Abstract: The article concerns norms of current Russian civil and corporate legislation regulating specific features of legal status of open and close joint stock companies and joint stock companies of workers (public enterprises), producing co-operatives, legal practice regarding application of the Federal Law of December 26, 1995 N. 208-FZ "On Joint Stock Companies", Federal Law of July 19, 1998 "On Specific Features of Joint Stock Companies of Workers (Public Enterprises)", as well as the positions of legal scholars on these issues. The article involved comparative legal, logical and descriptive methods, as well as the method of systemic structural analysis. It is well-known that public enterprises are regulated by the current Russian legislation regarding close joint stock companies .However, over-regulated nature of many issues and legal dubiousness  of some provisions of the Law on Public Enterprises cause criticism of the legal construction of public enterprise in specialized legal literature, raising the issues of legal nature of these enterprises. The intermediary position between a joint stock company and producing co-operative call for the studies of this organizational legal form of a commercial organizations and questionning of its independence.