24 - Law and society

Summary

Addressing the interconnections of ‘law and society’ in seventeenth-century Muscovy is challenging, because of the complexity of the judicial system. Russia was far from the uniformity in law, adjudication and procedure that the contemporary European Polizeistaat was striving for (and even there the goal was achieved more in the breach than the norm). In its multiplicity of venues and legal norms and in the flexibility of the enforcement of those norms, Russian justice was decidedly medieval.

This is not to say that the state was passive in the legal arena. Codification and centralisation of judicial power were, indeed, key goals of seventeenth-century rulers. But their ambition exceeded reality. Moscow’s rulers were hindered by the challenge of administering an empire that was immense, ethnically diverse and riddled with pockets of immunity. This chapter will explore that complexity by surveying the multiple venues of legal proceedings in Muscovy, then by examining judicial practice and finally by surveying changes in the positive law.

Judicial venues

In principle a centralised bureaucratic structure of chancelleries in Moscow and regional governors in the provinces provided the judicial system in the seventeenth century. Chancelleries sent governors, called voevody, to appointed regions. They exercised administrative, fiscal and judicial authority; they often oversaw subordinate officials and courts in smaller towns. On paper the system was hierarchical and empire wide. In practice, however, many groups and regions fell out of range of the governor’s authority because of explicit or implicit charters of judicial immunity, religious, ethnic or colonial status, or personal dependency.