On February 8, 1649, the Zemsky Sobor adopted the Council Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich - a set of laws that regulated almost all spheres of life of subjects of the Russian state, and then the Russian Empire from the mid-17th to the first half of the 19th century. The adoption of the Code was a huge step in the development of domestic legal thought and Russian statehood.

"Passing fair laws"

In the first half of the 17th century, the judicial and legal practice of the Russian state was fragmented and contradictory. In all orders, “legal books” were created, which were constantly replenished with regulations. At the same time, according to historians, after the end of the Time of Troubles, legislative activity in the Russian state sharply intensified. There were hundreds of normative legal acts in force, which were systematized in chronological order, but not in content.

“The Troubles were a terrible state disaster. But in Russia it happens that in the depths of a catastrophe something new grows. So in this case, the Troubles became barbaric and bloody, but a transition from patrimonial statehood to public law. With patrimonial statehood, the state is considered as belonging to the monarch himself. An important step in the transition to public legal statehood was the election of Mikhail as Tsar at the Zemsky Sobor,” said the head of the department of history of state and law at Moscow State University in an interview with RT. M.V. Lomonosov, Doctor of Law, Professor Vladimir Tomsinov.

According to him, this event was an important step in the transition to public law statehood.

“The Zemsky Sobor, from a random meeting that the tsar initiates for some of his own purposes, has turned into an integral part of Russian statehood. State territory was no longer thought of as a plot of land that the king could dispose of at his own discretion, but rather as the territory of the state. The only thing that the state lacked in its new capacity was giving the legislation a public legal character,” Tomsinov emphasized.

He notes that the first motive that guided Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich when starting work on a new collection of laws was the desire to systematize legislation that was enormous in scope. But he also had other considerations.

“The 17th century is often called a “rebellious time,” because during this period there were a lot of uprisings and rebellions. So, the creation of the cathedral code was a reaction to the events of 1648, which in our historiography are referred to as the Salt Riot,” said Vladimir Volkov, a professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University and the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Ilya Glazunov, in a conversation with RT.

  • Salt riot in Moscow, 1648. Painting by Ernest Lissner

  • © Public domain

The salt riot was caused by large-scale abuses by officials and attempts to collect direct taxes from the population, instead of which an indirect tax on salt had previously been levied.

“It was a very powerful popular uprising. It was never suppressed. The government and Alexei Mikhailovich himself had to negotiate with the rebels. And one of the demands of the rebels was the adoption of fair laws,” Volkov said.

In 1648, the Zemsky Sobor was convened, which decided to develop a new universal code of laws. The commission for its development was headed by Prince Nikita Odoevsky and Prince Semyon Prozorovsky. Within a few months, a preliminary version of the collection of laws was ready, which systematized numerous regulations in force in the Russian state.

  • Kremlin in the 17th century

  • © Public domain

According to historians, the draft Council Code was read out to the participants of the Council for several months and was discussed class by class. The collection of laws was finally adopted on February 8, 1649. In the same year it was printed in a circulation of 2.4 thousand copies.

“This is the first printed monument of law in Russia,” noted Vladimir Tomsinov.

Crimes and Punishments

The collection consists of a preface, table of contents and 25 chapters, divided into 967 articles. According to historians, the Council Code outlined a division of norms into branches of law.

“The people were thirsty for new laws, but the laws turned out to be quite strict. Historians count how many crimes in the code were subject to the death penalty in various forms. The numbers given are 54, 60, 64. But, by and large, some of the descriptions are repeated, so there is an opinion that they were executed under the new code for 20-25 types of criminal acts. The punishments, according to this document, were cruel. This includes quartering, hanging, and burning,” said Vladimir Volkov.

  • Alexey Mikhailovich, portrait by an unknown artist

  • globallookpress.com

  • © Vladimir Boiko

Criminal law was divided into crimes against the church, crimes against the state and public administration, official and property crimes, and crimes against the person. Criminals were fined and their property was confiscated.

“Severe penalties were imposed, for example, for the tobacco trade. For the spread of infectious diseases - too. The threat of epidemics was realized, which means that the rudiments of quarantine measures were introduced,” said Vladimir Volkov.

As researchers note, the goals of punishment were not only to replenish the treasury, but also to retaliate, intimidate and isolate the criminal from society. For unintentional commission of a crime, the offender, according to the code, could be pardoned.

According to historians, it was the Council Code that finally introduced the regime of serfdom in the Russian state.

“The Cathedral Code recorded the eternal search for fugitive peasants; the peasant transition on St. George’s Day was canceled. That is, the peasants were finally attached to the land,” said Vladimir Volkov.

  • Scenes of Russian life. 17th century (A. M. Vasnetsov “In the Russian Upper Room”)

  • © Public domain

As experts note, civil law norms were also enshrined in the Council Code. Women's legal capacity was officially confirmed. The Code described property rights and the process of acquiring them - in some cases, extremely complex. Personal liability was increasingly replaced by property liability. Inheritance could occur by law and by will.

Although family law at that time primarily fell under the jurisdiction of the church court, some of its norms also appeared in the Council Code. For different categories of family members, responsibility for killing relatives differed significantly. Homicide or the murder of parents, for example, was punished much more cruelly than the murder of children. In general, the document defended the patriarchal principle of family building.

The code also outlined criminal procedural measures: search, legal action, search, as well as the procedure for launching the legal procedure.

The king, based on the content of the code, was an autocratic and hereditary monarch.

  • Chapter 1 of the Council Code (“On blasphemers and church rebels”)

  • © Public domain

“The Council Code was written in a language that was good and understandable to people of that time, without many archaisms characteristic of earlier normative legal acts,” noted Vladimir Volkov.

Nowadays, the original of the Cathedral Code on 960 sheets, connected into a scroll 317 m long, is stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in a gilded ark specially made by order of Catherine II.

“The cathedral code was initially created as an integral legal monument, into which, even based on its very design, it was difficult to add something or remove something from it,” said Vladimir Tomsinov.

According to him, the important role of the Council Code was that it significantly narrowed the legal space in which government officials could act at their own discretion and engage in arbitrariness.

The Council Code was formally in force until the “Code of Laws of the Russian Empire” came into force in 1835, but some of its provisions remained relevant until 1917.

“The Council Code opens a new era in Russian history. Its adoption was a grandiose event,” concluded Vladimir Tomsinov.