Involvement as a defendant in criminal proceedings: national traditions vs foreign experience

Introduction: the prospects for further development of the criminal procedure mechanism for making a criminal claim against a person that is subject to substantive resolution during subsequent court proceedings is one of the controversial issues that attract the attention of a wide range of specialists. In this regard, the purpose of the paper is to identify the historical reasons that predetermined the rooting in the Russian system of the criminal procedure regulation of the existing procedure for bringing as a defendant to understand the possibility of its reformation, following the example of other European states. Methods: the methodological framework for the research consists of the general scientific (dialectical, systemic, structural-functional, logical, etc.) and specific scientific (formal-legal, comparative-legal, historical-legal, prognostic, etc.) research methods. The results of the study made it possible to formulate a position on the conditionality of the existing mechanism for bringing as a defendant by the historical traditions of the Russian criminal justice that have been formed over many years, largely based on the “classical” French (investigative) model of pre-trial proceedings. Conclusions: any proposed reforms of the mechanism for making a criminal claim against a person cannot be started only because of the “positive” experience of other countries; they can onlybegin after identifying, understanding, and properlyassessing the underlying reasons that predetermined the appearance of the procedure for bringing as a defendant in the Russian criminal proceedings.