Great Muscovite Law Code

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The complete Ulozhenie is divided into twenty-five chapters, each dealing with a different general topic or legislative area. They are presented in a specific order, corresponding to the importance or status accorded to each at the time, from the highest to the lowest. Thus, chapter 1 considers the honor and authority of God and his church, the second chapter treats the personal honor of the czar, the third looks at matters of conduct in the czar's court, and so on. The final chapter (the “lowest,” not excerpted here) treats unlawful taverns. The chapters between consider a wealth of issues, including the mint and currency, travel and foreigners, various ranks of service personnel, tolls and fees, the judicial process at various social levels, monasteries, different categories of landholding, social and political estates, slaves and serfs, robbery and theft, the death penalty, and palace musketeers. Some chapters are short—the one on palace musketeers has only three articles. Others are much longer. There are, for instance, 104 articles on robbery and theft and 119 on the judicial process regarding slaves. The longest of all, at 287 articles, considers the judicial process in general.

Chapter 1: Blasphemers and Church Troublemakers

Chapter 1 begins with assertions of the supreme authority of God and of the one true faith (Russian Orthodoxy). Insults or offenses against either God or the church are especially serious crimes and are to be punished harshly. All aspects of the Russian Orthodox Church—its physical spaces, personnel, and rituals—are given special status. Crimes perpetrated within or against the church are to be treated separately from similar acts in other places. On the other hand, several articles call for the crime to be properly ascertained before punishment is meted out, thus suggesting the close connections between divinity and true justice. It should be noted that the law, while applicable in all churches, was written largely with the places of worship of the czar and elite classes in mind (especially places of worship within the Kremlin). This is evident in articles 8 and 9.

Chapter 2: The Sovereign's Honor, and How to Safeguard His Royal Well-Being

Speaking generally, in Russian history, church and state were less antagonistic than is the case in the Catholic West. To some extent, this reflected the relative weakness of the Russian Orthodox Church, but it was also symptomatic of the mutually reinforcing role of each in the overall system of political power. Although the czar was not inferior to the Russian Orthodox Church, he was certainly inferior to God. Hence his powers and authorities are enumerated in chapter 2, not chapter 1. There is little here to distinguish the concept of the state from the person of the czar. Instead, the two are seen as more or less synonymous. Some of the clauses seem draconian. Articles 6 and 7 equate knowledge of treason with the act itself, for example. One senses a degree of paranoia also in the calls for “rigorous investigation” (article 9) and the like, although these are balanced to some degree by mercy for the innocent.

Chapter 6: Travel Documents into Other States

This short chapter of six articles deals with foreign travel and clearly reflects state insecurities and xenophobia. Evidencing concern about possible connections between travel and treason, this chapter establishes a passport system. Unlike modern systems, however, permission was necessary for each separate trip. Such permissions were potentially available only to persons involved in commercial activity or others whose reasons for travel were deemed acceptable and useful to the state. The masses of peasants, tied irrevocably to their owners' estates by legislation elsewhere in the Ulozhenie, would not have been able to apply for permission. Note that this chapter tries to balance restrictions on travel with countervailing attempts not to hamper trade and commerce or to condemn people simply for living near an international border. The chapter focuses only on the czar's subjects and does not explicitly treat foreign nationals coming into Russia.

Chapter 10: The Judicial Process

This chapter speaks to a basic goal of the Ulozhenie: the creation of a state of law, with all the apparatuses, offices, and procedures that might require. Alexis's concept of a state of law should not be misunderstood, however. In the Ulozhenie there is no concept of people as individuals, imbued with natural rights or equal before the law. Instead, the assumptions are that the law exists to serve the interests of the state (largely synonymous with the person and authority of the czar) and that persons will be treated collectively according to social order, religion, nationality, and other factors. As evidence of the high level of concern for creating a state of law, the chapter contains 287 articles, the most by far of any in the code. Only the first six are reproduced here; but they suggest the basic parameters of the overall system.

The czar emphasizes his own authority. The Ulozhenie and the legal system more generally are his possessions and expressions of his will—even if specific and important tasks must be delegated to boyars, okol'nichie, and others. Boyars were hereditary nobles in state service and held the highest rank in the Muscovite social hierarchy; okol'nichie were second in rank. There were at least eighteen different service ranks at the time. Beyond this initial statement, however, the czar calls for impartiality, honesty, and adherence to the principles and rulings of his code, both by the Muscovite court and in the provinces.

Chapter 11: The Judicial Process for Peasants

This chapter includes thirty-four articles; about two-thirds of them are reproduced here. It is in this chapter that we find the legal basis for the full-fledged system of serfdom with which the social history of Russia from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries is nearly synonymous.

Article 1 establishes the tone of the chapter. It takes as a reference point the cadastral books of 1626, which showed the place of registration of peasant families at that time. In some cases, a later census of 1646–1647 provided the reference point. The article calls for all runaway peasants and their descendants—along with their wives, children, and “movable property”—to be returned to their original estates “without any statute of limitations” regardless of where they currently reside. Article 1 deals specifically with peasants originally registered on crown lands (the “sovereign's peasants”); article 2 extends the ruling to all categories of landowners. According to the law, a peasant originally registered with a member of the service gentry (such as a stol'nik or striapchii) but now living elsewhere must also be returned to his place of registration as of 1626. Note that this rule applied even to peasants who had moved onto lands belonging directly to the czar. Thus, the first two articles establish a basic and draconian principle: Peasants have only one rightful and lawful place to live, the place at which they were properly and originally registered. They and their descendants were to be returned there no matter how long they had lived at some other place.

Article 3 establishes that the law would not be used to punish landlords who have previously held runaway peasants, only those landlords who would do so henceforth. This surely suggests the scale of the issue. No doubt “runaways” were extremely common. More generally, this article and numerous others throughout the code deal with the many problems, disputes, and uncertainties bound to arise as soon as efforts began to establish the “rightful” place of residence of any given peasant or peasant family. What should one do, for example, when marriages have been made among peasants not registered on the same estate in 1626? To which estate should the resulting family and any descendants properly belong? Should the larger family be broken up? And what about the “vacant houses” of runaway peasants (article 5)? On these and other similar issues, the Ulozhenie generally calls for proper investigations and trials, and it establishes that complications based on actions taken before passage of the law should be treated with some sympathy. Future actions, by contrast, are to be dealt with more legalistically. Article 10, for example, specifically calls for a fine of ten rubles per peasant per year to be levied against any landlord under whom fugitive peasants are living. Articles 12 to 19 and 33 to 34 cover a range of specific—and probably common—scenarios, such as first and second marriages, widows, and persons who cross the frontier or marry foreigners.

The law greatly affected not only peasants but also landowners. For the most part, the idea was to help them secure and retain labor for their landholdings. But the code could also cause them problems. Article 7, for example, treats the case of a landowner whose peasants are found after investigation to be the lawful property of another and therefore subject to removal. Articles 20 and 21 place upon landowners the responsibility of properly ascertaining the current legal status of persons wishing to settle on their estates. No doubt this would have presented a burden to landowners, and there was always the chance that a landlord, even one who intended to follow the law properly, might make a mistake or be deceived by his peasants. That landlord would still risk being levied a hefty fine.

Chapter 16: Service Lands

Service lands (pomestie) were estates granted in return for state service and, at least originally, only for the duration of that service. These lands provided their holders with income and security. Article 1 lists various ranks of the service class along with the standard size of land grant for each. Articles 2 and 3 try to bring order and fairness to the process of land-grant swaps, which might occur if a member of the service gentry were to be transferred or moved or for other reasons. Although these lands were not hereditary possessions, they could, with government approval, be passed along to a relative or descendant, who would usually inherit the service obligation as well. As can be seen in articles 9 to 11 and 16, service lands also constituted a form of social insurance that provided income to retirees, widows, and unmarried daughters from the service class. A separate chapter of the Ulozhenie (not reproduced here) provided the legal framework for hereditary estates (votchiny).

Chapter 19: Townsmen

This chapter establishes yet another social category: the “townsmen.” Only the first article of a total of forty is reproduced here. It shows the czar's intent to exert his will, centralize control, and improve the collection of taxes from people and places either previously exempt under the authority of other high-ranking persons, such as the Russian Orthodox patriarch, or from whom it had otherwise been hard to collect taxes. By the seventeenth century, towns had become the loci of significant commercial activity and thus also of potential taxable wealth. When townsmen moved, those taxes, which generally were levied collectively rather than individually, often went uncollected. Beginning with the official approval of the Ulozhenie in 1649, townsmen were required to remain were they were, and they could, like serfs, be forcibly returned if they moved elsewhere without authorization. In return, they obtained certain monopolies on trade and commercial activities. In this article, a “limited service contract slave” is distinguished by possession of a contract stipulating the duration and nature of servitude. “Deti boiarskie” refers to a middle rank within the provincial, as opposed to the Muscovite, service class.

Chapter 21: Robbery and Theft Cases

This chapter deals harsh justice to those found guilty of the offenses of robbery and theft. Note that articles 9 and 10 do not treat simply the crime at hand but prescribe routine torture to uncover other potential offenses. The underlying assumption is that a person who has been caught committing one crime likely committed others. Crime is thus understood as a symptom of a certain character type, rather than as just an instance of illegal activity. Article 12 requires the death sentence for a third offense, except in the case of theft from a church (article 14), which is punishable by death for the first offense.

Chapter 22: Decree: For Which Offenses the Death Penalty Should Be Inflicted on Someone, and for Which Offenses the Penalty Should Not Be Death but [Another] Punishment Should Be Imposed

This chapter contains twenty-six articles, half of which are reproduced here. Many of these articles exemplify the Ulozhenie's emphasis on clear hierarchy, unquestionable authority, and strict punishment. They are largely untempered by concerns for mitigating circumstances and possible exceptions. When reading the first articles, dealing with murders within families, it should be kept in mind that the law's authors imagined the nuclear family as a microcosm of the larger “state family.” The authority given to parents, especially fathers, as heads of families mirrors that assumed by the czar over his larger “family”—the population of the Muscovite state. Similarly, the lack of power given to children represents in microcosm the subordination of all subjects to their social superiors and ultimately to the czar. Thus, crimes committed by children against their parents are considered extremely serious, while crimes committed by parents against their children are reckoned to be minor. Following articles 5 and 6, any complaints made by children against their parents are to be ignored and even punished, but their responsibility to care for and feed their parents in old age is sacrosanct. Of course, one can also see in these articles the influence of some of the Ten Commandments, rather strictly and literally applied.

Returning to family themes, articles 14 to 16 reflect the harsh patriarchal culture of the time. A man's authority over his wife is considered absolute and sacred. A woman who violates this order by murdering her husband has committed a terrible crime. Whereas clauses treating the murder of a master by his slave (not reproduced here) simply call for the slave's death, article 14 goes so far as to prescribe the manner of the offending wife's execution. The seriousness of her action, as viewed by Muscovite culture, is further emphasized in the same article by the refusal to contemplate any mitigating circumstances or calls for leniency made by the children or other relatives. This stands in stark contrast to some other parts of the code, where a clear concern is indeed shown for mitigating circumstances and intent (see, for example, article 20 in this chapter). Note, however, that article 15 stipulates that the wife's crime, though unpardonable, is not to be paid for by the death of any innocent unborn child. The concern shown in article 16 for a woman's honor echoes the partriarchalism of article 14 in that it seeks primarily to protect the exclusive ownership of the wife by her husband. The use of the term “mistress of that house” speaks to the fact that the law had in mind primarily elite women and not the ordinary peasant, whose affairs were largely regulated by this time by their landlords. Articles 24 to 26 return to religious themes and freely mix elements of harsh legalism with Christian compassion.