism in Russia as a manifestation of public psychology in the historical and sociological context. The author believes that these processes have multi-factorial determinants. Their study is most effective in the context of interdisciplinary methods (rather than specialized methods) with the priority of one of the components, and public psychology is singled out as such. The reference point was 1917 when two fundamental revolutions were carried out (in February and October). Accordingly, the author first revealed the psychological characteristics of legal nihilism in the Russian Empire and showed that the accumulated legal legitimacy in the country became one of the reasons for social upheaval in 1917. Then the research identified the features of the social psychology of legal nihilism in the Soviet state, where similar negative phenomena were observed, on the other political, ideological and economic basis, as a result of which the USSR underwent social upheaval and collapsed as well. In modern Russia, the situation is characterized by the fact that the inertial public psychology of legal nihilism is superimposed, on the one hand, on the legal system corresponding to the leading achievements of civilization (the first popularly adopted Constitution of Russia, the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and other laws) and, on the other hand, on such real social relations that significantly complicate the transformation of the public psychology of legal nihilism into public psychology of legal positivism.