Luchterhandt Otto - Professor, University of Hamburg, Germany, LLD. Address: 177 Mittelweg, Hamburg, 20148, Germany. E-mail: ostrecht@jura.uni-hamburg.de.

The paper studies the interpretation and understanding of human rights in the official documents of the Russian Orthodox Church (hereafter ROC) at the turn of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The objectives of the research are to specify the specific features of of the approach of the ROC to secular (liberal) doctrine of human rights which is fundamental both for international conventions and liberal democratic constitutions. The basis of the article has become the fundamentals of the ROC on merit, freedom and human rights and the Fundamentals of the ROC social conception and Patriarch Kirill speeches. The author presents an argument that state may degenerate under the influence of totalitarian dictatorships which rejected the value of individual rights and this phenomenon should be tackled. He attempts to prove that the collapse of the Soviet system and new church government in the 1990s did not lead to the reform of the ROC institution. The liberal opposition within ROC was suppressed and the initiatives to cover the past of the church impartially were rejected. The current approach of the ROC leaders to the key problems of communication with people, society and state keeps showing lack of understanding of the essence of human rights as an integral legal institution, its democratic trend. Human rights are interpreted by the ROC as a de facto set of clauses as to rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen. The secular conception of human rights is understood as subordinate to their religious interpretation. In practice, the ROC hinders the implementation of legal rights for believers of other religions not forbidden by law – Old-believers, Protestants, Catholics. The author notices that this approach of church leaders goes against the RF Constitution of 1993.