POST NUMBER 5830 OCTOBER 2012THE INCREMENTAL ADVANCE OF A NEW CIVIL CODE WITH SOME TWO THOUSAND CHANGES

In 1786, in To A Mouse, the great Scots bard Robert Burns penned a standard proverb invoked in the face of frustration, if not failure: The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]. It is premature to characterize the content of the pending omnibus revision of the Russian Civil Code as befitting the invocation of such an expression of dismay and disappointment. The pace of its progress in being legislated is also probably not merited. Both of these points are usefully illuminated in an recent interview of Pavel Krasheninnikov, Chairman, State Duma Committee for Constitutional Legislation, that he gave to By Marina Sokolovskaya in issue number 40 of Profile, a Russian news magazine jointly published with Der Spiegel, dated 29 October 2012 (http://www.profile.ru/article/vtoroi-posle-konstitutsii-72820). Longstanding Russian hand, David Johnson, who is weathering the hurricane Sandy on Virginia's Chincoteague Island, (Issue #190, item #8; davidjohnson@starpower.net), gets credit for finding (AND WE WISH HIM WELL!) and posting an excerpt of this interview, although without some of the concrete and specific details found in the original article e.g., his statement that it includes more than 2000 amendments, has involved the participation of some 30 working groups, been vetted at 10 conferences across Russia, plus been considered at several Duma committee hearings. In addition to the simple question of when will the seconding reading of the September 818 page clean draft be had, there is the much more fundamental ones of: - how many amendments and other changes are pending plus - how extensively altered will the text be of what passes that critical second reading? Another important fact shared by Krasheninnikov is that what is currently Part Three, Division V, Chapters 61-65 of the Civil Code on the subjects of inheritance and succession is unchanged. The former Justice Minister concluded his interview with an acknowledgement that as the legislative process is a political one further and even many amendments and changes are inevitable before a new Civil Code is printed in Rossiskaya Gazeta as a newly enacted law of the Russian Federation.