Yulia Prikhodina, Deputy Chairman of the RF CCI Council for Financial, Industrial and Investment Policy – Chairman of the Expert Council for Assessing the Regulatory Impact of Bill Drafts, tells to Invest-Foresight about her friends, about her value system, about the intricacies of a legal career, about the unexpected acquisition of like-minded creative friends within the professional community of lawyers and financiers. Artem Genkin talked with the guest.
– The first question: how do you become a lawyer? More precisely, how and at what point did you decide that you would be a lawyer?
– I just had no other options. I am a fifth generation lawyer. This is already at the level of genetics, and, of course, thanks to the huge influence of the grandmother. My grandmother was of noble origin, with a difficult fate. Being not only a talented lawyer, but also an incredible beauty and charisma woman, she also possessed an amazing gift of a storyteller. Often people came to her for advice, for everyday wisdom. At first, my grandmother worked as a judge, and she became almost the youngest judge in Moscow, and then went to the Moscow City Bar Association, where for many years, together with my grandfather, she worked as a lawyer in the legendary Legal Consultation No. 16 on Ostozhenka. My grandmother told me a lot about her legal experience, about friendship with lawyers, funny stories from their lives, complex cases that she led, about the absolutely incredible destinies of people, about how important it is to pass testes of your life with your head held high. And since my grandmother, being a judge, analyzed criminal cases, and subsequently was engaged in criminal defense, then as a child I learned from her about the criminal process, about forensics, investigative actions, about what a trasological examination is, what attorney-client privilege means and much more. Therefore, it became a natural and logical step for me to take the path of a lawyer. We can say that my choice was predetermined.
– What university did you graduate from? And what is your specialization in jurisprudence?
– I graduated from the Moscow State Law Academy (MSLA), now it is Kutafin Moscow State Law University. I studied civil law as specialization. Although initially I wanted to study criminal law, work as an investigator, and then go to the Bar and engage in criminal defense. But in my life it turned out differently, such an “unclosed gestalt”, one might say, was formed. And I still keep at home old books on forensics, criminology, criminal proceedings, collections of speeches by prosecutors and lawyers, an investigator’s handbook.
– When did you enter the profession? What was the impression of the work at those years, what tasks did you have to solve?
– I went to work in 1996. And my first work began with a complete immersion in the legal world – I came as a secretary-typist to the Legal Consultation No. 16 of the Moscow State Bar. It was the legendary Legal Consultation, many famous lawyers worked there, with whom my grandmother and grandfather communicated and were friends, and, fortunately, I managed to get to know some of them. These were stars of legal thought, brilliant minds of the Bar.
Then the late Vladimir Sanevich Shafir, the strongest lawyer and an amazing person of great soul and heart, headed the Legal Consultation. He said: “Here’s a month for you, you have to learn to type! If you don’t learn, I won’t hire you!” There were no computers then, and I learned to print on a regular typewriter. And I printed on it, I must say, very quickly and much more accurately than on a computer. After all, unlike a computer, it was not possible to erase and reprint everything on a typewriter.
– When did you feel like a professional in legal science and practice?
– The legal path obliges to study constantly. The number of changes made to the current regulatory legal acts, as well as the number of newly adopted acts, is enormous, and in order not to drown in them, it is important to track them in a timely manner and be able to read them correctly. And after reading – apply them correctly. Do I consider myself a professional? After all, this is a question of self-esteem, which is difficult to answer objectively. I was able to solve quite complex legal issues, carry out complex transactions, and my chiefs and partners with whom I worked listened to my opinion, perceived me as a person whom they can rely on, trusted me – and this is important from the point of view of the formation of professional reputation. Does this mean that I am a professional? Definitely, there will be lawyers who have solved and are solving much more complex and serious problems. I am not ready to give myself an assessment from the point of view of professionalism, since it will be a priori subjective. Let those with whom I worked and work now give me grades.
– And when was the first wake-up call that jurisprudence is not enough for you and you still want to engage in creativity?
– That’s a difficult question for me. Many years ago, a difficult situation occurred in my life. I was very young, and I had to deal with it somehow. At that time, we did not have a culture of turning to psychotherapy and psychotherapists. Purely intuitively, I took a brush, paints and began to draw. There was no awareness in this. Thus, a lot of work has accumulated. By that time, I had been working in the financial market for quite some time. And I began to meet people who were somewhat similar to myself, who, in addition to professional activities, were engaged in creativity: photography, painting, music, dancing, embroidery, poetry, they created jewelry, dolls, etc. At some point, I had the idea to unite talented representatives of the financial sector. So in 2011 the project “The World of Art: Financiers Create” was born, which, by the way, was very supported by Alla Georgievna Gryaznova – Honorary President of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation and Anatoly Grigorievich Gavrilenko – Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NP RTS Association.
– You had a chance to implement a number of interesting projects in the communities of legal and financial market professionals. Kurt Vonnegut has an interesting demarcation. He writes about granfallons and karrases. Granfallon is such a false community where everything seems to be together, but without common goals and objectives, but karras is where like-minded people really gathered, burning with one idea. Is it possible to say that in the professional community of lawyers and financiers you managed to find such a carras, that is, there were truly like-minded people… at least those you dealt with?
– In any community there are different groups of people, they have different goals, tasks and characters. The people who surrounded me and surround me are mostly my like-minded people, these are people whom I respect, from whom I learn a lot, some of them I can call my mentors. The inner circle is people who have a clear and stable system of values, who understand what is good and what is bad, intellectual, intelligent, decent people. Some of them have certain talents in creativity: they can write poetry, paintings, create jewelry, photograph, make beautiful collages, etc. But to say that you are friendly with everyone in the community, you have excellent relations with everyone and you are spiritually and mentally close to everyone – this is probably not the case: we are all different, we converge with someone, we don’t converge with someone, we disagree with someone.
– Do you have a big library at home? What is your favorite book in it? Maybe you can name a few favorite books, but no more than three…
– No, I don’t have a very big one, because we often moved, and the library became smaller with each move, some books were lost, some simply had to be left. My two best-loved books are The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
– Here we coincide… Tell me, did your children follow your professional footsteps?
– I said to my daughter, when she already began to think about her professional path: “Just please, do not become a lawyer, I beg!” And, oddly enough, my late dad – her grandfather, who was a very strong lawyer, also said that she did not need to go to law, because she would not be a bad lawyer, and being a good lawyer is, in fact, significant stress. By the way, about genes. Although the first dad’s education is chemical – he finished Mendeleev Chemical Technology Institute, still the genes prevailed, and after 40 years he received a second education as lawyer.
– I hope your daughter still did not obey you and did everything in her own way?
– I suppose to some extent she obeyed us. Since she saw with her own eyes that legal work is extremely difficult and stressful. Although stress can overtake everywhere, in any area, be it design, IT, medicine, construction or the beauty industry. The only question is the level and quality of stress. The daughter graduated from the Higher School of Economics, received an education related to intercultural communications, and we can say that now she works close to her specialty.
– Circle of your friends, it comes from school, institute years, from your yard? Where are your best friends from, and how many friends do you have?
– No, I don’t have many friends. The most interesting thing is that it is believed that with age it becomes more difficult to make friends. I have the opposite opinion: the older I am, the easier and better I establish strong and trusting friendships with people. The main circle of friends is associated with my work, with my creative projects.
– Are you a representative of women’s art? Does it actually exist, or is it such a convenient philistine stereotype?
– Honestly, I do not support gender division: women’s art, men’s art. For example, I know men who write beautiful still lives, wonderful flowers. And there are women who paint a rather cold nature, tough, complex portraits, urban landscapes. And then, what is meant by “female art”? If we understand in this way that women, due to their gender, some of their psycho-emotional features, write only certain objects or plots – then, I gave examples refuting this stereotype.
– What is the relationship between the reality that the artist is experiencing and its reflection in his works? Do you create a work of art about what you experienced, or do you directly transfer it “one to one” into your works?
– I am self-taught, I came to art through the need, through a certain inner urge to transform the event that happened to me.
I do not approach, so to speak, rationally to painting. For example, I have a desire to depict a blooming pink apple tree that grows in our public garden on Sukharevskaya, and I write a pink apple tree. Then the mood comes to write lilac-purple irises. I write them, but at the same time I do not know and do not think how much the works I have written reflect my inner world and state. But sometimes it also happens that some picture bothers me, because it probably reflects not my brightest emotions. Remember, for example, that black cat I drew in Budapest? In other words, I create the way I feel, and I feel the way I create.
– What was the first recognition of your creative merits for you?
– The very first confession was a story that happened in 2001. I then drew a yellow chrysanthemum in a small format and decided to show this work to my close friend. And suddenly, out of nowhere, a fly sat on the flower and began to crawl along the painted petals. My friend then said: “If you were able to deceive nature itself, then this is the true recognition of your talent. Keep drawing!”
– What is the most important thing in your life?
– My daughter, her happiness.
– You were, I spied on the Internet, in the jury of the superfinal of the All-Russian Case Championship of schoolchildren in economics and entrepreneurship, which was held in 2023. What experience have you learned from this?
– We were there with Anna Nikolaevna Palagina, rector of MIMOP (International Institute of Management of Associations of Entrepreneurs of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation. – Ed.). Thanks to her efforts and invitation, we are actively interacting with the Higher School of Economics and for several years now we have been participating in the jury of this case championship with a team from the RF CCI. This experience is invariably positive. We have a lot of talented and creative people in Russia who are trying to create something, change this world for the better. For me, participation in the case championship is always extremely positive emotions, excellent team work of the jury and the opportunity to once again make sure what wonderful and talented youth we have.
– I have not voiced one of your most significant regalia in recent years: this is the Expert Council for Assessing the Regulatory Impact of Bill Drafs, which you head under the Council of the RF CCI for Financial, Industrial and Investment Policy. What did this experience give you and what, as it is fashionable to say now, insights did it allow to acquire?
– First, returning to the fact that a lawyer needs to study constantly, this is an excellent school that allows you to understand the process of creating regulatory legal acts, consider a fairly wide range of legislation, learn how to conduct serious deep analytics, effectively interact with my colleagues on the Council and prepare interesting proposals. Again, the main thing for me in any work is a creative approach, in this regard, the Council allows me to realize my creative ambitions, to embody my understanding of aesthetics, beauty and harmony. This may seem strange to someone, but I look at legal documents primarily in terms of harmony and beauty. Because legal documents have their own legal aesthetics: internal consistency, correct and verified legal language, absence of collisions, and completeness of the document.
– Your favorite quote? Or maybe this is some kind of slogan or something that contains some important innermost meaning for you?
– Since I already said that my favorite book is “The Master and Margarita”, my favorite quote is from this book. Remember what Woland says to Margarita? ‘Never ask for anything! Never anything, and especially those who are stronger than you. They will offer and give everything themselves!”