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Sobornoye Ulozhenie of Alexis of Russia promulgated
On January 29 (February 8), 1649 the Zemsky Sobor (the first Russian parliament) adopted a new legal code of the Russian state – Sobornoye Ulozhenie of the tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
This document appeared in the beginning of the second tsar of Romanov’s family reign and was provoked by the serious social, political and economical crisis that resulted in a tide of people’s discontent. The Russian legal system of the time did not suit not only peasants, tradespeople and ordinary Strelets, but neither the nobles willing to extend and consolidate by law their rights and privileges.
In June of 1648 Moscow nobles and the tradespeople leaders addressed the tsar asking him to convoke the Zemsky Sobor to discuss the vital problems. Upon the mutual decision of the tsar, the high Orthodox clergy and Boyar Duma was organized a commission of 5 people led by the prince N.I. Odoevsky which also included the boyar S.V. Prozorovsky, okolnichy prince F.F. Volkonsky, the clerks G. Leontiev and F. Griboyedov.
The commission was intended to coordinate all the standard acts in force and, having supplemented them with the new resolutions, combine them in a single code. The Code was based on the offices’ books, Moscow codes of law, boyar sentences, collective petitions, extracts from the Lithuanian statute of 1588, the church laws code, the orders of oecumenical and local church councils.
In order to discuss and approve the Code text there was specially summoned the Zemstvo Sobor which started working on September 1 (11), 1648. The tsar, Boyar Duma and the Sanctified council held a separate meeting from the elective estates representatives headed by the prince Yu. A. Dolgoruky. In the course of the discussion the bill suffered significant revision. The final version included 82 new articles.
965 articles united into 25 chapters of the new code of laws in contrast to the previous documents of the kind contained the norms not just of the procedural law but also of the state, civil, administrative and criminal law. The code determined for the first time the status of the head of state, the order of the government service, the types of the state and penal crimes. The issues of legal procedure were regarded with a special attention.
The code had approved the serfdom in the country, having abolished the fixed years and declared the search for the run-away serfs unlimited. From that time on peasants’ serfdom became hereditary and their property was acknowledged as the one belonging to the landowner.
All the tradespeople were now registered in their trading quarters and became a taxed estate. However it had a privilege to undertake the commercial and industrial activity.
The code seriously limited the rights of the clergy. Henceforth it was subject to trial without special preferences and could no more acquire ancestral lands for the exception of a patriarch and his retainers. The Monastery office was established to administrate the former ancestral lands of monasteries and clergy.
Meeting the interests of the service class the document equalized the status of estates and ancestral lands enabling the landowners to own and be in charge of the land allotted for service.
The Code adoption was one of the most important achievements of Alexei Mikhailovich reign. It served as the basic law of the Russian state up to 1830.
Lit.: Маслов К. А. Соборное Уложение: материалы к семинару по истории государства и права России [Электронный ресурс] // Сайт студентов и выпускников Юридического факультета СПбГУ. 2001-2011. URL: http://www.law-students.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=333; Соборное уложение 1649 года. Л., 1987; Тихомиров М. Н., Епифанов П. П. Соборное уложение 1649 г. М., 1961; То же [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://www.hist.msu.ru/ER/Etext/1649.htm.
Based on the Presidential Library’s materials:
Акты, относящиеся до юридическаго быта древней России. СПб., 1884. Т. 3;
Полное собрание законов Российской империи, с 1649 года. СПб., 1830. Т. 1. № 1;