Historical aspects of the development of legal liability of the Russian state to individuals
The article deals with topical issues and a special category of legal science - the principle of mutual liability of a citizen and a state. At present, legal liability of a state is considered to be one of the problematic issues of modern times, despite the fact that this institution was applied in Roman law and was much discussed in Europe during the 18<sup>th</sup> century. In the course of the development of Russian legal science, scholars published enough works considering the interrelation between an individual and a state, but the liability of a state to an individual was hardly subject to consideration, as opposed to the thesis of the unity of interests of a state and an individual. This trend was due to the ideology of the socialist state. Having analysed a number of works by Russian and foreign scholars, as well as the current legislation, the authors of the article point out that this problem is not only an internal one because in international law, where states are viewed as the main participants, there is also no clear opinion on the issue, moreover, there is no regulatory act that makes it possible to use this instrument, although attempts to adopt such an instrument have been made more than once.