Many modern researchers note that the level of legal culture of the modern Russian remains low. At the same time, the thesis is put forward about the failure or inhibition of building a rule of law state, when the legal consciousness of citizens and the elite operates mostly with pseudo-legal categories. In this regard, hopes are pinned on the positive development of legal awareness and the formation of a legal culture.

Before talking about legal culture and the presence or absence of it in society, it is necessary to understand what is meant by the category "legal culture".

In domestic literature, there are a huge number of definitions of the concept of "legal culture". If you try to give a detailed definition of the concept, it becomes clear that legal culture is a specific social institution that performs the function of shaping people's political consciousness, value-normative attitudes, and indirectly, legal behavior [8, p. 38].

Based on the definition given in the educational literature, legal culture is a set of regulations and values ​​on the basis of which the legal order that actually exists in the country is built. It is expressed in the legal consciousness of people, that is, their ideas about what this order should be like and how to treat the legal system in force in the state [3, p. 6].

I.V. Ivannikov proposed the following definition of legal culture: legal culture is one of the forms of socially significant creative activity of people in the sphere of state-legal relations, which is expressed in legal norms, institutions, in the ability to assess these phenomena and spiritual products of life, in skills and values ​​that influence their legally significant behavior [4, p. 295].

“Legal culture is the process and result of human creativity in the field of law, characterized by the creation and approval of legal values,” writes one of the leading researchers in the field of Russian legal culture M.B. Smolensky [2].

The concept of legal culture, if approached from the point of view of its disciplinary

Theory of culture

belonging, refers, first of all, to the scientific thesaurus of jurisprudence, theory and philosophy of law. Usually, within the framework of legal discourse, it is correlated with such concepts as legal consciousness, legal behavior, legal understanding, and attempts are made to draw productive semantic distinctions between them. However, at the same time, legal culture is a component of the culture system as a whole and thus falls under the influence of general cultural patterns and under the study of sociology [7, p. 6]. The socio-philosophical study of legal culture presupposes its consideration as a social phenomenon, which, in turn, dictates certain paradigmatic parameters and methodological principles that are specific to sociology, angles and approaches that are different from jurisprudence and philosophical and legal ones. Sociologists are primarily interested in the institutional characteristics of legal culture, its place in the system, relations with the institution of law and other institutions of society, as well as its functioning in a single complex of social regulators. The legal culture of a particular society can be analyzed in the same way as a set of cognitive structures and as an integral part of a person's life world. Socio-philosophical studies of legal culture, finally, should touch upon such important strictly sociological subjects of the field as the problems of social determination of cultural and legal phenomena, ethno-psychological and archetypal foundations of the legal mentality and legal culture [1, p.16]. as well as its functioning in a single complex of social regulators. The legal culture of a particular society can be analyzed in the same way as a set of cognitive structures and as an integral part of a person's life world. Socio-philosophical studies of legal culture, finally, should touch upon such important strictly sociological subjects of the field as the problems of social determination of cultural and legal phenomena, ethno-psychological and archetypal foundations of the legal mentality and legal culture [1, p.16]. as well as its functioning in a single complex of social regulators. The legal culture of a particular society can be analyzed in the same way as a set of cognitive structures and as an integral part of a person's life world. Socio-philosophical studies of legal culture, finally, should touch upon such important strictly sociological subjects of the field as the problems of social determination of cultural and legal phenomena, ethno-psychological and archetypal foundations of the legal mentality and legal culture [1, p.16].

In the context of a general definition, legal culture can be represented as a set of norms, values, legal institutions, processes and forms that perform the function of socio-legal orientation of people in a particular society (civilization) [9].

The legal culture of society is a part of the general culture, which is a system of values ​​accumulated by mankind in the field of law and related to the legal reality of this society: the level of legal awareness, the regime of law and order, the state of legislation, legal practice, etc. [9].

The main element of legal culture is legal awareness.

The legal culture of a society depends primarily on the level of development of the legal consciousness of the population, i.e. on how deeply they have mastered such legal phenomena as the value of human rights and freedoms, the value of the legal procedure in resolving disputes, finding compromises, etc., how legally informed the population, its social, age, professional and other groups, what is the emotional attitude of the population to the law, the court, various law enforcement agencies, legal means and procedures, what is the attitude of citizens to compliance (non-compliance) with legal requirements, etc. This is the first element of legal culture.

“Legal consciousness,” writes I.A. Ilyin, - consists, first of all, in the fact that a person knows about the "existence" of positive law and about his "connection" to it; and further, he knows that the meaning of this right is one and definite, not changed by personal arbitrariness and random interest; and that its content is "such and such." It is necessary that everyone actually knows what he rightfully "can", "should" and "should not", so that he would, as it were, personally feel the limits of his legal "status" in the confidence that they can be changed by law, but not against right and not bypassing it” [5, p. 31].

The level of development of legal consciousness can be fixed only in real legal activity, in legal behavior, which also have independent characteristics. Therefore, the second element of the structure of legal culture is the level of development of legal activity. The latter consists of the theoretical - the activities of legal scholars, educational - the activities of students and students of law schools, universities, etc. and practical - law-making and law-realizing, including law enforcement activities. It is clear that the legal culture of a society largely depends on the level of development and quality of law-making activities to create a legislative basis for the life of society. Law-making should be carried out by persons who are legally competent and in many other respects, in compliance with democratic and proper legal procedures and principles.

The origin and formation of legal consciousness, legal culture belong to the distant past - 4-5 millennia ago. Arising, legal phenomena were "strung" on some long-existing behavioral and mental cultural phenomena and images. They did not appear out of nowhere, but were built into the indivisible integral system of thought-sensory that already existed among archaic people before them.

a different perception and generalization of reality, which was called mythology. The latter has its roots in a communal-tribal, or primitive communal formation, and is lost in the abyss of millennia [6].

The emergence of law was due to the transformations of society, which were political in nature and led to the formation of the state. These transformations were based on property stratification, which contributed to the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the split of society into social groups opposed to each other - classes. When private property appeared in society, the equal property social status of the members of the collective began to become a thing of the past, their work began to be measured by an equal legal measure. Legal consciousness consists in the application of an abstract equal measure, an equal scale to unequal people, power, property [6].

Legal consciousness and legal culture are initially associated in their genesis with the economic, political and social characteristics of social development. The pre-legal way of understanding the surrounding reality, which is characterized by collectivism in tribal, communal interests, is being replaced by legal consciousness, based on the opposition of private interest to the collective. Legal consciousness and legal culture are associated with a person's awareness of his individuality, autonomy, isolation from the team.

Legal consciousness is based on an individualizing type of consciousness, the recognition of private, personal interest as the main one. Legal awareness allows replacing personalized regulation based on precedents with abstract regulation based on unified legal norms. The class of owners did not satisfy the leveling norms of distribution of the archaic era contained in traditions and customs.

The need to realize the rights and obligations, freedom and lack of freedom of the subject leads to the emergence of legal consciousness, which uses means, concepts, mental structures to adequately reflect the socio-economic and political changes taking place in society. Legal consciousness appears only when a person begins to realize himself as an individual, autonomous, self-valuable subject, isolated from society [6].

Only a developed, relatively isolated and isolated individual in his mind from the collective can demand for himself a mechanism of protection, which is law, and only law can provide real protection to a person who has self-consciousness, self-esteem and the need for freedom, in an independent, independent of the collective. choosing a course of action.

The legal consciousness of a society can be at the proper height only when it has a sufficiently developed jurisprudence. In addition to the perception of natural law, another condition for the triumph of legal consciousness is a living connection between legal science and the consciousness of the masses.

References

1. Bugaenko, Yu. Yu. Legal culture in modern Russia: socio-philosophical analysis [Text]: dis. ... Candidate of Philosophical Sciences / Yu.Yu. Bugaenko. - Krasnodar, 2007.

2. Wikipedia - free encyclopedia [Electronic resource]. - Access mode http://ru.wikipedia.org.

3. Gagin, I. A. Legal culture and its role in the formation of a penal system employee [Text]: teaching method. allowance / I.A. Gagin. - Ryazan, 2005. - Book 13.

4. Ivannikov, I.A. Theory of state and law [Text] / I.A. Ivannikov. - Rostov-on-Don, 2001.

5. Ilyin, I.A. On the essence of legal consciousness [Text] / I.A. Ilyin. - M., 1993.

6. Slepokourov, V.S. Culture as a system of socio-normative regulation [Text]: monograph / V.S. Slepokurov. - M.: MGUKI, 2003. - 209 p.

7. Smolensky, M. B. Legal culture: the experience of sociocultural analysis [Text] / M.B. Smolensky. - Rostov n / D., 2002.

8. Chernyshenko, A.G. Legal awareness: concept, structure, essence in the context of socio-cultural development [Text] / A.G. Chernyshenko // Scientific Thought of the Caucasus. Application. - 2002. - No. 15.

9. Legal culture [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: www.ref.bv.ru.