The Legal Space of the Commonwealth of Independent States in the Context of Legal Geography: Traditions and Determinants of Interaction

The constitutional and legal development of the CIS countries after the dissolution of the USSR has posed a number of key questions for the scientific community regarding the formation and functioning of the new legal space. One of the central issues has become the contradiction between the increasing legal pluralism and the persistent tendency towards the integration of legal systems. Differences in legal systems, caused by historical, cultural, and political factors, are combined with the formation of a common normative field at the CIS level. The formulation of this problem predetermined the aim of this study — to identify the features of the legal space of the CIS, to characterize its socio-cultural and institutional determinants, as well as to outline the main crisis manifestations and directions of possible legal transformation. To achieve the set goal, the following tasks are addressed in the work: to analyze the historical and legal prerequisites for the formation of the legal space of the CIS; to reveal socio-cultural and religious features influencing the specifics of legal regulation; to investigate manifestations of legal nihilism and legal dualism; to assess institutional and substantive problems in the fields of human rights, digitalization, and sustainable development. The methodological framework incorporates comparative legal, institutional, and interdisciplinary approaches, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of the legal dynamics within the post-Soviet legal landscape. The findings reveal enduring characteristics of the CIS legal space. A unifying factor lies in the continuity between the CIS legal space and the individual legal systems it comprises with the legal traditions of the Russian Empire and the socialist legal model. However, disintegration within the legal space — both at the general and national levels — is driven by legal dualism (or more accurately, pluralism), which intensifies amid deepening legal crises and normative uncertainty under modern global challenges.