Introduction. Development of the industrial production in the regions becomes possible on condition of attracting the labour resources and creating the appropriate socio-economic conditions, acceptable living, training and leisure opportunities for employees. Solving these tasks results in formation of the industrial clusters and development of the settlements with the city-forming industrial enterprises. The settlements that have emerged as an evidence of the technological progress and as a result of formation of the economic relationships differ from the settlements and cities formed under the dominating influence of the agricultural and commercial sectors. First of all, the differences refer to the intensity of migration flows, quick emergence of the agglomerations consisting of the class-homogeneous labour collectives represented by the proletariat (including the stratum of engineers and craftsmen). For this reason, during formation of the industrial sector in the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX century, a special kind of internal affairs authorities called the “industrial police” had evolved, which were partly funded at the expense of the extrabudgetary funds of the served enterprises. These practices had spread throughout the Donetsk coal-mining basin, which included an immense territory from the city of Shakhty, Rostov region (former Aleksandrovsk-Grushevskii, Province of the Don Cossack Host) – in the east to the city of Donetsk, Donetsk People's Republic (former Yuzovka, Yekaterinoslav province) – in the west. Nowadays, a scientific study of the industrial police formation process on the territory of Donbass is relevant and especially valuable due to the fact that from 2022 the coal-mining basin has become an integral part of the Russian Federation and because it possesses the vast historical and industrial-production experience of joint development and cooperation of its constituent regions, including in the field of law enforcement activities. Therefore, the paper targets to investigate the process of formation of the industrial police on the territory of the Donetsk coal-mining basin (at the pre–Soviet period).

Materials and Methods. The objects of the study were the legal relations referring to the formation and development of the industrial police on the territory of the Donetsk coal-mining basin in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. The study was carried out based on the empirical analysis of the history of the law enforcement authorities on the territory of the Donetsk coal-mining basin. While preparing the article, the principle of historicism was applied, historicallegal, dogmatic legal and system-structural methods of scientific research were used. Along with the specific scientific methods of jurisprudence knowledge, the general scientific methods of synthesis, induction and deduction, as well as the comparative, systemic and cognitive methods were used.

Results. A scientific concept of the Donbass law enforcement system, which had existed at the turn of the XIX– XX centuries within the Province of the Don Cossack Host and had represented a specific subject of the Russian Empire in the pre-Soviet period, was formed. The regulatory legal acts, which had been the basis for the emergence and development of the industrial police, ensuring protection of the public order and safety, were identified and studied. The historically justified key dates of the Donbass industrial police formation were distinguished and might be used in the moral, psychological and memorial work, demonstrating the unity of the population living on the territory of the Donetsk coalmining basin in the past and future.

Discussion and Conclusion. Enforcement of the law is an important part of the law enforcement function of the state and is being ensured across the whole territory of the Russian Federation, including the “new regions” of Russia, which had been previously detached from it in 1991 due to undoing the USSR. Therefore, the research in the historical and legal development of the industrial police of the Donetsk coal-mining basin demonstrates the historical unity of the peoples of Donbass throughout the single state. The conclusions drawn by the authors upon the conducted research directly refer to ensuring the national ideological security of the Russian Federation.

Introduction. The Constitution of the Russian Federation defines the benchmarks ensuring an appropriate level of development for the important spheres of life, a high living standard, which requires a comprehensive approach to forming the human potential of the generations of the Russian citizens. The quintessence of the Russian statehood strategic development implies minimisation of the prerequisites inducing formation of the destructive legal consciousness in citizens, which obstructs achievement of the legal order in the country. In the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation, among the list of national interests, a significant place is allocated to saving the people of Russia, to development of the human potential. The state strategic planning document had defined the following goals: upbringing a harmoniously developed and socially responsible citizen, forming in the society the attitude of intolerance to illegal activities. No doubt, in Russia, the trend of the power exercising mechanism to undergo modern institutional changes is caused by the social modernization and is targeted at the conceptual ideas of the constitutionalism. The economic and socio-political transformations inevitably affect not only formation of the legal environment, but also structuring the public consciousness, which concepts predetermine the development of the reasoned and practically oriented legal solutions. The state of the public perception of the legal phenomena should be constantly monitored due to the continuous impact imposed on it by the transformations in the state structure of the governmental and administrative authorities. The scientific understanding of these processes should not be underestimated, otherwise this can cause the psychological turbulence of a significant part of the population in choosing the behavioural patterns of lawful behaviour. In the context of transformation of the social determination process, which is attributed with a complicated range of the antisocially-motivated impacts, significantly limiting the preventive social and law enforcement potential, the present research is relevant due to the special importance assigned to precise, steady and uniform application of the legislative provisions, the degree of their functional social harmonisation in the social relation regulation mechanism. The deformations of the citizens’ legal consciousness are the factors hindering the achievement of the high efficiency in implementation of the fundamental principles of the supremacy of law. The research aims at investigating the functional role of the legal consciousness in the legal regulation mechanism of the modern social formations, at analysing the problems of exercising the state policy in the frame of forming the positive perception of the legal phenomena among the citizens and revealing the interrelations of the legal consciousness deformations and stimulation of the legitimate behavioural variation.

Materials and Methods. The article analyses the results of the research of the native and foreign scientists on the regularities in the public perception of the state and legal phenomena and impact thereof on the legitimate behavioural variation. The general scientific and specific scientific methods were used in the research, such as the statistical method and the method of system analysis of data characteristic of the phenomena affecting the state of lawfulness in Russia.

Results. The regularities in the functional role of the legal consciousness within the mechanism of legal regulation of the social relations have been acknowledged. The substance of the legal consciousness interrelations with the legal ideology and legal psychology has been revealed. The problems of efficiency of the state policy in forming the civil legal consciousness have been determined. It has been proposed to integrate into the scholarly discourse such a type of legal consciousness deformation as legal dementia, which predetermines the state of lawfulness in the modern Russian society.

Discussion and Conclusion. The practical side of the legal consciousness reflects the behavioural attitudes of a person, his readiness to use in practice his theoretical knowledge and value assessments. The law-related feelings, emotions, ideas, principles, attitudes that have become a part of a person’s legal consciousness, subsequently determine his actions in the legal framework. To ensure protection of the national mental values and to prevent emergence of the destructive attitudes in the society, changes in the educational, scientific, cultural and other spheres should be made taking into account the historical traditions and the experience accumulated by the Russian society. Unfortunately, nowadays, among the main problems of the lawmaking and law enforcement processes in Russia are weak scientific and analytical justification of the draft laws, low quality of laws, acute legal collisions within the law system, violations of the intra-system relations that result in a tendency of citizens’ legal estrangement.

Introduction. Suffrage is one of the most frequently reformed areas of the national legislation of the Russian Federation. Permanent law making activity and its further interpretation in the frame of law enforcement practices of holding the elections to public authorities not only fail to resolve the disputable issues, but arise the new ones referring to the electoral system regulation. The most important objective in the present day studies of the passive suffrage is to identify the legal collisions and make proposals for filling in the legal gaps encountered by the law enforcers in the context of the tasks set forth before them, i.e. to ensure implementation of the passive suffrage of the candidates. Nowadays, the need to carry out the legal analysis of the impact imposed by the conceptual legislative innovations on using the right to passive suffrage has become evident. The aim of this paper is to analyse the existing restrictions of passive suffrage, as well as to study the eligibility and limits of these restrictions.

Materials and Methods. In the article, the recently published works of native scientists, the mass media materials, federal legislation, decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the studied area, the regulatory legal acts adopted by the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, as well as the results of the work of the election commissions have been analysed. The study was based on such commonly accepted methods of scientific cognition as the dialectical and dogmatic-legal methods, as well as the methods of analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction.

Results. The issues of legitimacy of establishing the additional restrictions to the rights of citizens have been investigated. The conclusion has been made not only of great importance to protect the human rights and freedoms, but of urgent need to comply with the legal restrictions of these rights. The concepts of restrictions and violations of the human and civil rights and freedoms have been differentiated, and the statutory expression of the suffrage restrictions has been analysed. Except for the constitutional provisions (legal capability and criminal record), the content of the additional restrictions introduced at the federal level and referring to the age, residence qualification, presence or absence of a criminal record of committed crimes and torts of extremism has also been disclosed.

Discussion and Conclusion. The essence of the passive suffrage restrictions implies imposing the certain requirements and conditions on a person for him to acquire the eligibility to stand as a candidate in the elections to the public authorities. The system of suffrage restrictions is designed to ensure the high-quality of formation, complete functionality and professionalism of the elected authorities and officials, however could also become a tool for fighting against the opposition.

Introduction. Digitalization is a distinctive feature of development of the modern society, which implies intensive implementation of the new technologies into the different spheres of life, including the electoral process. In Russia, the development of measures efficiently ensuring the suffrage of the citizens, the improvement of the legal regulation of the electoral process are being carried out for more than thirty years. However, the dynamics of automation and digitalization of the electoral procedures often outrides their theoretical justification and legal comprehension. The works of Russian and foreign authors study the problems of the electoral process digitalization, the electronic forms of manifesting the civic activity and political engagement. A number of researchers consider the ongoing changes to be inevitable and call for a revision of the electoral process basic fundamentals, others propose to limit this process indicating on the impossibility to ensure the absolute information security. The paper aims at analysing the main stages of automation and digitalization of the electoral process in Russia, identify the problems associated with implementation of the new technologies and develop recommendations for the efficient transformation of the electoral system in the context of digitalization.

Materials and Methods. To ensure the relevance and reliability of the obtained results, the general and specific scientific methods of cognition were used in the research: the dialectical method, the method of juridical comparativistics, as well as the content analysis of the regulatory legal acts and historical, systemic, logical and other methods. Various methods of interpreting the legal norms were used to identify the regularities in their application. The content analysis of the regulatory legal acts and the logical method made it possible to identify the electoral process digital transformation features. The method of modeling enabled formulation of the proposals on improving the legislation.

Results. The main stages of automation and digitalization of the electoral process have been studied. Their features and problems have been identified. The need for transformation of the legal regulation, capable of efficient ensuring the suffrage of the citizens in the new conditions, has been substantiated.

Discussion and Conclusion. Based on the results of the research, the recommendations have been developed for efficient legal regulation of the main stages of the electoral process in the context of digitalization. The theoretical conclusions formulated by the authors are proposed to be used for further research and improvement of the current electoral law of the Russian Federation.

Introduction. In the framework of the legal regulation of the trade union activities in Russia, a number of regulations cause certain contradictions with regard to establishment of the social and labour relations. Difficulties in interaction of the trade unions with the employers and the state, supplemented by the competition with the private labour, arise the problem of preserving the institution under study as the one aimed at the formation of a system of social partnership, development of the labour environment, national economy and social equality. Therefore, the research strives to investigate the constitutional requirements for establishment and operation of the trade unions to enable harmonization of the social and labour relations. By finding the legislative gaps in the process of implementing the rights of citizens to establish and operate the trade unions, it is possible to modernize the regulatory legal institutions in this field. The aim of the research is to study the specifics of the constitutional right to establish and operate the trade unions.

Materials and Methods. The methodological framework was organised based on the selection, analysis and systematisation of the relevant regulatory and legal data and research works in the subject area. The use of a set of general scientific (dialectical, logical, systemic) and specific scientific methods of cognition (comparative legal, dogmatic legal, sociolegal) made it possible to study the principles of state regulation of the trade union activities, identify the gaps in their work and shortcomings due to be eliminated, as well as to summarise the factors of applicability of the constitutional operational procedure to the activities of the trade union organisations in Russia.

Results. The constitutional right to establish and operate the trade unions has been analysed. It has been acknowledged that determination of the legal advantages of the trade union members does not correlate with the process of declining the popularity of this institution in the Russian Federation. It has been revealed that this trend is caused by the several problems, i.e.: the multiplicity of the legislative requirements creates a number of contradictions in the relations between the trade unions and employers preventing the full freedom of organisations’ activities; the process of establishing the trade unions is complicated by the need to incorporate the legal entity, the legislative predetermination and formality do not give freedom to the organisations in compiling the charter and making changes to it without permission of the state; the principles of the internal relations regulation must comply with the standard provisions of the Labour Code of the Russian Federation, which also limits the trade union activity; the court defence of the rights of the trade union members needs to be revised and modernized to eliminate the ambiguous provisions and reduce the bureaucratic processes. The use of the variable collective agreements and principles of social partnership aimed at harmonisation of the social and labour relations have been proposed as the solutions to the identified problems.

Discussion and Conclusion. The study has identified the key issues and underdeveloped aspects of the constitutional regulation of the trade union activities in the Russian Federation, which could be solved through the optimisation of the excessive legislative requirements, issuing the updated provisions on court defence of the trade union members, establishing the full independence and autonomy of such organisations in the matters of internal regulation, as well as through the development of the system of social partnership. The theoretical and practical conclusions drawn in the paper could be used for further research in the field of improving the legal literacy of the trade union members.

Introduction. In the frame of entrepreneurship development, promotion of business ethics becomes particularly important as a mechanism for business harmonization, ensuring legal equality, healthy competition and fair attitudes to consumers. However, the controversial approaches to defining the concept of “business ethics” and the multiple interpretations thereof prevent from boosting the global spread of business culture in the legal regulation framework. In this regard, the aim of the study is to systematise the conceptual approaches to substantiation and formation of business ethics in the context of legal regulation of entrepreneurial activity.

Materials and Methods. The methodological basis of the research includes the general and specific scientific methods. The methods of analysis, comparison and systematisation enable the study of the integral parts of business ethics to get deep understanding of this concept. By comparing different interpretations, the common grounds in the interdisciplinary approaches to substantiation of this concept are revealed. Systematisation fosters organisation of the legal and moral values into a single hierarchical structure that forms the essence of business ethics. The philosophical-juridical method reveals the interrelation of the philosophical approach contained in the entrepreneurial value reference points and the legislative norms of society.

Results. The research has revealed a pattern of business ethics development in the context of global and national wellbeing. The hierarchical structure of business ethics has a top-down nature: the international level, the macro level and the micro level. Despite the influence of cultural specifics on the development of the moral value system, the formation of business culture should go in correlation with the norms of law and the needs of society, along with establishment of the corporate boundaries and general entrepreneurial principles. At the corporate level, the integration of business ethics into the enterprise strategy is beneficial for its image and reputation, and the efficiency lies in promotion of the socio-economic, legal and other aspects fostering creation of fair, sustainable and conscious business.

Discussion and Conclusion. The concept of “business ethics” is studied in the various scientific contexts. Despite all differences in interpretation, the mechanism of forming the business ethics in the framework of entrepreneurial activity is uniform, it includes creation of the code of ethics, training in ethical principles, development of a system of incentives, elaboration of the methods of prevention and punishment. In various contexts, this mechanism is aimed at eliminating unlawful forms of competition, ensuring economic, social and legal security, increasing the level of responsibility and creating an efficient system of business values.

Introduction. The telephone fraud is a serious problem faced both in Russia and abroad. With the development of digital technologies and Internet, the fraudsters find the new ways to deceive citizens by calling them on the phone, pretending to be the representatives of banks, law enforcement agencies or other official institutions. The dynamics of damage caused by such crimes is constantly growing, therefore, the efficient measures should be taken to prevent and suppress fraud. The aim of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of the criminal law with respect to telephone fraud liability in Russia and foreign countries based on the dynamics of damage example.

Materials and Methods. The methodological basis of the research included the general and specific scientific methods of cognition. Among the general scientific methods, the dialectical and legalistic methods were used. In addition, the method of historical analysis, data analysis and synthesis methods were applied, the legal acts regulating the public relations on countering the telephone fraud were investigated. Also, a comparative legal method was used to analyse and compare different legal provisions. For more complete understanding of the problem, the analysis of the judicial practices of the Russian courts was carried out, which made it possible to evaluate the existing law enforcement practices in the specific situations.

Results. The analysis of the criminal law on fraud liability in Russia and foreign countries, as well as measures enforced to counteract fraud in the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China and the United States of America, has been carried out. The consequences of fraud as a type of crime have been studied, and the general dynamics of damage from the registered and investigated telephone frauds in the Russian Federation has been analysed. The main trends and features of such cases have been revealed.

Discussion and Conclusion. The analysis of the criminal law demonstrates that fraud liability in Russia and foreign countries has its own features. Studying these differences will help to identify the best practices in countering fraud and to develop the more efficient measures for preventing this type of crime and punishing the fraudsters.