Prof. Olga Khazova – Family Law in the Post-Soviet European Territory: What does it look like?

As the result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, new independent states were formed on European territory: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. This served as an impetus to extensive law reforms in these countries. Family law reform was a constituent part of this revision. It had to be adapted to the new social and economic realities, which were brought to these countries together with tremendous political changes. In the former USSR, the Soviet republics did not have a lot of freedom in designing their own family laws; all the codes on marriage and the family were practically the same, being based on the Fundamentals of the Legislation of the USSR and Soviet Republics on Marriage and the Family and having, in fact, the Russian Federation (at that time RSFSR) Code on Marriage and the Family 1969 as a common compulsory model. Therefore it is not surprising that after these countries became independent and were released from the pressure of the Soviet state, a completely different picture of family law emerged.

The lecture will focus on the main changes that were introduced into family law of the post-Soviet European countries; it will attempt to explain the existing diversity in legal regulation, as well as reveal the main trends in post-Soviet European family law.