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The 1497 Sudebnik-Muscovite Russia's First National Law Code

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Horace W. Dewey*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan

Extract

Little is known about the immediate historical background of the 1497 Sudebnik. According to Karamzin, the Sudebnik's compilation was largely the work of one Vladimir Gusev. A few months after the code was finished, a strange conspiracy came to light. This same Vladimir Gusev was arrested, along with a number of henchmen, for plotting the murder of Dmitrij, the grandson of Grand Prince Ivan III. Also implicated in the conspiracy were Ivan's own son Vasilij and his wife Sophia; the latter had reportedly been receiving visits from witches bearing mysterious potions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1956

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References

1 Karamzin, N. M., Istorija gosudarstva rossijskago (St. Petersburg, 1888), VI, 242-43, 312Google Scholar. Chronicle accounts of the appearance of the Studebnik and of the conspiracy can be found in Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisej, XXIV, 213 and XII, 246 respectively.

2 Ja. S. Lurje, “Iz istorii politicheskoj bor'by pri Ivane III,” Uchenye zapiski Leningradshogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta (serija istoricheskikh nauk), X (1940), 90-91 and Cherepnin, L. V., Russkie feodal'nye arkhivy XIV-XV vekov (Moscow, 1951), II, 290-92Google Scholar. However, in the new Bol'shaja Sovetskaja Entsiklopedija (Moscow, 1952), XIII, 224, Gusev is mentioned only in connection with the compilation of the 1497 Sudebnik.

3 Articles 3-8, 10-12, 15, 18-19, 21-26, 28-31, 33, 36, 38-40, 44, 50, 53, 62, 64-65, 68.

4 Articles 8, 10, 12, 13, 32, 49-50, 54-55, 57-61, 67. Note that the Pskov city charter, while composed of almost twice as many articles as the Sudebnik, contains only twenty fee or damage clauses.

5 Dmitriev, F. M., Istorija sudebnykh instantsij i grazhdanskogo appeljatsionnogo sudoproizvodstva (Moscow, 1859), p. 276 Google Scholar. M. F. Vladimirskij-Budanov points out that the Sudebnik fees are lower than those of the 1397 Dvina charter except in regard to judicial duels; Khristomatija po istorii russkago prava (Kiev, 1901), II, 84.

6 von Herberstein, Baron Sigismund, Notes Upon Russia (translated and edited by R. H. Major, London, 1851), I, 109Google Scholar.

7 Diakonov, M., Ocherki obshchestvennogo i gosudarstvennogo stroja drevnej Rusi, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1908), p. 319Google Scholar.

8 For an excellent description of justice under the appanage princes, see V. O. Kljuchevskij, A History of Russia (translated by C. J. Hogarth, London, 1912), II, 245.

9 Articles 1, 33, 34, 38, 53, 67.

10 Articles is and 13 touch on this procedure, known in Russian legal history as the poval'nyj obysk.

11 Articles 14 and 34.

12 Dmitriev, op. cit., p. 224; the boyar judges have been called “virtually all-powerful” in this respect; see I. I. Srairnov, “Sudebnik 1550 goda,” Istoricheskie zapiski, 24 (1947), p. 278.

13 Articles 4-7, 38, 48, 68. The classic account of a judicial duel in this period was furnished by Herberstein (op. cit., I, 104-5).

14 The jurisdictional supremacy of Moscow courts had been a major issue in precipitating the struggle with Novgorod. The Boretskaja clique had fought bitterly to prevent its realization, for they knew that to be judged by Moscow courts not only signalled the end of the old principle “Novgorod is judged by its own courts,” but meant that any semblance of Novgorodian independence or autonomy was gone. See Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisej, XXV (Moscow, 1949), pp. 314, 317-18 for Novgorod's efforts to obtain a last-minute compromise on this issue, namely, that a local posadnik should sit with Ivan's vicegerent in court. This was refused.

15 Sergeevich, V., Russkie juridicheskie drevnosti (St. Petersburg, 1890-1893), II, 327-73, 484-517Google Scholar. Sergeevich is probably quite right, as the 1550 Sudebnik expressly states, in its first article, that the djaki are also to judge.

16 Russia. Arkheograficheskaja kommissija. Akty istoricheskie (St. Petersburg, 1841), 341-43.

17 Article 38 actually refers to the charters which regulated the activities of these vicegerents and sought to check abuses and arbitrary uses of power on their part. The texts of some of these charters (a great many have been lost) can be found in A. I. Jakovlev (ed. and comp.), Namestnichie, gubnye i zemskie gramoty moskovskogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1909), 208 pp., which includes the famous 1488 Beloozerskaja ustavnaja gramota.

18 See Cherepnin, op. cit,, II, 323-25 and Smirnov, op. cit., p. 284 for recent studies on this subject.

19 The “men of court” made their first appearance in the Beloozero administrative charter (see footnote 17).

20 This “state significance” of the men of court has been stressed by Chicherin, B. N., Opyty po istorii russkago prava (Moscow, 1858), p. 27.Google Scholar

21 Akademija Nauk SSSR. Institut istorii. Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1952), p. 81.

22 Mirsky, D. S., Russia, a Social History (London, 1931), p. 135 Google Scholar.

23 Pokrovsky, M. N., Brief History of Russia (New York, 1935), I, 260.Google Scholar

24 Cherepnin, op. cit., II, 344.

25 See Kljuchevskij, op. cit., II, 144, 197, 234.

26 Cherepnin, op. cit., II, 337.

27 Dmitriev, op. cit., pp. 249-52.

28 V. Sergeevich, Lektsii i issledovanija po drevnej istorii russkago prava (3d ed.; St. Petersburg, 1903), p. 579, 593“94.

28 a See the recent study by Romanov, B. A., “O polnom kholope i sel'skom pope v sudebnike Ivana Groznogo,” Akademiku Borisu Dmitrievichu Grekovu ho dnju semidesjaiiletija. Sbomik stotej (Moscow, 1952), pp. 140-45Google Scholar.

29 Herberstein, op. cit., I, 56-57.

30 An uneasy but legal compromise on this issue of the judicial duel was reached in 1551, with the publication of the Sloglav, whose article LXVIII prohibits the judicial duel in all cases under ecclesiastical jurisdiction and seeks to exempt the clergy from participation in the judicial duel in all other matters except murder and theft; for these cases the bishop is to be informed before representatives of the clergy can be required to participate. Le Stoglav, ou les cent chapitres, E. Duchesne, ed. and trans. (Paris, 1920), pp. 187-92.

31 Literature on the problem of restricting peasant removal (or otkaz) indeed presents a wide variety of interpretation. See Pakhman, S. V., Istorija kodifikatsii grazhdanskogo prava (St. Petersburg, 1876), I, 227 Google Scholar (Article 57 seen as a guarantee of the peasant's right to leave his master at a fixed time each year); Akademija Nauk SSSR. Institut istorii. Ocherki istorii SSSR (Moscow, 1953), II, 303 (Article 57 makes the rent high in order to make the whole transaction more difficult for the peasant); Jushkov, S. V., htorija gosudarstva i prava SSSR (Moscow, 1950), I, 169 Google Scholar (Monasteries responsible for choice of St. George's Day period, when peasant, facing cold winter ahead, hesitated to pass over to new landlord); Kljuchevskij, op. cit., II, 197 (Article 57 not passed on the demand of the monasteries, but actually represents a measure directed against monasterial practices of luring away peasants on secular lands); B. N. Chicherin, op. cit., p. 185 and Eljashevich, V. B., Istorija prava pozemel'noi sobstvennosti v Rossii (Paris, 1948), I, 135 Google Scholar (St. George's Day period is the end of the agricultural year and the most natural time for peasants to settle accounts and leave the landlord), and many other sources. An excellent recent study on the background of the St. George's Day article can be found in an article by George Vernadsky, “Serfdom in Russia,” Relazioni of the 10th International Historical Congress at Rome, Vol. III (September, 1955), pp. 247-272.

32 The withdrawal of removal and transfer rights from other classes and groups of the population (and the imposition of certain taxation or service duties upon them), has been brilliantly summarized by M. F. Vladimirskij-Budanov, Obzor istorii russkago prava (3d ed.; St. Petersburg, igoo), p. 126 ff. Although the first general law of peasant enserfment, as such, appeared only in the 1649 Sobornoe Ulozhenie (chap. XI, art. 3), there is evidence that actual serfdom had come to Russia well before this date; see the 1597 ukaz on suits for runaway peasants contained in Vladimirskij-Budanov's Khristomatija po istorii russkago prava, III, 94.

33 A discussion of the gorodskoj kljuch can be found in Sergeevich, Russkie juridicheskie drevnosti, II, 215, and in B. D. Grekov, Krestjane na Rusi (Moscow, 1946), pp. 576-77.

34 Witte, F., Die Rechtsverhältnisse der Ausländer in Russland (Dorpat, 1847), p. 19 Google Scholar; Barbaro, J. and Contarini, A., Travels to Tana and Persia (London, 1873), pp. 160-62Google Scholar. In this period most Russian legislation pertaining to aliens was contained either in treaties or in individual documents issued to specified foreign citizens. Aliens were generally mistrusted; Muljukin, A., Prieid inostrantsev v moskovskoe gosudarstvo. Iz istorii russkago prava XVI-XVII vekov (St. Petersburg, 1909), pp. 170-75Google Scholar.

35 Cherepnin, op. cit., II, 385; Bol'shaja Sovetskaja Entsiklopedija, XIII (1952), 224. This is a significant shift of emphasis from earlier Soviet scholarship. Tikhomirov, for example, accepts Djakonov's statement that the Sudebnik, as Moscow's first legislative attempt, 1 could hardly be considered successful, explaining that it set up primarily procedural | norms, leaving untouched many important problems of civil and domestic relations law; i N. V. Tikhomirov, Istochnikovedenie istorii SSSR s drevnejshikh vremen do konca XVII v. (Moscow, 1940), I, 162.

36 Ocherki istorii SSSR, II, 158.

37 Sergeevich, Lektsii i issledovanija, p. 27.

38 N. P. Zagoskin, Istorija prava russkago naroda (Kazan, 1899), I, 61.

39 Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, p. 40.

40 The relevant passages are quoted in Smirnov, op. cit., pp. 272-73.

41 See Djuvernua, N., Istochniki prava i sud v drevnej Rossii (Moscow, 1869), p. 287Google Scholar ff. Dmitriev cites cases which show that land suits were brought—and accepted by the courts—as long as seventy years after the cause of action had arisen, in obvious violation of article 63 of the Sudebnik; Dmitriev, op cit., pp. 175-76.

42 Grekov, for example, states that the 1497 Sudebnik, being unacceptable to “supporters of the old order,” was in effect for a short time only, and that the chaotic conditions following the death of Vasilij III gave the boyars of the opposition the chance to ignore the Sudebnik; Krestjane na Rusi, p. 643.

43 Comparative tables can be found in Vladimirskij-Budanov's chrestomathy, second volume, pp. 184-88; M. Klochkov, Ukazatel’ slov i vyrazhenij vstrechajushchikhsja v sudebnikakh 1497, 1550 i 1589 gg. (Jurev, 1902), pp. 24-26 and Sudebniki XV-XVI vekov, pp. 610-15.

44 Leontovich, F. I., Istorija russkago prava (Odessa, 1869), pp. 1516 Google Scholar; Zagoskin, op. cit., p. 64.