ABSTRACT
The lawlessness that characterizes contemporary Russia has profound implications for efforts to reform the Russian economic and political systems. Laws, legal reforms, and a healthy respect for them provide the rules and framework within which a market economy functions. According to reports that appeared in the Russian media, the Institute concluded that organized crime and corrupt government officials control over 40 percent of the Russian economy, including approximately two-thirds of all commercial institutions, 35,000 businesses, 400 banks, as many as 47 stock exchanges, and 1,500 government-owned enterprises. Russian legislation and regulations, whether laws adopted by the Federal Assembly, decrees issued by the President, or various kinds of regulations issued by the Council of Ministers and the individual government agencies, are frequently poorly drafted, vague, internally inconsistent, and contradictory of other legislation or regulations. Russian legal development began to follow a substantially different trajectory from comparable developments in Western Europe during the eleventh through thirteenth centuries.
