Legal nihilism as the reverse side of legal and political culture

The purpose of the article is to analyze the terms “nihilism”, “legal culture” and “political culture” and to determine the place of legal nihilism in the general context of legal and political culture, as well as to identify the author’s view on the concept of legal nihilism. The paper states the existence of various approaches to the concept of “legal nihilism” in the scientific literature, examines the interpretation of this term by different authors, as well as its forms and types, and sets out the author’s position on this issue. The existing definitions of culture, the mechanisms of its influence on society, up to the ability to manage the latter, are analyzed too. Similar work is being done with the concept of “legal culture”, indicating that the latter includes not only positive, but also negative aspects of legal consciousness, including legal nihilism, and the caveat that a set of positive features of legal culture is an indispensable attribute of democracy, has done. Finally, the concepts and characteristics of the term “political culture” are analyzed in a similar way, indicating that political culture is closely related to legal culture. Basing on the results of the work, one made the conclusion about the importance of the elimination of legal nihilism and the development of legal and political culture, including for today’s Russia.