Originially from: World Arbitration and Mediation Review (WAMR)

PRACTICE & PERSPECTIVE
International Forum
New Rules Prompt Rethinking: Is It Time
to Arbitrate in Russia?
By Professor Olga Zimenkova, Moscow State Institute for International
Affairs (MGIMO) and Alla Kazakina, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler,
with an introduction by Scott Horton, Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler,
Scott Horton, New York City, September 1995
For years the foreign investment community has adopted a fairly
dismissive attitude towards the prospect of arbitration in Russia under the
jurisdiction of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. With the rising
level of investment in Russia and the rising cost of litigation in such
expensive European watering holes as Stockholm, Vienna, Geneva and
Zurich, however, simple economic considerations are compelling more
and more investors to think seriously about arbitration in Russia as an
alternative. Similarly, investors in other states of the CIS are being
encouraged by their CIS counterparts to contemplate dispute resolution
sited in Russia. In the view of most other CIS states, Russia is an
attractive, neutral, inexpensive alternative to a Western European site. The
recent overhaul of the rules for arbitration within the Chamber of
Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation makes this a more
attractive alternative than it has at any time since its founding, and provide
reasons to reassess the situation.
There are signs in fact that a reassessment has already occurred, since
the volume of arbitrated matters in Russia now stands at an historic high.
Many factors contribute to this situation: (1) the rapidly changing, often
chaotic state of the Russian legal system; (2) the creation of new Russian
enterprises with limited experience in the practices of the foreign trade;
and (3) severe payment problems that many Russian companies
experience with respect to hard currency.
Challenging Stockholm
Traditionally, the most common choice of forum for U.S.-Soviet or
U.S.-Russian arbitration has been the arbitration tribunal at the Stockholm
Chamber of Commerce. In 1977, the American Arbitration Association
and the USSR Chamber of Commerce and Industry proposed a model