Constitutional Principle of Social Solidarity as a Basis for the Consolidation of the Russian Society and States

Abstract

The current circumstances related to the Covid-19 pandemic, which the entire world community had to face, raised sharply the question of mutual responsibility of the society and the state. At the same time, restrictions imposed at the state level are most often assessed by citizens as excessive. As a result, the number of studies devoted to establishing the legitimacy of restricting human rights and freedoms in the conditions of the epidemic is growing, however, such a phenomenon as social solidarity remains practically ignored. It is social solidarity, understood as the cohesion of the society (not only in the face of common threats and challenges), that can become the basis for constructive interaction between the society and the state. The aim of the study was the legal understanding of social solidarity as a new constitutional principle of the Russian state, which presupposes the possibility of establishing permissible restrictions on individual rights and freedoms in the conditions of protecting the foundations of the constitutional state from the modern threats. The absence of a normative definition of social solidarity in the current legislation of Russia, despite the constitutional reform carried out in 2020, entails difficulties in the correct interpretation of this phenomenon. The use of both general scientific and special methods of cognition of socio-legal phenomena — the formal legal method and the method of legal modeling — made it possible to see in social solidarity not only the legal structure, but also the leading moral and ethical principle of interaction between the society and the state. The analysis of the domestic legal acts made it possible to conclude that the constitutional principle of social cohesion of the society and the state in the face of various threats with the observance of such elements as the rule of law, the constitutional provision of individual rights and freedoms and the conditions for their permissible restriction is the basis for the inviolability of the state and its constitutional system.