The Rules of the Game: A Brief Course in Non-Law for Future Sociologists and Lawyers

Leonid Nikitinsky spent nearly forty years covering the courts as a journalist, including twenty-two years at Novaya Gazeta. Then came February 2022. Faced with a torrent of increasingly absurd legislation and judicial decisions, he found that, as a lawyer, he could no longer comment on them in legal terms—only with words that Russia's State Duma has effectively deemed unacceptable.
As Nikitinsky explains, this book is his personal response to the legal madness of recent years. It is also the deeply felt testimony of someone who devoted his life to defending the rule of law, only to witness law itself being replaced by ponyatiya—the unwritten rules, informal codes, and arbitrary understandings that operate outside the legal system.
The book looks behind the façade of official law to reveal how these shadow institutions of "non-law" emerged and how they function today. Although they present themselves as legal institutions, they in fact operate according to entirely different principles—principles that increasingly shape everyday life in contemporary Russia

Leonid Nikitinsky. The Rules of the Game: A Brief Course in Non-Law for Future Sociologists and Lawyers. — Freedom Letters / Novaya Gazeta, 2026.
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