From the history of codification of the legislation of the Russian Federation on public service (1990s)

Abstract

The article examines in a retrospective manner the issues of codification of Russian legislation on public service. Appeal to the experience of codification is due to the relevance of systematizing the legislation on public service in modern conditions for a better understanding of its directions, determining the best means, methods and other elements of this legal practice. The publication raises and discusses the problem of the presence in Russia in the conditions of the 1990s the objective need to create a service code. In general, during this historical period, certain prerequisites for codification were already taking shape, which was expressed: in the implementation of an administrative reform in the country, and within its framework, a reform of the public service, which required clear and consistent legal support; in a very voluminous, but at the same time disordered, blank and contradictory legal framework that normalized public-service relations; in significant attention to the problems of service law and legislation, their systematization by the doctrine represented, first of all, by specialists in the field of constitutional, administrative and labor law. Finally, the importance of creating a service code was recognized at the highest political level, which ultimately materialized in the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation to develop this legislative act. However, the article shows that, in the second half of the 1990s codification prerequisites have not yet fully "ripened", and the decision to develop a draft Code on the civil service has become hasty. By the time work began on the creation of the bill, a holistic concept for reforming the institution of the civil service had not been formulated, which did not allow the legislator to clearly define the conceptual directions of codification. Codification consisted in streamlining the norms on a separate type of service - state civil in the absence of a common basic law on civil service in the system of legislation on public service as a whole. The success of codification was also hampered by disagreements of a theoretical nature regarding the sectoral affiliation of the norms governing relations with the participation of civil servants, in terms of the scope of the concepts of "civil service" and "civil servant", etc.