Received March 14, 2020
The concept of “culture” is one of the most complex and ambiguous in its explicit content, contextual, connotative, discursive meaning in cultural studies and law and public administration.
The Law of Russia No. 3612-I of October 09, 1992 (Rev. of July 18, 2019) “Fundamentals of the Legislation of Russian Federation on Culture” does not contain the legal definition of the concept of “culture.” The meaning of the idea of “culture” represented in the principles of state cultural policy, approved by the Decree of the President of Russia No. 808 of December 24, 2014, omits several critical significant elements of its structure and content indifferent to the protection of national interests of Russia in the field of culture.
The Russian legislator is often criticized for some attributed archaism of thinking and isolation from “progressive world legislative approaches.” Therefore, it is reasonable to look at foreign laws in culture and give reference examples from foreign laws. Moreover, the presence of such definitions a priori reduces the need to discuss with cultural scientists and cultural figures the issue of the alleged impossibility to develop and legally consolidate a legal description of the concept of “culture” in the law.
Whether such a definition will be fixed is another question. Still, it is necessary to discuss the legal uncertainty of the concept in question, especially in Russia’s bad state governance in the field of culture today1.
As Samuel Johnson said, “Dictionaries are like clocks, the worst of them is better than nothing, and you can’t expect the best of them to be quite accurate.”2
We have studied the normative legal regulations of 8 foreign countries (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Korea, Malta, USA, Switzerland, Japan).
The meaning of the idea of “culture” is represented in many normative legal regulations of foreign countries directly in various modalities. In some cases, this is done no straight (by consolidating the definition) but in a form that requires a systematic interpretation of a set of legal norms to reveal the traditional meaning of this concept, understanding the named concept logically or complexly follows from the sense of these acts’ standards.