The concept of monopoly in the Russian legislation and legal doctrine

The article deals with some theoretical issues of the definition of monopoly concept. The authors carry out the comparative analysis of the economic and legal approaches to the interpretation of this concept and demonstrate the inconsistence of the comprehension of monopoly concept in the current Russian legislation. The analysis of the current legislation makes it possible to state that the concept of monopoly in it has a peculiar dual character. It is not possible to synthesize two legislative interpretations of monopoly and give a single definition. They are united only by the fact that in both cases we are talking about the dominant position (dominance) of the subject at the market. The rest of the content is different: in the first case a monopoly is an illegal use of the dominant position at the market, the dominance can be expressed in the occupation of half or even less of the market share (from this comes the law on Protection of Competition); in the second case a monopoly is the subject of legal activities carried out in the complete absence of competitors at the market (this is the position underlying the legislation on natural monopolies). Obviously, such a significant discrepancy is conditioned by the fundamentally different approaches.