Personality Rights in the Russian Federation

The Russian law regulates protection of personality rights on the constitutional level, as well as that of acts of a lower rank. The Russian Civil Code does not contain a definition of personality rights, but only enumerates them, with the provision that case law treats the list of protected rights contained in the regulations as a closed one. On the other hand, the doctrine defines them as non-material, non-property rights, connected with the human being and protected by law. Contemporarily, there are distinguished two groups of personality rights protecting the physical existence of the human being (health, life, bodily inviolability) and related to its functioning in society (honour, dignity, privacy, freedom of movement). In a lawsuit of protection of personality rights the claimant must prove, in the case of defamation, not only the fact of their violation, but also the falseness of the charges. In other cases, the genuineness of the charge does not play a role. The protection includes property-related means (compensation and satisfaction) and non-property ones (correction of untrue information, publication of a statement with the appropriate content and form.