Lecture
Security in the literal sense of the word means the absence of danger. It was this aspect above all that the well-known lexicographers V.I. Dal and S.I. Ozhegov noted in their dictionaries. V.I. Dal indicated that security is "the absence of danger, safety, reliability". In S.I. Ozhegov's view, "security is a situation in which no danger threatens anyone or anything".
Such a condition, however, in which any threats are absent, is an ideal one. In reality there is always a certain danger or the possibility of its arising. For this reason the concept of security includes a system's ability to withstand possible threats.
According to the views officially adopted in the Russian Federation, security is understood as the condition in which the vital interests of the individual, society and the state are protected from internal and external threats. The main objects of security are: the individual, society and the state. All these objects of security are organically interconnected, and the principal link between them is the individual. The protection of his or her life and health, rights and freedoms, dignity and property is of paramount importance in comparison with other types of security.
The personal security of citizens of the Russian Federation consists in the genuine provision of constitutional rights and freedoms; in raising the quality and standard of living; and in physical, spiritual and intellectual development.
The security of society includes the protection of its material and spiritual values, of law and order, the strengthening of democracy; the achievement and maintenance of social concord on the basis of the principle of social justice; the enhancement of the creative role of the population's activity, and, as applied to Russia today, its national and cultural revival.
The security of the state consists in protecting its constitutional order, sovereignty and territorial integrity; in establishing political, economic and social stability; in the unconditional execution of the laws; and in resolute opposition to destructive forces, corruption, bureaucratism and attempts to usurp power in selfish interests.
Security should be interpreted as a property of a system that includes potential victims and threats to them. It is ensured by the stability, resilience and survivability of the victim and by its use of the following methods: evasion, defence, or destruction of the sources of danger, threats and challenges. Resilience means the ability to function normally under disturbances; stability means the aggregate of resiliences to long-acting disturbing factors; and survivability means the ability of systems to keep functioning under conditions of purposeful opposition.
Stability, like security, is an indispensable condition for the development of a sovereign state. Ensuring a stable and favourable external and internal environment for the life of the state is inseparable from enhancing security. At the same time, under certain conditions a state may feel secure even in a period of turbulent change (instability), and not only in the course of calm, evolutionary development. On the other hand, a confrontational situation or military standoff may also be stable and fixed. A totalitarian or rigidly authoritarian political regime, for example, may be relatively stable.
Three levels of stability may be distinguished. The first level is the stability of the state's military-political leadership (the relative duration of its existence, the constancy of its core composition). The second level is the stability of the political regime (preservation of the currently existing socio-political system, the evolutionary character of political changes, the absence of political violence). The third level is the stability of the community, of the people (preservation of the state's territorial integrity, ensuring the personal security and welfare of its citizens, improving environmental protection and maintaining demographic balance).
Vital interests, in turn, are defined as "the aggregate of needs whose satisfaction reliably ensures the existence and the possibilities for the progressive development of the individual, society and the state".
By I.A. Ilyin's definition, the state deals "exclusively with the general, nationwide interest; for the private and personal interest of citizens may be taken into account only insofar as it... can be perceived and interpreted as a general and nationwide interest".
Vital interests are usually understood to mean the needs of the state and society upon whose satisfaction their very existence and development directly depend. As a rule, these include: preservation of state sovereignty; ensuring the country's territorial integrity; preservation of socio-political stability and the inviolability of the state's constitutional order; maintaining strategic stability and security in the regions adjoining the state's borders and in the world as a whole; ensuring unhindered access to international economic and strategic zones and communications important to the country, with strict observance of the norms of international law; protection of the state's citizens in zones of military and other conflicts and in other cases of threat to their lives associated with armed violence, and so on.
Of course, ensuring its security is by no means a new phenomenon for Russia. Over its centuries-long history Russia has turned to this question many times. Great victories over invaders in the Battle on the Ice, the Battle of Kulikovo, the Patriotic War of 1812, the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) and others are inscribed forever in Russia's history.
The subjects providing security are understood to mean the participants in this process who are capable of acting independently and freely. The principal subject providing security is the state, which carries out its functions in this field through the organs of legislative, executive and judicial power.
The organs of legislative power: form the legislative basis in the field of ensuring security; within their competence take decisions on matters of the use of the forces and means of ensuring security, including the use of military force; consider and adopt federal laws on the ratification and denunciation of international treaties of the Russian Federation in the field of security.
The organs of executive power: ensure the execution of laws and other normative acts regulating relations in the sphere of security; organise the development and implementation of state programmes for ensuring security; carry out a system of measures to ensure the security of the individual, society and the state within their competence; in accordance with the law, form, reorganise and abolish state bodies for ensuring security.
The judicial bodies: ensure the protection of the constitutional order in the Russian Federation, guided by the Constitution and laws of the Russian Federation and by the constitutions and laws of the republics within the Russian Federation; administer justice in cases of crimes encroaching on the security of the individual, society and the state; provide judicial protection for citizens and for public and other organisations and associations whose rights have been violated in connection with activity to ensure security.
In accordance with current legislation, the state ensures the security of every citizen on the territory of the Russian Federation. Citizens of the Russian Federation located outside its borders are guaranteed protection and patronage by the state.
Citizens and public and other organisations and associations are also subjects of security; they possess rights and obligations relating to participation in ensuring security in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, the legislation of the republics within the Russian Federation, and the normative acts of the bodies of state power and administration of territories, regions, the autonomous region and the autonomous districts, adopted within their competence in this field. It should be noted that the creation of security bodies not established by the law of the Russian Federation is not permitted.
In addition, the state provides legal and social protection to citizens and to public and other organisations and associations that render assistance in ensuring security in accordance with the law.
Security is achieved by pursuing a unified state policy in the field of ensuring security, and by a system of measures of an economic, political, organisational and other nature commensurate with the threats to the vital interests of the individual, society and the state.
In order to create and maintain the necessary level of protection of the objects of security in the Russian Federation, a system of legal norms regulating relations in the sphere of security is being developed, the main directions of activity of the bodies of state power and administration in this field are being determined, and bodies for ensuring security and a mechanism for control and supervision of their activity are being formed or transformed.
Thus it may be said that the security system is formed by the organs of legislative, executive and judicial power, by state, public and other organisations and associations, by citizens taking part in ensuring security in accordance with the law, and also by the legislation regulating relations in the sphere of security.
The main functions of the security system are:
identifying and forecasting internal and external threats to the vital interests of the objects of security, and implementing a set of operational and long-term measures to prevent and neutralise them;
creating and maintaining in readiness the forces and means of ensuring security;
directing the forces and means of ensuring security under everyday conditions and in emergency situations;
implementing a system of measures to restore the normal functioning of the objects of security in regions affected as a result of an emergency situation;
participating in measures to ensure security beyond the borders of the Russian Federation in accordance with international treaties and agreements concluded or recognised by the Russian Federation.
In Soviet society security was identified with state security, understood as the aggregate of measures to protect the existing state and social order, territorial inviolability and independence of the state from the subversive activity of the intelligence and other special services of hostile states, and also from opponents of the existing order within the country. This, however, not infrequently led to an underestimation of dangers and threats in other spheres of life.
In this connection, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the change in the views of the military-political leadership of the Russian state on the system for ensuring its security, the term "national security" was introduced into official documents.
The concept of "national security" appeared in the political lexicon comparatively recently. The term "national security" was first used in 1904 in a message from US President Theodore Roosevelt to Congress, in which he justified the annexation of the Panama Canal Zone by the interests of US "national security". Subsequently this problem became central in the research of American political scientists.
In 1947 the US Congress passed the National Security Act, under which the National Security Council (NSC), which exists to this day, was created. Within the Council a system of goals, interests, threats and priorities of national policy is developed. In order to improve the quality of analytical support, a subcommittee of the NSC at the level of deputy ministers has operated in the United States since 1971, establishing US priorities.
In the USSR the problem of national security was not officially elaborated. It was, as it were, subsumed under the category of "defence capability" familiar from the Soviet era.
In the Russian Federation a definition of national security first appeared in the Address of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly in 1996. That document emphasised: "National security is understood as the condition in which national interests are protected from internal and external threats, ensuring the progressive development of the individual, society and the state".
National security is a complex, multi-level, open, dynamic system based on the trinity of relations of the basic social subjects - the individual, society and the state. Moreover, the formation and functioning of this system is conditioned by the influence of a multitude of factors: historical, geographical, ethnic, demographic, socio-political, economic, cultural, religious, and so on.
Theoretical research into the system of national security has enabled Russian scholars to develop a categorial apparatus and generally accepted approaches to its study. The results of this research formed the basis of the practical drafting of the "National Security Concept of the Russian Federation", approved by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1300 of 17 December 1997, as well as of the amendments and additions to it introduced by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 24 of 10 January 2000.
The National Security Concept of the Russian Federation is nothing other than a system of views on ensuring in the Russian Federation the security of the individual, society and the state from external and internal threats in all spheres of life. The Concept formulates the most important directions of state policy of the Russian Federation, as well as a definition of the national security of the Russian Federation, understood as the security of its multinational people as the bearer of sovereignty and the sole source of power in the Russian Federation.
Structurally, Russia's National Security Concept consists of an introduction, four sections and a conclusion. The first section characterises Russia's place in the world community and sets out the main trends in the development of international relations after the end of the era of bipolar confrontation. The second section defines Russia's national interests as an aggregate of the balanced interests of the individual, society and the state, which are long-term in nature and determine the main goals and the strategic and current tasks of the state's foreign and domestic policy. The third section presents the threats to Russia's national security and the main spheres of their influence. The fourth section defines the main tasks in the field of ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation.
What, then, made it necessary to draft and adopt Russia's National Security Concept?
First, the presence of crisis phenomena in the economic sphere, in the system of social relations and in the military field. An urgent need arose to refine the system of officially adopted views on Russia's national security, on the nature of the threats to the state's interests, and on the state's goals and strategy for ensuring those interests.
Second, the absence of a spiritual foundation capable of uniting a society that needs a certain unifying core on the basis of which broad agreement could be formed within the framework of today's principal all-Russian interests, goals and capabilities.
Third, the need to bring the entire system for ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation (forces, means, bodies, and the normative-legal basis of their functioning) into line with the realities of the international situation, the economic capabilities of the state, and the level of society's spiritual readiness for change. This system must reflect current and prospective security priorities and ensure the sustainable development of society and the state.
Fourth, the National Security Concept, as a political document, was to become the basis for the development of specific programmes and organisational documents, and for the planning and implementation of the entire process of state-building in the field of ensuring security.
It should be understood that the process of improving the system for ensuring national security did not end with the adoption of this version of the Concept. Over time new threats to the country's security emerge, and the science and practice of ensuring it develop; all this will undoubtedly call forth a new version of the Concept.
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