Adopted by the Zemsky Sobor in 1649 and in force for almost 200 years, until 1832.

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✪ Baskova A.V./ IOGiP / Cathedral Code of 1649

✪ Cathedral Code of 1649 (narrated by Alexander Lavrentyev)

✪ Salt riot of 1648. Cathedral Code of 1649.

✪ Copper Riot of 1662

✪ Chiang Kai-shek (narrated by Alexander Pantsov)

Subtitles

Reasons for the adoption of the Council Code

As a result, by 1649, the Russian state had a huge number of legislative acts that were not only outdated, but also contradicted each other.

The adoption of the Code was also prompted by the Salt Riot that broke out in Moscow in 1648; One of the demands of the rebels was the convening of the Zemsky Sobor and the development of a new code. The revolt gradually subsided, but as one of the concessions to the rebels, the tsar convened the Zemsky Sobor, which continued its work until the adoption of the Council Code in 1649.

Legislative work

To develop the draft Code, a special commission was created headed by Prince N.I. Odoevsky. It included Prince S.V. Prozorovsky, okolnichy Prince F.A. Volkonsky and two clerks - Gavrila Leontyev and F.A. Griboyedov. At the same time, it was decided to begin the practical work of the Zemsky Sobor on September 1.

He was intended to review the draft Code. The cathedral was held in a broad format, with the participation of representatives of the townspeople's communities. The hearing of the draft Code took place at the cathedral in two chambers: in one were the tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral; in the other - elected people of various ranks.

Much attention was paid to procedural law.

Sources of the Code

• Decree books of orders - in them, from the moment of the emergence of a particular order, current legislation on specific issues was recorded.
• Sudebnik of 1497 and Sudebnik of 1550.
• - was used as an example of legal technique (formulation, construction of phrases, rubrication).
• The Helmsman's Book (Byzantine law)

Branches of law according to the Council Code

The Council Code outlines the division of norms into branches of law inherent in modern legislation.

State law

The Council Code determined the status of the head of state - the tsar, autocratic and hereditary monarch.

Criminal law

The crime system looked like this:

Punishments and their purposes

The punishment system was as follows: death penalty (in 60 cases), corporal punishment, imprisonment, exile, dishonorable punishments, confiscation of property, removal from office, fines.

• The death penalty is hanging, beheading, quartering, burning (for religious matters and in relation to arsonists), as well as “pouring a red-hot iron down the throat” for counterfeiting.
• Corporal punishment - divided into self-harm(cutting off a hand for theft, branding, cutting off nostrils, etc.) and painful(beating with a whip or batogs).
• Imprisonment - terms from three days to life imprisonment. The prisons were earthen, wooden and stone. Prison inmates fed themselves at the expense of relatives or alms.
• Exile is a punishment for “high-ranking” persons. It was the result of disgrace.
• Dishonorable punishments were also used for “high-ranking” persons: “deprivation of honor,” that is, deprivation of ranks or reduction in rank. A mild punishment of this type was a “reprimand” in the presence of people from the circle to which the offender belonged.
• Fines were called “sale” and were imposed for crimes that violate property relations, as well as for some crimes against human life and health (for injury), for “incurring dishonor.” They were also used for “extortion” as the main and additional punishment.
• Confiscation of property - both movable and immovable property (sometimes the property of the criminal’s wife and his adult son). It was applied to state criminals, to “greedy people”, to officials who abused their official position.

It is important to note that paragraphs 18 and 20 of Chapter XXII provide for pardon if the murder was committed unintentionally.

1. Intimidation.
2. Retribution from the state.
3. Isolation of the criminal (in case of exile or imprisonment).
4. Isolating a criminal from the surrounding mass of people (cutting off the nose, branding, cutting off an ear, etc.).

It should be especially noted that in addition to the common criminal punishments that exist to this day, there were also measures of spiritual influence. For example, a Muslim who converted an Orthodox Christian to Islam was subject to death by burning. The neophyte should have been sent directly to the Patriarch for repentance and return to the fold of the Orthodox Church. Changing, these norms reached the 19th century and were preserved in the Code of Punishments of 1845.

Civil law

The main ways of acquiring rights to any thing, including land, ( real rights), were considered:

• The grant of land is a complex set of legal actions, which included the issuance of a grant, entry in the order book of information about the grantee, establishment of the fact that the land being transferred is unoccupied, and taking possession in the presence of third parties.
• Acquiring rights to a thing by concluding a purchase and sale agreement (both oral and written).
• Acquisitive prescription. A person must in good faith (that is, without violating anyone’s rights) own any property for a certain period of time. After a certain period of time, this property (for example, a house) becomes the property of a bona fide owner. The Code set this period at 40 years.
• Finding a thing (provided its owner is not found).

Law of obligations in the 17th century, it continued to develop along the line of gradual replacement of personal liability (transition to serfs for debts, etc.) under contracts with property liability.

The oral form of the contract is increasingly being replaced by a written one. For certain transactions, state registration is mandatory - the “serf” form (purchase and sale and other real estate transactions).

Legislators paid special attention to the problem patrimonial land ownership. The following were legislatively established: a complicated procedure for alienation and the hereditary nature of patrimonial property.

During this period, there were 3 types of feudal land ownership: the property of the sovereign, patrimonial land ownership and estate.

• Votchina is conditional land ownership, but they could be inherited. Since feudal legislation was on the side of the land owners (feudal lords), and the state was also interested in ensuring that the number of patrimonial estates did not decrease, the right to buy back sold patrimonial estates was provided for.
• Estates were given for service; the size of the estate was determined by the official position of the person. The feudal lord could only use the estate during his service; it could not be passed on by inheritance.

The difference in the legal status between votchinas and estates was gradually erased. Although the estate was not inherited, it could be received by a son if he served. The Council Code established that if a landowner left the service due to old age or illness, his wife and young children could receive part of the estate for subsistence. The Council Code of 1649 allowed the exchange of estates for estates. Such transactions were considered valid under the following conditions: the parties, concluding an exchange record between themselves, were obliged to submit this record to the Local Order with a petition addressed to the Tsar.

Family relationships

The Code did not directly concern the area of ​​family law (which was under the jurisdiction of the church court), however, even in criminal cases, the principles of Domostroy continued to apply - enormous parental authority over children, the actual community of property, the division of responsibilities of spouses, the need for a wife to follow her husband.

In relation to children, parents retained power until their death. Thus, for the murder of a father or mother, a son or daughter was supposed to be “executed by death without any mercy,” while at the same time the mother or father who killed the child was sentenced to a year in prison followed by repentance in church. Children, under the threat of punishment, were forbidden to complain about their parents, if, nevertheless, “whose son or daughter taught to beat the head about the court against the father or mother and they should not give trial against the father or mother for anything, and beat them with a whip for such a petition

The Code established a special type of execution for female murderers - burying alive up to the neck in the ground.

With regard to state crimes, the code establishes that if “the wives and children of such traitors knew about their treason, they will be executed by death according to the same.”

It is worth noting that church law (developed back in Stoglav and supplemented by decisions of the Great Moscow Council) allowed one person to enter into no more than three marriages during his life, and the marriageable age for men was 15 years, for women - 12 years. Divorce was allowed, but only on the basis of the following circumstances: the spouse leaving for a monastery, the spouse being accused of anti-state activities, the wife’s inability to bear children.

Legal proceedings

The Code describes in detail the procedure “ court decisions"(both civil and criminal).

1. “Initiation” - filing a petition.
2. Summoning the defendant to court.
3. Judgment is oral with the obligatory maintenance of a “court list”, that is, a protocol.

The evidence was varied: testimony (at least 10 witnesses), documents, kissing the cross (oath).

Procedural events aimed at obtaining evidence:

1. “Search” - consisted of questioning the population about the commission of a crime or about a specific (sought) person.
2. “Pravezh” - was carried out, as a rule, in relation to an insolvent debtor. The defendant was subjected to corporal punishment by caning. For example, for a debt of 100 rubles, they flogged for a month. If the debtor paid the debt or had guarantors, the right ceased.
3. “Search” - complex activities related to clarifying all the circumstances of the “sovereign’s” case or other particularly serious crimes. During the “search” it was often used torture. The use of torture was regulated in the Code. It could be used no more than three times with a certain break.

Development of the Code

If changes were necessary in the field of legal relations, the following were added to the Council Code: new decree articles:

• In 1669, additional articles were adopted on “tate cases” (about thefts, robberies, robberies, etc.) due to an increase in the crime rate.
• In -1677 - about estates and estates in connection with disputes about the status of estates and estates.

In addition to the Code, several statutes And orders.

• 1649 - Order on city deanery (on measures to combat crime).
• 1667 - New Trade Charter (on the protection of domestic producers and sellers from foreign competition).
• 1683 - Scribe order (on the rules for land surveying estates and estates, forests and wastelands).

An important role was played by the “verdict” of the Zemsky Sobor of 1682 on the abolition of localism (that is, the system of distribution of official places taking into account the origin, official position of a person’s ancestors and, to a lesser extent, his personal merits.)

Meaning

1. The Council Code generalized and summarized the main trends in the development of Russian law in the 17th century.
2. It consolidated new features and institutions characteristic of the new era, the era of advancing Russian absolutism.
3. The Code was the first to systematize domestic legislation; An attempt was made to differentiate the rules of law by industry.

The Council Code became the first printed monument of Russian law. Before him, the publication of laws was limited to their announcement in marketplaces and in churches, which was usually specifically indicated in the documents themselves. The appearance of a printed law largely eliminated the possibility of abuses by governors and officials in charge of legal proceedings. The Council Code has no precedents in the history of Russian legislation. In terms of volume it can only be compared with Stoglav, but in terms of the wealth of legal material it surpasses it many times over.

When compared with Western Europe, it is clear that the Council Code is not the first collection of acts of this kind. One of the first was Casimir's Law Code of 1468, compiled by the Grand Duke of Lithuania Casimir IV and developed later, in 1529, then the code in Denmark (Danske Lov) in 1683; it was followed by the code of Sardinia (1723), Bavaria (1756), Prussia (1794), Austria (1812). Europe's most famous and influential civil code, the French Napoleonic Code, was adopted in 1803–1804.

It is worth noting that the adoption of European codes was probably hampered by the abundance of the legal framework, which made it very difficult to systematize the available material into a single coherent, readable document. For example, the Prussian Code of 1794 contained 19,187 articles, making it overly long and unreadable. By comparison, the Napoleonic Code took 4 years to develop, contained 2,281 articles, and required the personal active participation of the emperor to push for its adoption. The cathedral code was developed within six months, numbered 968 articles, and was adopted with the aim of preventing the development of a series of urban riots in 1648 (started by the Salt Riot in Moscow) into a full-scale uprising like the uprising of Bolotnikov in 1606-1607 or Stepan Razin in 1670-1670. 1671.

The Council Code of 1649 was in effect until 1832, when, as part of the work on codification of the laws of the Russian Empire, carried out under the leadership of M. M. Speransky, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was developed. Previous numerous attempts to codify the legislation that appeared after the publication of the Code were not successful (see.

Begins active legislative activities.

The intensive growth in the number of decrees for the period from the Code of Laws of 1550 to the Code of 1649 is visible from the following data:

• 1550-1600 - 80 decrees;
• 1601-1610 −17;
• 1611-1620 - 97;
• 1621-1630 - 90;
• 1631-1640 - 98;
• 1641-1648 - 63 decrees.

In total for 1611-1648. - 348, and for 1550-1648. - 445 decrees

As a result, by 1649, the Russian state had a huge number of legislative acts that were not only outdated, but also contradicted each other.

The adoption of the Code was also prompted by the Salt Riot that broke out in Moscow that year; One of the demands of the rebels was the convening of the Zemsky Sobor and the development of a new code. The rebellion was suppressed, but as one of the concessions to the rebels, the tsar convened a Zemsky Sobor, which continued its work until the adoption of the Council Code in 2006.

Legislative work

He was intended to review the draft Code. The cathedral was held in a broad format, with the participation of representatives of the townspeople's communities. The hearing of the draft Code took place at the cathedral in two chambers: in one were the tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral; in the other - elected people of various ranks.

All the delegates of the Council signed the list of the Code, which in 1649 was sent to all Moscow orders for guidance in action. When drawing up the code, the task was not to draw up a code; it was only intended to summarize the entire existing stock of legal acts, harmonizing them with each other and abolishing outdated norms.

The elected representatives submitted their amendments and additions to the Duma in the form zemstvo petitions. Some decisions were made through the joint efforts of elected officials, the Duma and the Sovereign.

Much attention was paid to procedural law.

Sources of the Code

1. Decree books of orders - in them, from the moment of the emergence of a particular order, current legislation on specific issues was recorded.
2. year - was used as an example of legal technique (wording, construction of phrases, rubrication).

Branches of law according to the Council Code

View of the Kremlin. 17th century

The Council Code only outlines the division of norms into branches of law. However, the tendency towards division into industries, inherent in any modern legislation, has already emerged.

State law

The Council Code determined the status of the head of state - the tsar, autocratic and hereditary monarch.

Criminal law

• The death penalty is hanging, beheading, quartering, burning (for religious matters and in relation to arsonists), as well as “pouring a red-hot iron down the throat” for counterfeiting.

• Corporal punishment - divided into self-harm(cutting off a hand for theft, branding, cutting off nostrils, etc.) and painful(beating with a whip or batogs).

• Imprisonment - terms from three days to life imprisonment. The prisons were earthen, wooden and stone. Prison inmates fed themselves at the expense of relatives or alms.

• Exile is a punishment for “high-ranking” persons. It was the result of disgrace.

• Dishonorable punishments were also used for “high-ranking” persons: “deprivation of honor,” that is, deprivation of ranks or reduction in rank. A mild punishment of this type was a “reprimand” in the presence of people from the circle to which the offender belonged.

• Fines were called “sale” and were imposed for crimes that violate property relations, as well as for some crimes against human life and health (for injury), for “incurring dishonor.” They were also used for “extortion” as the main and additional punishment.

• Confiscation of property - both movable and immovable property (sometimes the property of the criminal’s wife and his adult son). It was applied to state criminals, to “greedy people”, to officials who abused their official position.

Purposes of punishment:

1. Intimidation.
2. Retribution from the state.
3. Isolation of the criminal (in case of exile or imprisonment).
4. Isolating a criminal from the surrounding mass of people (cutting off the nose, branding, cutting off an ear, etc.).

Civil law

The main ways of acquiring rights to any thing, including land, ( real rights), were considered:

• The grant of land is a complex set of legal actions, which included the issuance of a grant, entry in the order book of information about the grantee, establishment of the fact that the land being transferred is unoccupied, and taking possession in the presence of third parties.
• Acquiring rights to a thing by concluding a purchase and sale agreement (both oral and written).
• Acquisitive prescription. A person must in good faith (that is, without violating anyone’s rights) own any property for a certain period of time. After a certain period of time, this property (for example, a house) becomes the property of a bona fide owner. The Code set this period at 40 years.
• Finding a thing (provided its owner is not found).

Law of obligations in the 17th century, it continued to develop along the line of gradual replacement of personal liability (transition to serfs for debts, etc.) under contracts with property liability.

The oral form of the contract is increasingly being replaced by a written one. For certain transactions, state registration is mandatory - the “serf” form (purchase and sale and other real estate transactions).

Legislators paid special attention to the problem patrimonial land ownership. The following were legislatively established: a complicated procedure for alienation and the hereditary nature of patrimonial property.

During this period, there were 3 types of feudal land ownership: the property of the sovereign, patrimonial land ownership and estate. Votchina is conditional land ownership, but they could be inherited. Since feudal legislation was on the side of the land owners (feudal lords), and the state was also interested in ensuring that the number of patrimonial estates did not decrease, the right to buy back sold patrimonial estates was provided for. Estates were given for service; the size of the estate was determined by the official position of the person. The feudal lord could only use the estate during his service; it could not be passed on by inheritance. The difference in the legal status between votchinas and estates was gradually erased. Although the estate was not inherited, it could be received by a son if he served. The Council Code established that if a landowner left the service due to old age or illness, his wife and young children could receive part of the estate for subsistence. The Council Code of 1649 allowed the exchange of estates for estates. Such transactions were considered valid under the following conditions: the parties, concluding an exchange record between themselves, were obliged to submit this record to the Local Order with a petition addressed to the Tsar.

Family law

Scenes of Russian life. 17th century

• year - Order on city deanery (on measures to combat crime).
• year - New Trade Charter (on the protection of domestic producers and sellers from foreign competition).
• year - Scribe's mandate (about the rules for land surveying estates and estates, forests and wastelands).

An important role was played by the “verdict” of the Zemsky Sobor of the year on the abolition of localism (that is, the system of distributing official places taking into account the origin, official position of a person’s ancestors and, to a lesser extent, his personal merits.)

The meaning of the Cathedral Code

1. The Council Code generalized and summarized the main trends in the development of Russian law in the 17th century.
2. It consolidated new features and institutions characteristic of the new era, the era of advancing Russian absolutism.
3. The Code was the first to systematize domestic legislation; An attempt was made to differentiate the rules of law by industry.

The Council Code became the first printed monument of Russian law. Before him, the publication of laws was limited to their announcement in marketplaces and in churches, which was usually specifically indicated in the documents themselves. The appearance of a printed law largely eliminated the possibility of abuses by governors and officials in charge of legal proceedings. The Council Code has no precedents in the history of Russian legislation. In terms of volume it can only be compared with Stoglav, but in terms of the wealth of legal material it surpasses it many times over.

When compared with Western Europe, it is striking that the Council Code codified Russian civil law relatively early, already in 1649. The first Western European civil code was developed in Denmark (Danske Lov) in 1683; it was followed by the code of Sardinia (), Bavaria (), Prussia (), Austria (). Europe's most famous and influential civil code, the French Napoleonic Code, was adopted in -1804.

It is worth noting that the adoption of European codes was probably hampered by the abundance of the legal framework, which made it very difficult to systematize the available material into a single coherent, readable document. For example, the Prussian Code of 1794 contained 19,187 articles, making it overly long and unreadable. By comparison, the Napoleonic Code took 4 years to develop, contained 2,281 articles, and required the personal active participation of the emperor to push for its adoption. The cathedral code was developed within six months, numbered 968 articles, and was adopted in order to prevent the development of a series of urban riots in 1648 (started by the Salt Riot in Moscow) into a full-scale uprising like the uprising of Bolotnikov in 1606-1607 or Stepan Razin in 1670-1670. 1671.

The Council Code of 1649 was in effect until 1832, when, as part of the work to codify the laws of the Russian Empire, carried out under the leadership of M. M. Speransky, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was developed.

Notes

Literature

• Klyuchevsky V. O. Russian history. Full course of lectures. - M.: 1993.
• Isaev I.A. History of state and law of Russia. - M.: 2006.
• Ed. Titova Yu. P. History of state and law of Russia. - M.: 2006.
• AND ABOUT. Chistyakov History of the domestic state and law.. - M.: 1996.
• Grigory Kotoshikhin About Russia during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. - Stockholm: 1667.

• A.G. Mankov"The Code of 1649 - the code of feudal law of Russia." - M.: 1980.

• Vladimirsky-Budanov M.F."Review of the history of Russian law", 6th ed. - St. Petersburg. ; Kyiv: Publishing house of bookseller N.Ya.Ogloblin: 1909.

• Yu.L. Protsenko"Estate-representative monarchy in Russia (mid-16th - mid-17th centuries)", 6th ed. - Volgograd: 2003.

Before the Code of 1650 is visible from the following data:

• 1550-1600 - 80 decrees;
• 1601-1610 − 17;
• 1611-1620 - 97;
• 1621-1630 - 90;
• 1631-1640 - 98;
• 1641-1648 - 63 decrees.

In total for 1611-1648. - 348, and for 1550-1648. - 445 decrees

As a result, by 1649, the Russian state had a huge number of legislative acts that were not only outdated, but also contradicted each other.

The adoption of the Code was also prompted by the Salt Riot that broke out in Moscow in 1648; One of the demands of the rebels was the convening of the Zemsky Sobor and the development of a new code. The revolt gradually subsided, but as one of the concessions to the rebels, the tsar convened the Zemsky Sobor, which continued its work until the adoption of the Council Code in 1649.

Legislative work

A copy from the Ferapontovsky Monastery

He was intended to review the draft Code. The cathedral was held in a broad format, with the participation of representatives of the townspeople's communities. The hearing of the draft Code took place at the cathedral in two chambers: in one were the tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral; in the other - elected people of various ranks.

All the delegates of the Council signed the list of the Code, which in 1649 was sent to all Moscow orders for guidance in action.

The elected representatives submitted their amendments and additions to the Duma in the form zemstvo petitions. Some decisions were made through the joint efforts of elected officials, the Duma and the Sovereign.

Much attention was paid to procedural law.

Sources of the Code

• Decree books of orders - in them, from the moment of the emergence of a particular order, current legislation on specific issues was recorded.
• - was used as an example of legal technique (formulation, construction of phrases, rubrication).

Branches of law according to the Council Code

View of the Kremlin. 17th century

The Council Code only outlines the division of norms into branches of law. However, the tendency towards division into industries, inherent in any modern legislation, has already emerged.

State law

The Council Code determined the status of the head of state - the tsar, autocratic and hereditary monarch.

Criminal law

• The death penalty is hanging, beheading, quartering, burning (for religious matters and in relation to arsonists), as well as “pouring a red-hot iron down the throat” for counterfeiting.
• Corporal punishment - divided into self-harm(cutting off a hand for theft, branding, cutting off nostrils, etc.) and painful(beating with a whip or batogs).
• Imprisonment - terms from three days to life imprisonment. The prisons were earthen, wooden and stone. Prison inmates fed themselves at the expense of relatives or alms.
• Exile is a punishment for “high-ranking” persons. It was the result of disgrace.
• Dishonorable punishments were also used for “high-ranking” persons: “deprivation of honor,” that is, deprivation of ranks or reduction in rank. A mild punishment of this type was a “reprimand” in the presence of people from the circle to which the offender belonged.
• Fines were called “sale” and were imposed for crimes that violate property relations, as well as for some crimes against human life and health (for injury), for “incurring dishonor.” They were also used for “extortion” as the main and additional punishment.
• Confiscation of property - both movable and immovable property (sometimes the property of the criminal’s wife and his adult son). It was applied to state criminals, to “greedy people”, to officials who abused their official position.

Purposes of punishment:

1. Intimidation.
2. Retribution from the state.
3. Isolation of the criminal (in case of exile or imprisonment).
4. Isolating a criminal from the surrounding mass of people (cutting off the nose, branding, cutting off an ear, etc.).

It should be especially noted that in addition to the common criminal punishments that exist to this day, there were also measures of spiritual influence. For example, a Muslim who converted an Orthodox Christian to Islam was subject to death by burning, while the neophyte should be sent directly to the Patriarch for repentance and return to the fold of the Orthodox Church. Changing, these norms reached the 19th century and were preserved in the Penal Code of 1845.

Civil law

The main ways of acquiring rights to any thing, including land, ( real rights), were considered:

• The grant of land is a complex set of legal actions, which included the issuance of a grant, entry in the order book of information about the grantee, establishment of the fact that the land being transferred is unoccupied, and taking possession in the presence of third parties.
• Acquiring rights to a thing by concluding a purchase and sale agreement (both oral and written).
• Acquisitive prescription. A person must in good faith (that is, without violating anyone’s rights) own any property for a certain period of time. After a certain period of time, this property (for example, a house) becomes the property of a bona fide owner. The Code set this period at 40 years.
• Finding a thing (provided its owner is not found).

Law of obligations in the 17th century, it continued to develop along the line of gradual replacement of personal liability (transition to serfs for debts, etc.) under contracts with property liability.

The oral form of the contract is increasingly being replaced by a written one. For certain transactions, state registration is mandatory - the “serf” form (purchase and sale and other real estate transactions).

Legislators paid special attention to the problem patrimonial land ownership. The following were legislatively established: a complicated procedure for alienation and the hereditary nature of patrimonial property.

During this period, there were 3 types of feudal land ownership: the property of the sovereign, patrimonial land ownership and estate. Votchina is conditional land ownership, but they could be inherited. Since feudal legislation was on the side of the land owners (feudal lords), and the state was also interested in ensuring that the number of patrimonial estates did not decrease, the right to buy back sold patrimonial estates was provided for. Estates were given for service; the size of the estate was determined by the official position of the person. The feudal lord could only use the estate during his service; it could not be passed on by inheritance. The difference in the legal status between fiefdoms and estates was gradually erased. Although the estate was not inherited, it could be received by a son if he served. The Council Code established that if a landowner left the service due to old age or illness, his wife and young children could receive part of the estate for subsistence. The Council Code of 1649 allowed the exchange of estates for estates. Such transactions were considered valid under the following conditions: the parties, concluding an exchange record between themselves, were obliged to submit this record to the Local Order with a petition addressed to the Tsar.

Family law

• 1649 - Order on city deanery (on measures to combat crime).
• 1667 - New Trade Charter (on the protection of domestic producers and sellers from foreign competition).
• 1683 - Scribe order (on the rules for land surveying estates and estates, forests and wastelands).

An important role was played by the “verdict” of the Zemsky Sobor of 1682 on the abolition of localism (that is, the system of distribution of official places taking into account the origin, official position of a person’s ancestors and, to a lesser extent, his personal merits.)

The meaning of the Cathedral Code

1. The Council Code summarized and summarized the main trends in the development of Russian law in the 17th century.
2. It consolidated new features and institutions characteristic of the new era, the era of advancing Russian absolutism.
3. The Code was the first to systematize domestic legislation; An attempt was made to differentiate the rules of law by industry.

The Council Code became the first printed monument of Russian law. Before him, the publication of laws was limited to their announcement in marketplaces and in churches, which was usually specifically indicated in the documents themselves. The appearance of a printed law largely eliminated the possibility of abuses by governors and officials in charge of legal proceedings. The Council Code has no precedents in the history of Russian legislation. In terms of volume it can only be compared with Stoglav, but in terms of the wealth of legal material it surpasses it many times over.

When compared with Western Europe, it is striking that the Council Code codified Russian civil law relatively early, already in 1649. The first Western European civil code was developed in Denmark (Danske Lov) in 1683; it was followed by the code of Sardinia (), Bavaria (), Prussia (), Austria (). Europe's most famous and influential civil code, the French Napoleonic Code, was adopted in -1804.

It is worth noting that the adoption of European codes was probably hampered by the abundance of the legal framework, which made it very difficult to systematize the available material into a single coherent, readable document. For example, the Prussian Code of 1794 contained 19,187 articles, making it overly long and unreadable. By comparison, the Napoleonic Code took 4 years to develop, contained 2,281 articles, and required the personal active participation of the emperor to push for its adoption. The cathedral code was developed within six months, numbered 968 articles, and was adopted in order to prevent the development of a series of urban riots in 1648 (started by the Salt Riot in Moscow) into a full-scale uprising like the uprising of Bolotnikov in 1606-1607 or Stepan Razin in 1670-1670. 1671.

The Council Code of 1649 was in effect until 1832, when, as part of the work to codify the laws of the Russian Empire, carried out under the leadership of M. M. Speransky, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was developed.

see also

Notes

Literature

• Klyuchevsky V. O. Russian history. Full course of lectures. - M., 1993.
• Isaev I. A. History of state and law of Russia. - M., 2006.
• Ed. Titova Yu. P. History of state and law of Russia. - M., 2006.
• Chistyakov I. O. History of domestic state and law. - M., 1996.
• Kotoshikhin Grigory About Russia during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. - Stockholm, 1667.

• Mankov A. G. The Code of 1649 is the code of feudal law in Russia. - M.: Science, 1980.
• Tomsinov V. A. The Cathedral Code of 1649 as a monument to Russian jurisprudence // Cathedral Code of 1649. Legislation of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich / Compiled, author of the preface and introductory articles V. A. Tomsinov. M.: Zertsalo, 2011. P. 1-51.

Printed in Moscow, 1649 (7157 January 29), this book was completed by the command of the Great Sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich, Autocrat of All Rus', in the third year of his God-protected powers, and under his son Sovereign, the blessed Tsarevich and Grand Duke Dimitri Alekseevich, in the first summer of his birth. In sheet, 338 l.l.; Their numbering and notebook signature (42) are below. Output at the end. Lines 25. Font: 10 lines=89 mm. 29 wood engraved headpieces. The thickness of the block is 6.5 cm. Bound in full leather from the late 17th - early 18th centuries on boards, with blind embossing on the lids, with two bronze clasps. 31.6x20.9 cm. The Code was published in 3 editions of 1200 copies each, which were printed on the same stock of paper, but differed in small details. These differences are described in detail by A.S. Zernova in the Union Catalog (M., 1958, No. 216). The Council Code of 1649 is the first systematic set of laws in Russian history, published in printing!

Bibliographic description:

1. From the treasures of the RSL. Book culture of Russia XVI - early XX centuries. Moscow, 1998. No. 11

2. Book treasures of GBL. Issue 1. Books of the Cyril press of the XV-XVIII centuries. Catalog, Moscow. 1979, No. 38

3. Ostroglazov I.M. "Book rarities." Moscow, “Russian Archive”, 1891-92, No. 378

4. Sopikov V.S. Experience of Russian bibliography. Editing, notes, additions and index by V.N. Rogozhina. T.1-2, Parts 1-5, St. Petersburg, edition A.S. Suvorina, 1904-1906, No. 1568

5. Stroev P. “Description of early printed Slavic and Russian books located in the library of Count F.A. Tolstov”, M., 1829, No. 111

6. Stroev P. “Description of early printed Slavic books located in the Tsarsky library”, M., 1836, No. 168

7. Karataev I. “Description of Slavic-Russian books printed in Cyrillic letters.” Volume one. From 1491 to 1652, St. Petersburg, 1883, No. 649

8. Zernova A.S.« Books of the Kirillov press, published in Moscow in the 16th-17th centuries. Union catalog» . Moscow, 1958. No. 216

9. Rodossky A.« Description of early printed and Church Slavonic books stored in the library of the St. Petersburg Academy» . Vol. I-II. St. Petersburg, 1891-98. No. 216

10. Undolsky V.M. “Chronological index of Slavic-Russian books of the church press from 1491 to 1864.” Issue I. Moscow, 1871, No. 641

11. Titov A.A. has an undoubted commercial interest. Old printed books according to the Catalog of A.I. Kasterina, with their prices indicated. Rostov, 1905, No. 317 ... 30 RUR.!

12. International book. Antique catalog No. 29. MONUMENTS OF SLAVIC-RUSSIAN BOOK PRINTING. Moscow, 1933., No. 70 ... 10 US dollars!

The Council Code of 1649 is a set of laws of the Moscow state, the most famous monument of Russian law of the 17th century, the first regulatory legal act in Russian history that covered all existing legal norms, including the so-called “new decree” articles. In 1648, on July 16, when the tsar was in his 20th year, he, in consultation with the Duma, ordered the collection and preparation of material for the compilation of a new collection of laws. At the same time, it was decided to convene a Zemsky Sobor, “in order to approve his sovereign’s royal and zemstvo affairs with those with all elected people and put them in order, so that all the great deeds according to his sovereign’s decree and the conciliar code would henceforth be indestructible.”To develop the draft Code, a special commission was created headed by Prince N.I. Odoevsky. It included Prince S.V. Prozorov, okolnichy Prince F.F. Volkonsky and two clerks - Gavrila Leontyev and Fyodor Griboyedov.The matter itself was carried out extremely hastily. Already from July 28, letters were sent to cities about sending elected officials by September 1. From October 3, meetings took place separately in two chambers - lower and upper. The upper one consisted of the Tsar, the Boyar Duma and the Consecrated Cathedral, headed by the Patriarch. The lower one included archers, nobles, representatives of Moscow settlements and district towns, and townspeople. First, the draft Code was read in the lower house. Then, substantially edited and supplemented, it was reported at the top. By January 29, 1649, the discussion was over. The final version of the document was a scroll of 959 glued together narrow paper columns, sealed with the signatures of 315 members of the Council. The approved text was immediately sent for printing, which was carried out with amazing speed for that time: it began on April 7, and was completed on May 22 of the same year. Such a quick completion of such a complex and difficult matter as the publication of a new Code, forces, on the one hand, to assume the presence of extremely important motives that prompted the Moscow the government to take up the matter and carry it out with particular determination, on the other hand, it indicates the existence of favorable conditions that contributed to the implementation of the difficult task. The emergence of the question of a new codification in the half of the 17th century. is explained, first of all, by a number of general reasons. A whole century has passed since the publication of Sudebnik 2, during which the Moscow state experienced a number of serious changes and even shocks. The Time of Troubles left the new Moscow government with a difficult legacy: loosening of public relations, ruin of the population and upset financial situation. From the very first steps and for many years, it was necessary to strain all the meager state and public forces to protect against internal and external enemies. Under such conditions, restoring normal order in the spheres of administration and justice was an unattainable task. Abuses of power by rulers and judges were committed with complete shamelessness; the central government was powerless against them. This was largely due to the state of the legislation at that time. The compilers of the 2nd Code of Law themselves were aware of its incompleteness and established the further path of legislation by reporting from orders to the sovereign and the Duma all cases not provided for in the Code of Law. This order of initiation of legislative issues caused the extreme casuistry of decrees and boyar sentences, and this imperfection was aggravated by the fact that they were not only not published, but were not even communicated to all central government offices, but were written down only on a copy of the Code of Laws of the order from which the report came . The Duma also did not keep a record of the decrees issued, and therefore the legislative branch could easily fall into conflict with its previously issued decrees. All these unfavorable circumstances taken together led, apparently, to an attempt to re-issue the Code of Laws less than 40 years after its promulgation: under Tsar Feodor, in 1589, a draft of a new Code of Laws was drawn up, which, however, did not receive official approval . The Time of Troubles put aside the issue of codification, and legislation continued to develop on the same casuistic basis. The imperfections of the legislation and the associated abuses of judges fell with all their weight on the lower classes of the service and tax population. It is natural, therefore, that petitions came from among him to re-issue the Code of Law. By decree of July 28, 1648, it was ordered to write a code of law and a set book for all sorts of reprisal cases “on the petitions of captains, and solicitors, and Moscow nobles, and residents, nobles and boyar children of all cities, and foreigners, and guests, and living rooms and cloth hundreds in all ranks of merchants." When such a petition was submitted remains unknown; It is quite possible that it was not the only one. If the government remembered it and decided to implement it at this very moment, then there were special reasons for this. The year 1648 was one of the most difficult for the young king and his closest advisers; Since June 2, serious popular unrest arose in Moscow and other cities. In Moscow they were accompanied by an open riot, with murders and arson. The first victim of popular hatred was the clerk N. Chistoy, who was reminded of the heavy salt tax introduced on February 7, 1646 and repealed on February 17, 1648. The tsar was demanded to hand over the boyars B. Morozov, L. Pleshcheev and P. Trakhaniotov, and the tsar was forced hand over the last two, who were subjected to brutal lynching by the rebellious crowd. The Tsar had to personally enter into negotiations with the rebels twice and managed to “beg the world” not to execute Morozov, with the understanding, however, that he would be exiled to the Kirillov Monastery, “and henceforth he and all his Morozov family would not be in Moscow.” in the orders of the sovereign’s affairs, not to be in the voivodships and not to own anything.” To confirm these promises, the tsar was even forced to venerate the image of Spasov. The unrest did not stop there. Back in August, letters of worship were sent to the cities, in which it was reported that “internecine warfare took place in Moscow and in the cities, and to this day there is rebellion in the cities, grain shortages and cattle deaths.” In the midst of the unrest, a decree was issued on July 16. Patriarch Nikon quite correctly, although with his characteristic harshness, noted the connection between these events; about the Zemsky Sobor, he said: “And everyone knows that the gathering was not by will, for the sake of fear and civil strife from all the black people, and not for the sake of true truth”; He considered the “written book” to be “passionately written by many people for the sake of embarrassment.” The commission appointed to prepare the bill was given a program of activities, indicating the sources from which the necessary material should be drawn. In particular, the commission had to: 1) write out articles from the rules of St. that were suitable for state and zemstvo affairs. apostles and saints fathers and from the city laws of the Greek kings; 2) select previous decrees of sovereigns and boyar sentences on all sorts of cases and compare them with old codes of law, and 3) for all questions that would not be answered in code books, old decrees and boyar sentences, draft new articles by “general council”. The order in which this program was carried out remains unknown. The Council Code was adopted at the Zemsky Sobor in 1649 and was in force until 1832, when, as part of the work to codify the laws of the Russian Empire, carried out under the leadership of M. M. Speransky, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire was developed. The Council Code consists of 25 chapters regulating various areas of life. As we wrote above, on January 29, 1649, the drafting and editing of the Code was completed. Externally, it was a scroll consisting of 959 narrow paper columns. At the end were the signatures of the participants of the Zemsky Sobor (315 in total), and along the gluing of the columns were the signatures of the clerks. Currently the original is kept in the Armory Chamber. From this original scroll (for the storage of which more than a century later, under Catherine II, a silver reliquary was made) a copy was compiled in the form of a book, from which 1200 copies were printed twice during 1649, 1200 copies in each edition. The Council Code of 1649 was a new stage in the development of domestic legal technology. All the delegates of the Council signed the list of the Code, which in 1649 was sent to all Moscow orders for guidance in action. The electors introduced their amendments and additions to the Duma in the form of zemstvo petitions. Some decisions were made through the joint efforts of elected officials, the Duma and the Sovereign. In the Council Code, for the first time, the desire of the legislator to form a system of norms and classify them according to branches of law is felt. Much attention was paid to procedural law. The Council Code only outlines the division of norms into branches of law. However, the tendency towards division into industries, inherent in any modern legislation, has already emerged. The Council Code determined the status of the head of state - the tsar, autocratic and hereditary monarch. The Code contained a set of norms regulating the most important branches of public administration: the attachment of peasants to the land, the regime of entry and exit from the country, issues related to the status of estates and estates. The crime system looked like this:

1. Crimes against the Church: blasphemy, “seduction” into another faith, interruption of the liturgy in church, etc.

2. State crimes: any actions directed against the personality of the sovereign or his family, rebellion, conspiracy, treason. For these crimes, responsibility was borne not only by the persons who committed them, but also by members of their families.

3. Crimes against the order of government: unauthorized travel abroad, counterfeiting, giving false testimony, false accusation (“sneaking”), running drinking establishments without special permission, etc.

4. Crimes against decency: maintaining brothels, harboring fugitives, selling stolen or other people’s property, imposing duties on persons exempt from it, etc.

5. Official crimes: extortion (bribery, extortion), injustice (deliberately unfair decision of the case), forgery in service, military crimes (looting, escape from the army), etc.

6. Crimes against the person: murder, mutilation, beatings, insult to honor. The murder of a thief caught in the act was not punishable.

7. Property crimes: theft (theft), horse theft (as a separate type of crime), theft of vegetables from a garden and fish from a cage (as a separate type of crime), robbery, robbery, fraud, arson, damage to someone else’s property.

8. Crimes against morality: disrespect of parents by children, pimping, “fornication” of a wife (but not a husband), sexual relations between a master and a “slave.”

The punishment system looked like this:

death penalty (in 36 cases), corporal punishment, imprisonment, exile, dishonorable punishments, confiscation of property, removal from office, fines. The death penalty is hanging, beheading, quartering, burning (for religious matters and in relation to arsonists), as well as “pouring a red-hot iron down the throat” for counterfeiting. Corporal punishment was divided into self-harm (cutting off a hand for theft, branding, cutting of the nostrils, etc.) and painful (beating with a whip or batogs). Imprisonment - terms from three days to life imprisonment. The prisons were earthen, wooden and stone. Prison inmates fed themselves at the expense of relatives or alms. Exile is a punishment for “high-ranking” persons. It was the result of disgrace. Dishonorable punishments were also used for “high-ranking” persons: “deprivation of honor,” that is, deprivation of ranks or reduction in rank. A mild punishment of this type was a “reprimand” in the presence of people from the circle to which the offender belonged. Fines were called “sale” and were imposed for crimes that violate property relations, as well as for some crimes against human life and health (for injury), for “incurring dishonor.” They were also used for “extortion” as the main and additional punishment. Confiscation of property - both movable and immovable property (sometimes the property of the criminal’s wife and his adult son). It was applied to state criminals, to “greedy people”, to officials who abused their official position.

Purposes of punishment:

1. Intimidation.

2. Retribution from the state.

3. Isolation of the criminal (in case of exile or imprisonment).

4. Isolating a criminal from the surrounding mass of people (cutting off the nose, branding, cutting off an ear, etc.).

It should be especially noted that in addition to the common criminal punishments that exist to this day, there were also measures of spiritual influence. So, for example, a Muslim who converted an Orthodox Christian to Islam was subject to death by burning, but the neophyte should have been sent directly to the Patriarch for repentance and return to the fold of the Orthodox Church. In a certain form, these norms reached the 19th century and were preserved, for example, in the Penal Code of 1845. The development of commodity-money relations, the growth of civil transactions, and the increasing role of international trade with Russia contributed to the development of civil law. The subjects of civil law were both individuals (private) and collectives (for example, a peasant community). Requirements for individuals - age 15-20 years (from the age of 15, a young person could be given an estate, take on a bonded obligation, etc., from the age of 20 he could testify in court after receiving the kiss of the cross). Compared to the previous period, women's legal capacity has increased. Thus, the widow was endowed with a set of powers in the field of concluding transactions. The main ways of acquiring rights to any thing, including land (real rights), were considered:

The grant of land is a complex set of legal actions, which included the issuance of a grant, entry in the order book of information about the grantee, establishment of the fact that the land being transferred is unoccupied, and taking possession in the presence of third parties. Acquiring rights to a thing by concluding a purchase and sale agreement (both oral and written). Acquisitive prescription. A person must in good faith (that is, without violating anyone’s rights) own any property for a certain period of time. After a certain period of time, this property (for example, a house) becomes the property of a bona fide owner. The Code set this period at 40 years. Finding a thing (provided its owner is not found). The law of obligations in the 17th century continued to develop along the line of gradual replacement of personal liability (transition to serfs for debts, etc.) under contracts with property liability. The oral form of the contract is increasingly being replaced by a written one. For certain transactions, state registration is mandatory - the “serf” form (purchase and sale and other real estate transactions). Legislators paid special attention to the problem of patrimonial land ownership. The following were legislatively established: a complicated procedure for alienation and the hereditary nature of patrimonial property. During this period, there were 3 types of feudal land ownership: the property of the sovereign, patrimonial land ownership and estate. Votchina is conditional land ownership, but they could be inherited. Since feudal legislation was on the side of the land owners (feudal lords), and the state was also interested in ensuring that the number of patrimonial estates did not decrease, the right to buy back sold patrimonial estates was provided for. Estates were given for service; the size of the estate was determined by the official position of the person. The feudal lord could only use the estate during his service; it could not be passed on by inheritance. The difference in the legal status between fiefdoms and estates was gradually erased. Although the estate was not inherited, it could be received by a son if he served. The Council Code established that if a landowner left the service due to old age or illness, his wife and young children could receive part of the estate for subsistence. The Council Code of 1649 allowed the exchange of estates for estates. Such transactions were considered valid under the following conditions: the parties, concluding an exchange record between themselves, were obliged to submit this record to the Local Order with a petition addressed to the Tsar. In the field of family law, the principles of Domostroy continued to apply - the primacy of the husband over his wife and children, the actual community of property, the obligation of the wife to follow her husband. The legislation allowed one person to enter into no more than three marriages during his life. The age of marriage was determined by custom and practice, but, as a rule, it coincided for a man with the age of civil capacity - 15 years. In relation to children, the father retained the rights of head of the family until his death. For the murder of a child, the father received a prison sentence, but not the death penalty, as for the murder of a stranger. The Code established a special type of execution for female murderers - burying alive up to the neck in the ground. Divorce was allowed, but only on the basis of the following circumstances: the spouse leaving for a monastery, the spouse being accused of anti-state activities, the wife’s inability to bear children.

The Code describes in detail the procedure for “judgment” (both civil and criminal):

1. “Initiation” - that is, filing a petition.

2. Summoning the defendant to court.

3. Court agreement - oral with the obligatory maintenance of a “court list”, that is, a protocol.

The evidence was varied: testimony (at least 10 witnesses), documents, kissing the cross (oath).

Procedural activities aimed at obtaining evidence:

1. “Search” - had nothing to do with a modern search and consisted of questioning the population about the commission of a crime or about a specific (sought) person.

2. “Pravezh” - was used, as a rule, in relation to an insolvent debtor. The defendant was subjected to corporal punishment with canings. For example, for a debt of 100 rubles they flogged them for a month. If the debtor paid the debt or had guarantors, the right, of course, stopped.

3. “Search” - complex measures related to clarifying all the circumstances of the “sovereign’s” case or other particularly serious crimes. During the “search”, torture was often used. The use of torture was regulated in the Code. It could be used no more than three times with a certain break.

The Code quickly turned into a “bestseller” of the 17th century. As researchers who studied the archives of the Printing House calculated, on average 148 books were sold per month, and by August 25, 1,173 copies had been sold. Moreover, Muscovites bought only half of them. The rest was sorted out by “guests of the capital” - representatives of more than 100 settlements in Russia. Among the buyers were nobles, priests, military men, courtyard people, and one peasant. The demand was so great that in the same 1649 two more additional printings had to be made. The appearance of the Code meant a radical turn of the Russian state towards a highly developed civilization. The Code largely determined the way of social, political and everyday life of Russians for almost two centuries to come. In 1737, during the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna, a new edition of the Code was undertaken. Attached to it was an engraved portrait of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich by H.A. Wortman.

In 1649, Tsar Alexei himself took up the affairs of government. On his personal instructions, a set of laws was drawn up - the Council Code. The young sovereign wanted to establish justice and better order by giving the people a new set of laws. This idea was very reasonable and correct. The people then did not know the laws by which they should live and judge; This is what helped the lawlessness of clerks and governors. The old code of law was not printed, it could only be copied, and therefore few people knew it. Additional decrees to it were known only to officials; they were not announced to the people, but were only recorded in the “decree books” of Moscow orders. In such conditions, clerks and judges turned things around as they wanted: some laws were hidden, others were distorted; there was no way to check them. Putting the old laws in order, making one set of them and publishing it for general information was a very necessary matter. In addition, it was necessary to review the content of laws, improve them and supplement them so that they correspond to the needs and desires of the population. All this was decided to be done at the Zemsky Sobor. The cathedral began to operate on September 1, 1648. There were elected people from 130 cities, both service and tax workers; sat separately from the boyar duma and the clergy. They discussed old laws and decrees and asked the king to repeal outdated or inconvenient ones and adopt new laws. The sovereign usually agreed and the new law was approved.

Strengthening the central government.

The second half of the 17th century is characterized by the strengthening of absolutist tendencies; the power of the king became less despotic in form, but stronger and unlimited in essence. The strengthening of autocratic power, in addition to general historical ones, was caused by the following specific factors:

• - enslavement of the population and aggravation of social contradictions;
• - completion of the formation of the service class, which was under state control;
• - economic recovery, development of agriculture, handicraft production and foreign trade, allowing to increase tax revenues;
• - the complication of the management system, the growth of the apparatus of officials;
• - the emergence of new foreign policy tasks, the need to improve the armed forces, now called upon to confront not the backward eastern, but the advanced European armies; In addition, with the annexation of Ukraine, an acute problem arose of its preservation and integration within Russia.

Absolutist tendencies manifested themselves:

• - in changing the title of the king. Instead of the former: “Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Duke of All Rus',” after the annexation of Ukraine, it became as follows: “By the grace of God, the great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Duke of all Great and Small and White Russia, autocrat.” The title emphasized the idea of ​​the divine origin of royal power and its autocratic character;
• - in strengthening the authority of power and the prestige of the king’s personality by the Council Code. A crime against the personality of the monarch was equated to a crime against the state, which was one of the signs of absolutism.

Of particular importance is the Council Code of 1649 - a grandiose monument to the legal thought of Russia, which summed up the legislative activity of the Moscow state. The decision to create it was made at the Zemsky Sobor in July 1648, which met immediately after the famous Moscow riot. A special commission headed by Prince Nikita Ivanovich Odoevsky prepared a draft Code. It was discussed at the Zemsky Sobor during September 1648 - January 1649, and in April-May the first edition was printed (1200 copies). After approval by the cathedral, the code was called the Council Code and remained in force for about 200 years, until the adoption of the Code of Laws in 1832.

The original of the Council Code has also been preserved. It is a scroll - a column about 309 meters long, written by different scribes who left notes in its margins about what source this or that article was taken from or what material was used as the basis for new articles. The signatures of the participants of the Council who adopted the Code (315 in total) were preserved on the original list. In a silver gilded ark, cast by order of Catherine II, it is now stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow.

The Council Code consists of a preface conveying the history of its creation, 25 chapters, divided into 967 articles. They regulate almost all aspects of socio-political and social life. According to the branches of law, all chapters can be grouped into several sections: chapters I-X combine the norms of state law (“On blasphemers and church rebels”, “On the sovereign’s honor and how to protect his sovereign’s health”, “On the sovereign’s court, so that in the sovereign’s court no whom there was no outrage and abuse”, “About forgery of seals”, “About money masters who will learn to make thieves’ money”, “About going abroad”, “About the service of military men”, “About prisoners”, “About the customs service ", "About tolls and transports and bridges"). The second section is the norms of the judicial system and legal proceedings - chapters X-XV (“On the court”, “The court on the peasants”, “On the court of the patriarchal clerks”, “On the monastic order”, “On the kissing of the cross”, “On completed deeds”). Chapters XVI (“On local lands”), XVII (“On estates”), XIX (“On townspeople”) and XX (“On serfs”) can be combined from the point of view of property law. Finally, chapters XXI (“On Robbery and Tatin’s Cases”) and XXII (“On the Death Penalty...”) are mainly devoted to criminal law.

The Code of 1649 is the last collection of law, built on the type of Moscow codes of law (casual principle). Its theoretical basis was the religious-Orthodox doctrine. As before, it lacked many important parts of the law (on state institutions, family and inheritance law, etc.), data about which historians draw from other sources. The implementation of the Code concerned the following:

• - in the adoption of this Code itself, systematizing and codifying laws;
• - in the attenuation of the activity of Zemsky Sobors. The central government, having strengthened, no longer needed the support of this estate-representative body; that is why, after the decision of 1653 on reunification with Ukraine, they did not gather in full force;
• - in changing the composition and role of the Boyar Duma. On the one hand, it increased the number and influence of Duma nobles and clerks, who entered the Duma not for nobility, but for personal abilities and service to the tsar, and on the other hand, numerical expansion turned it into a cumbersome, ineffective governing body, which forced the tsar to discuss the most important issues with a narrow circle of close associates and trusted persons who were part of the Execution Chamber;
• - in the development of the order system. Approximately 40 permanent orders can be divided into three groups: state, palace and patriarchal. In turn, among the state ones one can distinguish territorial ones, which were in charge of managing individual regions (Siberian, Smolensk, Little Russian, etc.), and sectoral ones (orders of the Great Treasury and the Great Parish, which were in charge of financial and economic issues; Local order - land provision for service people; military - Streletsky, Pushechny, Reitarsky; Posolsky - led foreign policy, etc.);
• - the number of clerks grew, the bulk of whom were “mongrel people.” The formation of professional bureaucracy was also a sign of absolutism;
• - in strengthening the positions of the central government in the localities in connection with the appointment of governors from the center, to whom the zemstvo and provincial elected elders were now subordinate;
• - at the beginning of the reorganization of the army. Regiments of a “foreign system” appeared (infantry - soldiers and cavalry - reitar), displacing the noble militia and consisting of Russian mercenary soldiers under the command of officers - foreign mercenaries;
• - in strengthening the subordination of the church to the state as a result of the establishment (according to Chapter X111 of the Code) of the Monastic Order, which was entrusted with the trial of the clergy and people dependent on them, the limitation of church land ownership (however, under pressure from the church in 1677, the Monastic Order was abolished), and also carrying out the church reform of Patriarch Nikon;
• - economic backwardness, leading, for example, to a lack of funds to maintain the administrative apparatus and army that meet the requirements of the time;
• - the social immaturity of the nobility, which has not yet outlived patriarchy and poorly understands its social class, and even more so, national interests;

Preservation of many norms and bodies of the traditional management system. For example, the activities of administrative bodies were based on custom and were not regulated by written laws; the functions of the orders were not differentiated and were often intertwined (almost every order dealt with financial and judicial issues). The executive apparatus practically itself determined what to carry out from the plans of the supreme power and what not.

Thus, the order system, based on custom, which did not have a clear division of functions and legal regulation, limited the supreme power. It turned out to be impossible to transform this system on a traditional basis. Thus, Alexey Mikhailovich created an order of Secret Affairs, subordinate only to him and designed to control the activities of other orders. But soon it turned into an additional organ of the command system, without changing its essence. Therefore, in order to overcome the omnipotence of orders, Peter 1 had to break this system and even move the administrative center to the new capital.

The local government system also retained many archaic features. In some places where local self-government bodies were preserved, a kind of dual power developed, which impeded the performance of administrative functions. Although, unlike the feeders, the activity of the voivode was a service and not a reward, it was not paid by the state. The voivode was supported by the local population, like feeders of the 16th century.

The noble militia remained the main military force. At the same time, the demands of modern warfare forced the creation of a standing regular army equipped with powerful fire weapons. The regiments of the “foreign system” that appeared, due to a lack of funds for their constant maintenance, weapons and training, were formed only for the duration of hostilities and could not completely replace the already outdated noble cavalry.

The royal power continued to be sanctified by the authority of the church and Orthodoxy, which substantiated its divine origin. But in the conditions of the emerging crisis of religious consciousness and the secularization of culture, which engulfed part of the upper ranks of society and the suburbs, a new rational ideological justification for its omnipotence was required. This was also prompted by the need to develop economic and cultural ties with European countries, where, under the influence of the Reformation and other factors, attitudes towards the nature of royal power changed dramatically.

The personality of Alexei Mikhailovich had a contradictory influence on the course of events. On the one hand, largely thanks to his personal qualities (sincere piety, penchant for compromise, nobility, erudition and intelligence), it was possible to overcome the consequences of social upheavals, annex Ukraine and, ultimately, strengthen the authority of the tsarist government. But, on the other hand, such qualities as contemplation and passivity, the desire to entrust the management of the country to his closest associates (Morozov was replaced by Prince N.I. Odoevsky, then Patriarch Nikon came, and after his disgrace followed Ordin-Nashchekin and Matveev), and the main thing is the desire to preserve and improve traditional orders, which predetermined the inconsistency of the political course. In general, Alexei Mikhailovich was a fading type of Orthodox tsar, no longer meeting the requirements of the time.

The most important of the new laws were the following:

• 1) the clergy was deprived of the right to acquire land for themselves in the future, and lost some judicial benefits;
• 2) the boyars and clergy lost the right to settle their peasants and slaves near cities, in settlements, and to accept mortgagees;
• 3) township communities received the right to return all mortgagees who had left them and remove from the townships all people who do not belong to the communities;
• 4) the nobles received the right to look for their runaway peasants without “lesson years”;
• 5) the merchants ensured that foreigners were prohibited from trading within the Moscow state, anywhere except Arkhangelsk.

Considering all these new decrees, you can see that they were all made in favor of service people (nobles) and townspeople (townspeople). Therefore, the nobles and townspeople were very pleased with the new laws. But the clergy and boyars could not praise the new order, which deprived them of various benefits. The mob was also dissatisfied: the mortgagees, returned to taxable status, the peasants, deprived of the opportunity to leave. Thus, the new laws established in favor of the middle classes of the population irritated the upper classes and the common people. Legislative work was completed in 1649 and a new set of laws, called the Council Code, was printed and distributed throughout the state.

In the Code, the most important were three groups of chapters.

One group of chapters spoke about crimes against royal power and against the Church. Any criticism of the Church and blasphemy against God was punishable by burning at the stake. Treason to the tsar, insult to the honor of the sovereign, as well as boyars and governors were executed. This indicated that an absolute monarchy had actually developed in Russia - the tsar had unlimited power in the country. Monarchy, as a form of government, began to take shape in Russia from the time of Ivan III. In 1649 it took legal form.

Another group of chapters was devoted to the rights of nobles. From now on, according to the Code, the nobleman was recognized with the right to transfer the estate by inheritance, provided that the sons of the nobleman would also be in the government service. These articles of the Code indicated that a noble estate (received for service) was equated to a boyar estate (received by inheritance). The new layer of feudal lords - the nobility - was increasingly equal in rights with the boyars.

The most important section of the Code was dedicated to peasants and townspeople. From now on, according to the Code, peasants were prohibited from moving from one landowner to another and a lifelong search for fugitives was established. Posad people were prohibited from moving from one town to another, from one craft to another. Fugitive townspeople were also subject to search. The “Conciliar Code” of 1649 completed the long process of the formation of serfdom in Russia, which began in 1497.