The article is devoted to the status of the volunteer/voluntary organizations in the modern political and legal system in Russia. Based on the analysis of the evolution of the legal model of data definitions and related terms in Russian law, as well as the concepts "volunteer" and "volunteer" in the historical context and contemporary political and legal discussion was identified the key traits that characterize these terms. In particular, the author proposes to divide these categories depending on the subject area of the activity: "volunteer" in relation to social phenomena and processes; "volunteer" in relation to the military and paramilitary sector. Also it is shown that such division will allow to avoid conflicts in law enforcement and gain more objective to use these categories in strategy policy documents related to socio-political development of Russian society.
