Государственное административное управление

The Russian national law is quite specific, diverse and, at the same time, very fragmented with regard to the rights and interests of indigenous peoples. There are many laws and normative legal acts affecting various aspects of life and activities of indigenous communities and their representatives. The norms set forth in the documents (federal and regional laws, by-laws, acts of municipal bodies, judgments of Supreme and Constitutional courts) need qualitative comprehension, adaptation and additional interpretation. Moreover, the norms of federal laws are being updated regularly, certain articles are no longer valid, new norms are emerging. It is not easy to follow all the updates in view of specifics of the Russian legislation. The lack of translations of Russian legal acts in the field of indigenous peoples’ rights is also to be mentioned in this regard. The specialists of Arctic Centre for Strategic Studies and UArctic Research Office (Northern Arctic Federal University, Arkhangelsk) translated three basic federal laws on the rights of indigenous peoples of the Russian Federation into English. There are laws on guarantees of the rights of indigenous small-numbered peoples, on indigenous communities, on territories of traditional land use and management. The commentaries to three laws are made by Maksim Zadorin, lawyer and expert on the legal issues of Arctic development of the Arctic Centre for Strategic Studies. The translation of federal laws and comments was carried out by the MA students Ksenia Vezhlivtseva and Daria Antufieva under the supervision of Olga Klisheva, the UArctic Research Office manager. We are very grateful to Timo Koivurova, Director of the Arctic Centre of Lapland University, Rovaniemi, UArctic Thematic Network “Arctic Law” and our Finnish colleagues who unanimously supported this idea. We are sure that the materials presented in this issue will help the English-speaking researchers and law specialists to clarify.

This article dwells upon some modern legal forms of activities of religious associations and problems of their registration. It is mainly focused on the issues of legal backgrounds in terms of freedom of conscience in Russia, international standards of activities of religious organizations, collective forms of freedom of conscience and religion in the court’s decisions. Finally, it discusses the need to amend the existing Russian legislation that does not comply with the principle of secularism, which is stated in the Constitution of 1993.