Great Muscovite Law Code

Audience

As a general statement of state authority and social hierarchy, the Ulozhenie was intended ultimately for the entire Russian populace. It would, however, have been directly read or encountered only by a small literate minority, especially members of the service gentry, court officials, and the church hierarchy. Twelve hundred copies were made in the spring of 1649, and a further twelve hundred in the winter. Both quickly sold out, with the majority of copies probably going to courts and other government offices in Moscow and throughout provincial towns, where it henceforth provided the framework for legal cases and procedures (with the main exception of cases coming under church jurisdiction). It is unclear how well the document would have been known by litigants, at least in the first decades after publication. The illiterate masses of serfs would have come to know of the Ulozhenie only slowly, sporadically, and dimly. Parts of it might have been read to them by priests or landlords, perhaps as justification for their removal to another estate. Aspects of it would have spread by word of mouth. Generally, however, at this time and later, peasants tended to attribute their exploitation and suffering not to the czar or to any specific piece of legislation, but instead to landlords, local officials, and other persons of whom they had direct experience.