A thematic exhibition “Sobornoye Ulozheniye of Alexis of Russia: 370th Anniversary of the Russian Law Monument” is opened in the Legal Information reading room (207b) from August 27 to October 28.
In 2019 it’s celebrated the 370th anniversary of the most important monument of Russian law, the Sobornoye Ulozheniye of Alexis of Russia.
The сode of 1649 is the largest monument of Russian writing of the 17th century, which sums up the previous legislative activity of Tsarist Russia of the 16th–17th centuries. Being the main achievement of the reign of Alexis of Russia, this grandiose and impressive in its scale and full in terms of legal elaboration legal act for more than two hundred years remained the most developed code of Russian laws.
Despite the casual presentation, the Code was distinguished by the best for its time legal technique. Amazing and admirable is the term of its adoption: all discussions, and the final adoption of this monument of legislation with a volume of almost 1000 articles, took only about 6 months.
The text of the code is divided into 25 chapters, each of them is divided into articles, the number of which reaches up to 967. The historians of Russian law analyzed the contents of the Ulozhenie, indicating that 60 articles arose from humble petitions. 56 articles were borrowed from the 1588 Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
For the first time in Russian law, the Code includes a chapter on the criminal legal protection of tsar. The highest government bodies are vested with judicial functions. Over 300 articles are devoted to criminal law, in detail reveals the concept of crime. About 250 articles are about civil law issues: land ownership, peasants, slaves, contractual and binding, administrative and financial law.
The original of the Code is a scroll glued from 959 narrow. The length of the scroll is 309 meters. Now the code is stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in a gilded "ark" specially made for this purpose. On the front side the text is written, there are signatures on the back. It is almost impossible to use this scroll for practical purposes. An exact copy in the form of a manuscript book was made from it and a type setting was made from it. The Sobornoye Ulozheniye were printed typographically and became the first printed monument of Russian law. The language was accessible and understandable for all layers of society. The publication of the code aroused interest in Western Europe and was translated into Latin, French, German and Danish. In 1649 the code was published twice in a large for that time circulation of 2400 copies. For more than two hundred years, the code did not lose its significance and retained the validity of the current code until the 1835 Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire.
Scientists are unanimous in their assessment of the code. This is a worldwide legal achievement. The document consolidated the process of the development of an estate-representative monarchy into an absolute.
The exhibition will be interesting to lawyers, historians, philologists, teachers and students.
The exhibition includes the following thematic sections:
• Sobornoye Ulozheniye of 1649 and its historical significance;
• Codification of legislation during the period of Alexis of Russia;
• Comparative analysis of Russian national law of the 17th century with other states;
• Investigation of criminal law under the Council Code of 1649;
• Significance of the 1649 Code in the history of civil proceedings;
• Linguistic features of the Code and its features and publications.
The exposition includes about 70 documents: books, brochures, periodicals, abstracts of dissertations.
Official Documents Department
