Today is a special day: 10 December - Human Rights Day, and our

best wishes to all who are listening! This week our guest on the podcast isSergei Anatolievich Pashin, a retired Russian federal judge, Honoured Lawyer ofthe Russian Federation and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. 

The topics discussed on the podcast include the reform of the

justice system in Russia, trial by jury, and whether there is a fair judicial systemin the country. 

The questions we ask include:

1) Is the judiciary an independent and autonomous branch of

state power in Russia? To what extent did the judicial reforms of the ninetiesachieve their goals?

2) Is it likely that with a critical mass of unjust

verdicts, society will explode? Or will irregularities and violations always betolerated?

3) You were one of those who initiated and supported the introduction

of jury trials. What has been the fate of its enforcement?

4) Recently the head of the Investigative Committee Aleksandr

Bastrykin, speaking at Moscow Legal Week said: "From the idea of 'theindividual as the highest value, which has above all rights', we should returnto the classical understanding of the individual as the subject of a set ofrights and duties. Why is there such a stress on duties all the time?

5) What are the prospects for fair justice in the Russian

Federation?

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the

podcast on our website or

on SoundCloud, Podcasts.com, Spotify, iTunes and Anchor.  The music, from

Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei

Nikitin writes on Facebook: “In many respects, the fairnessof the justice system is a private matter, a matter of individual decentjudges, decent investigators (there are such investigators, I knew them), anddecent policemen (there are such people, too). That is, in any system there aredecent people. But it is another thing that they can be discouraged frompracticing justice,” said Sergei Anatolievich Pashin. About this, and muchmore, Simon Cosgrove and I talked with Sergei Pashin in our podcast. We werevery lucky that Sergei Pashin was able to give an hour of his time to talk tous. Everyone knows that Pashin is a retired federal judge, one of the initiatorsof jury trials in Russia, an Honoured Lawyer of the Russian Federation, a memberof the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), author of the 1991 Constitutional Court Act,and a very busy man. Since 2008, Pashin has been teaching at the Law Department

of the Higher School of Economics. Or rather, alas, it’s now necessary to say –

was teaching. At the end of November 2021 Pashin suddenly received notice of

dismissal and from 24 December he will cease to be an employee of this

educational institution: the university terminated contracts with two professors

of the Faculty of Law - Sergei Pashin and Gennady Esakov. From 2011 to 2021 the

students of the HSE recognized Sergei Pashin every year as the best lecturer -

and deservedly so. It was extremely interesting talking with Sergei

Anatolievich, as you can judge for yourself. 

Simon

Cosgrove adds: ‘For further information about the past week in Russia,visit our website here.’