THE CORRELATION OF THE MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN STATE AND LAW IN THE DOCTRINE OF P.A. KROPOTKIN

The actual task of Russian state studies and jurisprudence remains the opposition to the ideological and theoretical constructions of Russian classical anarchism. Purpose: to establish the most significant features and disadvantages of P.A. Kropotkin’s interpretation of the correlation of state and law on the example of Medieval Europe. When writing the article, the author applies interdisciplinary and class approaches. General scientific and specific scientific methods are used: historical, problem-theoretical, formal-logical, textual. Materials: monuments of law, other historical sources, foreign and national historiography. The analysis shows that P.A. Kropotkin’s works are characterised not only by a pronounced anti-exploitation pathos, but also by an equally pronounced tendentiousness. Results: aprioriism, anti-statism and antilegism, radical localism, Eurocentrism, diffusionism, cyclism and catastrophism, clothed in the form of postulates, predetermined P.A. Kropotkin’s one-sided interpretations of the interaction of the medieval European state with positive and customary law. In the first case, it took a purely causative form, and in the second, it was predominantly conflictual. These are the key flaws of P.A. Kropotkin’s correlation concept.