Russian System Of Divorce During The Period Of Its Transformation

The Russian system of divorce has been influenced by the orthodox religion as well as the Russian culture and its traditions. Under the influence of these three elements, the Russian divorce system has gone through four time periods.The time before 1917 is known as the "epoch of the church marriages", divorces were also affected by the system. Both men and women had the freedom to marry whoever they wanted but not to divorce. There were very few law provisions for divorce and the main purpose was to keep the legislative marriage firm and stable.In 1917 after the October Revolution in Russia, the socialist regime overthrew the imperial regime. In order to consolidate the new regime, to win people’s hearts, to emancipate their minds and to destroy any vestiges of the old ways, the Socialist Party changed the marriage and family law by proclaiming free divorces. The Socialist Party paid a lot of attention to the freedom of divorce and enriched the divorce system with different laws.The third period was after The Great Patriotic War, when there was a great reduction of the population and an economic recession. So, to increase the population and to raise the economy, the new "Marriage and Family Law" did not grant the freedom of divorce, but even restricted it. Thus, there were relatively few provisions for divorce in that "Marriage and Family Law".The fourth period is the period of the Soviet Union. Due to the influence of Western ideas, the improvement of people’s living conditions, opening of their minds, "Marriage and Family Law" reinstated the freedom to divorce. It wasn’t wrong to stress the freedom of divorce itself, but at the time, in the Soviet Union, there was a conflict between two different concepts of socialism and capitalism in the Russian society. As far as these two concepts belong to different ideologies, the conflict was unavoidable. Thus, we can observe the collisions in Russian "Family Law", on the one hand it emphasizes freedom of divorce, while on the other it emphasizes the obligations of the stable family.However, Russia is located in the continental Europe and is influenced by Western ideas, which increases the rate of divorce in Russia in its transformation periods. People’s notion of family stability is weak due to the impact of the Soviet legislative period. Nowadays, the Russian and Chinese divorce systems have much in common. So, in our work we observed not only the Russian divorce system in its transformation but also studied its impact to the divorce system in China and vice versa, in order to share our best laws and improve "Divorce, Marriage and Family Law" of our countries.