"I Absorbed Respect for the Law with my Mother"s Milk"

Mikhail Fedotov, lawyer, one of the authors of the Law on Mass Media, Russia's representative to UNESCO for five years, head of the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights for nine years, and now the Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Copyright, Neighbouring, Cultural and Information Rights at HSE University, celebrates his 75th anniversary. In this interview for HSE University Life, he explains how to punch through a concrete wall with a tennis ball, why it is essential to keep moving forward, and why jurisprudence is an exact science.

Literary Club at the Palace of Pioneers

Since the 19^th century, our family has had physicians and engineers, but mostly lawyers. Therefore, I have been immersed in the legal world since childhood. One might say that I absorbed respect for the law with my mother's milk.

Nevertheless, I did not plan on becoming a lawyer; I aspired to be a writer because I used to write poetry in school, attended a literary club at the Palace of Pioneers on Vorobyovy Gory, and was contributing to Rovesniki, a radio programme for youth popular at the time.

But after receiving my high school diploma, I learned that I needed two years of work experience before applying to the Literary Institute. I had planned to spend those two years on heroic expeditions to remote places, but my mother intervened (my father was no longer with us). She said, 'If you were truly meant to be a writer, you'll become one. A legal education won't stop that. You should go to law school.' Of course, I refused to consider it at first. But then Mum said, 'You're just afraid you won’t pass the exams.' She dared me, and I accepted the challenge! And that decision determined my future.

I truly enjoyed studying at the School of Law at Moscow State University, where both my mother attended after her demobilisation and her father, my grandfather, had studied before World War I. However, in my second year, I was expelled for participating in the dissident movement. But shortly after, I was reinstated to the evening programme thanks to the intervention of my mother’s former classmates, who had become influential professors at the School of Law by that time.

Freedom of the Press: from Term Paper to Doctoral Dissertation

In the evening programme, students are expected to be employed. I was fortunate to land a job as a reporter for the Vechernyaya Moskva newspaper. There, I diligently mastered the craft of journalism, and I must say that in a year and a half, I not only learned quite a few things but also figured out how to work more efficiently.

Studying at the School of Law while working at a newspaper, along with my penchant for free thinking, sparked my interest in the legal aspects of the operation of what was then referred to as 'mass media and propaganda.'

Self-appointed Law Drafters

Yuri Baturin, whom I met nearly fifty years ago during a university exam, has since become not only a close friend but also a co-author. He once told me about the tunnel effect. Imagine there is a concrete wall in front of you, and you need to punch through it with a tennis ball. Is that possible? From the perspective of quantum physics, it is indeed possible, as the wall is heterogeneous, with windows opening and closing all the time. Therefore, there is always a chance that your ball will pass through the wall via such a 'window of opportunity.'

In the late 1980s, a window of opportunity opened for our proposed draft of the USSR Law on the Press and Other Mass Media. We proceeded at our own risk, which, on one hand, exposed us to various troubles, but on the other hand, allowed us to shape the bill according to what we believed was right, based on legal logic, global experience, and the interests of civil society. Thus, the first thing we included in our draft was a guarantee of media freedom and a prohibition on censorship. Of course, we were not legislators but merely self-appointed drafters of the law. In the autumn of 1988, a window of opportunity opened, allowing us to publish our draft while bypassing Glavlit (the Censorship Office). In 1989, we printed it as a brochure and distributed it to the delegates of the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, and in 1990, we witnessed it being passed into law.

On August 1, 1990, our law came into force. About a month prior, Mikhail Poltoranin, who had just been appointed Minister of Press and Information of the RSFSR, called me with an offer to become his deputy for legal affairs. This opportunity to put into practice what I had been writing about for many years—in books, articles, and finally a draft law—was simply too tempting to resist. Both a challenge and a temptation, this offer was difficult to decline.

Two Topics and One Big Cause

For the past fifty years, I have been guided by two muses: one is the patron of media law, specifically the law governing mass communications, and the other the patron of intellectual property law. These muses are closely related, as both fields they represent stem from human rights, which have also been a focus of my thoughts since my student years. Time and again, these muses have intertwined their two paths into one. For example, in 1992, as Deputy Minister of the Press and Mass Media, I successfully advocated for a presidential decree to establish the Russian Intellectual Property Agency under the President of the Russian Federation.

Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to devote much time to working at this Agency. In the spring of 1992, the trial of the CPSU case began in the Constitutional Court, and the President appointed me as one of his representatives.

Shortly after the end of the trial in the Constitutional Court, I was transferred from the Russian Intellectual Property Agency to the Ministry, this time as the Minister. I admit that I enjoyed this work, which primarily focused on fostering a civilised media market filled with independent and pluralistic media. However, in August 1993, when the Supreme Council adopted amendments to the Law on Mass Media that effectively restored censorship through the Federal Supervisory Board, I resigned as minister and was promptly appointed as Russia's Permanent Representative to UNESCO.

Paris Is Well Worth... an Appointment

My service as Russia's Permanent Representative to UNESCO was a happy time. I was fortunate to engage in areas that any intellectual would dream of, such as education, science, culture, and communications... We lived in Paris. I was surrounded by wonderful people, and together we worked on remarkable projects. The UNESCO Days in Russia was a unique campaign that reached many regions across the country. In short, I felt that I was in the right place and had no intention of 'switching jobs.'

However, it seems that at the Kremlin, they thought otherwise. In 1997, the President decided to nominate me as a judge of the Constitutional Court. However, the Federation Council predictably rejected my nomination, and I returned to Paris to continue in my role as Permanent Representative to UNESCO.

Human Rights Protection: the Art of the Impossible

Later, when I returned to Moscow, I often reproached myself for giving up so easily on the position of Constitutional Court judge in 1997. I felt a sense of indebtedness. Therefore, when the President invited me in 2010 to become his adviser and lead the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (Human Rights Council), I accepted.

During my nine years in this position, the Council accomplished a great deal, though there was still much more to be done. They say, miracles do not exist. But what is a miracle? It is an event whose probability approaches zero but is not actually zero. Therefore, under certain conditions, a miracle can occur. Like the law on the press which became a reality.

Human rights protection, which itself is a miracle, aims to help individuals realise their seemingly impossible hopes. Sometimes, miracles do enter their lives.

Good, Pure, and Bright

Five years ago, on my 70th birthday, I stepped down from my position as presidential adviser and head of the Human Rights Council due to my age. This change allowed me to finally focus on something good, pure, and bright: my beloved project, the UNESCO Chair on Copyright, which has been thriving for over a quarter of a century and brings together more than forty individuals from various countries.

One should understand that the UNESCO Chair is neither a subdivision of UNESCO nor an educational department. The very name 'UNESCO Chair' implies that it is, in essence, a pulpit—a platform from which the global values of science, culture, art, and the ideals of intellectual and moral solidarity, as outlined in the UNESCO Charter, are promoted. Therefore, its leader is referred to as the chairholder rather than the director. In other words, it is a centre for inter-university cooperation, focused on a specific area of expertise. There are now more than a thousand UNESCO Chairs around the world dealing with a diverse range of topics, from culture and traditions of wine at University of Burgundy to climate change research at University of Hamburg, and access to information at University of Chile. But there is only one UNESCO Chair on Copyright, Neighbouring, Cultural and Information Rights—ours.

The uniqueness of this UNESCO Chair lies in the research we conduct and the training courses we offer to students.

Periodic Table of Legal Elements

My book, titled The General Theory of Authorship, is on the way. It essentially focuses on constructing a meta-theory of intellectual property. At one point, Professor Viktor Dozortsev made a brilliant attempt to develop a coherent system of exclusive rights. To the best of my ability, I am trying to build upon his ideas and reinterpret them in order to eventually create something akin to the periodic table—except instead of chemical elements, it will contain legal concepts. Ultimately, in my opinion, jurisprudence is not part of the humanities or social sciences; rather, it is an exact science. Because law is inherently axiomatic. I often tell my students, 'A good law can function effectively or poorly. A bad law can only function poorly.' Therefore, the quality of legal norms is a very serious matter.

September 18

HSE People

'I Absorbed Respect for the Law with my Mother's Milk'