North Caucasus Legal Vestnik

Abstract

IntroductionIntroduction. The 2020 constitutional reform changed not individual norms, but the semantic structure of the Basic Law. In Articles 67.1, 72, 75.1, 114, the legislator introduced categories that had previously remained outside the highest regulatory level: historical truth, protection of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and the preservation of traditional family values. This has already required a doctrinal re-adjustment. This was followed by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 809 dated November 9, 2022 (hereinafter referred to as the Basics), and by the end of 2024, the body of «protective» sectoral legislation had expanded to one and a half dozen federal laws. By the beginning of 2026, the state policy on the preservation of traditional spiritual and moral values had turned into an extensive regulatory system, whose outline had not yet received an exhaustive legal description.PurposePurpose. To systematize the organizational and legal mechanism of the Russian Federation's state policy for preserving traditional spiritual and moral values that has taken shape by 2026; to determine its hierarchy; to identify the relationships between the constitutional axiological core, the program-strategic acts of the President and the Government, and the sectoral «protective» legislation; to assess the degree of normative maturity of the regional model in the constituent entities of the North Caucasian and Southern Federal Districts.MethodsMethods. The work relies on the formal-legal method (analysis of articles 67.1, 72, 75.1, 114 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation in the 2020 wording, Presidential Decree No. 809 of November 9, 2022, the body of federal laws Nos. 304, 489, 478, 479, 386, 411); the system-structural method (construction of a hierarchical map of sources); the comparative-legal method (comparison of regional models of the North Caucasian republics and the regions of the Russian South); elements of axiological analysis of doctrinal positions (Bondar, Zorkin, Khabrieva, Permilovsky, Chuychenko); the statistical method is applied to empirical data of VTsIOM, FOM, and Rosstat.ResultsResults. It has been established that by 2026 a three-level normative architecture has taken shape: the constitutional axiological core; the program-strategic layer (Decree No. 809, the National Security Strategy); and the sectoral operational superstructure. Decree No. 809 contains a legal definition of traditional values and a closed list of seventeen reference points that duplicates paragraph 91 of the National Security Strategy. The body of «protective» legislation of 2020-2024 forms the prohibitive segment.The North Caucasian model is distinguished by a triple structure of «state, traditional confessions, and ethno-cultural customs»; the Chechen concept of spiritual and moral education (Decree of the Head of the Chechen Republic of October 5, 2021 No. 177) demonstrates the greatest conceptual elaboration. With a high level of public support (84% per VTsIOM-2025; 85% per FOM-2024), demographic indicators testify to a gap between declaration and behavior.ConclusionsConclusions. The organizational and legal foundations of the policy for preserving traditional values have taken shape as an independent normative complex at the intersection of constitutional, administrative, and information law. The legal nature of Decree No. 809 remains debatable: the proposal expressed in the literature to adopt a federal law of the same name has grounds, but requires resolving the question of how such an act relates to Article 13 of the Constitution prohibiting state ideology. The North Caucasian regional segment represents the most mature model deserving of independent theoretical generalization. Proposals de lege ferenda are formulated: introducing the institute of value-based examination of draft regulatory legal acts; codification of regional legislation on spiritual and moral education; expanding the powers of the interdepartmental commission on historical education.