Justice & Law Quote by Alexander Rutskoy

“Rule of law” is the kind of phrase officials reach for when they want their argument to sound non-negotiable. In Rutskoy’s mouth, it functions less as a civics lesson than as a claim to legitimacy: a moral high ground that preemptively frames opponents as threats to “justice” and “fairness,” not merely political rivals. The line is built to travel well because it’s modular. Anyone can paste their preferred policy into “uphold it at all times” and treat disagreement as delinquency.

The subtext is the useful ambiguity at the heart of post-Soviet politics: law as an impartial guardrail, and law as an instrument of power. In societies transitioning from one regime to another, “rule of law” can mean independent courts, predictable rights, and constraints on executive authority. It can also mean the exact opposite in practice: an insistence on order, continuity, and obedience while the legal architecture is still being written by winners. The vow to uphold law “at all times” quietly flatters a strong-state instinct, suggesting that exceptions, emergencies, and street politics are inherently illegitimate.

Rutskoy’s biography sharpens the stakes. As Russia’s first vice president, he operated in a moment when constitutional authority was contested and institutions were brittle. In that context, invoking the “foundation” of society reads like a defensive move against chaos and a strategic move in elite conflict: if you can define yourself as the guardian of legality, you can paint your adversary as the author of disorder, even when both sides are improvising the rules.