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Excerpts from The Law Code of 1649

INTRODUCTION
[From Thomas Riha, Readings in Russian Civilization, vol. 1, p. 154]. The Law Code of 1649 (Ulozhenie) . . . was the most comprehensive codification of law undertaken in Russia up to that date. The next codification did not take place until the 1830s. The code consists of 967 articles divided into twenty-five chapters. . . . The language of the Russian original has been simplified. Feel free to read the entire Law Code or parts that are left out that you would like to read at Sobornoe Ulozhenie.

List of complete contents

I. Blasphemers and Heretics (9 articles)
II. The Sovereign's Honour and How to Guard His Health (22 articles)
III. The Sovereign's Court, so That There Will be no Outrages or Disorders at the Sovereign's Court (9 articles)
IV. Forgers of Documents, Signatures, and Seals (4 articles)
V. Mint Masters Who May Counterfeit Money (2 articles)
VI. Permits to Travel into Other Countries (6 articles)
VII. The Service of Diverse Military People of the Muscovite State (32 articles)
VIII. The Redemption of Captives (7 articles)
IX. Tolls, Ferries, and Bridges (20 articles)
X. Legal Procedure (287 articles)
XI. Legal Procedure Concerning the Peasants (34 articles)
XII. Legal Procedure Concerning All Subjects of the Patriarchal Department, the Court, and Peasants (3 articles)
XIII. The Monastery Department (7 articles)
XIV. The Oath (10 articles)
XV. Contracts (5 articles)
XVI. Pomest'e {Service} Estates (69 articles)
XVII. Votchina {Hereditary} Estates (55 articles)
XVIII. Seal Taxes (7I articles)
XIX. Posadskie liudi {Townsmen} (40 articles)
XX. Legal Procedure Concerning Kholopy {Bondmen} (119 articles)
XXI. Robbery and Theft Cases (104 articles)
XXII. An Instruction Regarding Offences That Deserve Capital Punishment and Those That Do Not, but Which Should Be Punished (26 articles)
XXIII. The Streltsy {Professional Soldiers} (3 articles)
XXIV. The Atamans and the Cossacks (3 articles)
XXV. Illegal Taverns (21 articles)

Chapter I: Blasphemers and Heretics

1. If a member of another faith, regardless of which faith, or a Russian, should blaspheme our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, or His Mother the Holy Queen, Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, or the honourable cross, or its holy servants, each such case should be investigated thoroughly, using all possible means. An inquiry about it should be organised, and the blasphemer of God should be burned at the stake.
2. And should some scoundrel come into God's church during the holy liturgy and should he in some way try to prevent its completion, he should be seized, his action investigated, and he should be condemned to death without mercy.
3. And should someone, upon entering God's church during the holy liturgy while singing is going on, start directing insults against Patriarch, or Metropolitan, or Archbishop, or Bishop, or Archimandrite, or Igumen, or the ecclesiastical order [in general], and thereby disrupt holy singing in that church, the Sovereign should be informed of this, an investigation should be inaugurated, and for his action the scoundrel should be whipped at the marketplace.
4. And should anyone, upon entering God's church, start a fight with another person and kill that person, the murderer should be sentenced to death.
5. And should he only wound and not kill, he [the guilty one] should be mercilessly whipped at the market place, put in prison for a month, and made to compensate the injured person twice for the insult.
6. And if a scoundrel should strike anyone in God's church but inflict no wound, he should be whipped with a cane for this insult and [be] made to compensate the injured person.
7. If someone should insult another person verbally but should not harm him [bodily], the guilty person should be put into prison for a month. And whoever was insulted should be compensated in order to prevent the occurrence of any outrages in God's churches in the future.
8. In church during the singing, no one can present a personal petition to the Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich of All Russia, nor to the Great Lord, His Eminence Joseph, Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia, nor to Metropolitans, Archbishops, and Bishops, in order to prevent confusion in the church during the church singing, because God's church was created for prayer [not for business]. All Orthodox Christians should stand and pray in God's churches with fear and should not think of worldly matters.
9. And whoever should forget the fear of God and disregard the Tsar's decree and petition either the Sovereign, or the Patriarch, or other officials about a personal matter in God's church during church singing, such petitioner should be thrown into prison for a term to be determined by the Sovereign.

Chapter II: The Sovereign's Honour, and How to Guard His Health

1. Should anyone think maliciously about the Sovereign's health, and should another person report him concerning this malicious thought, there should be made an inquiry into his malicious thought and intended action against his Tsarist Majesty, and such person, upon investigation, should be executed.
2. Likewise, should a member of his Tsarist Majesty's government wish to seize control of the Muscovite state and become Sovereign, and should he, to attain this evil goal, organize an army or conspire with the enemies of his Tsarist Majesty, issue charters, or aid them in any way, in order to seize control of the Muscovite state or do some other foolish thing with the aid of those enemies of the Sovereign, and should someone report him, there should be organized a proper inquiry into his treason, and such a traitor should be sentenced to death.
3. And should anyone give away a city of his Tsarist Majesty to an enemy through treason, or accept foreigners into cities of his Tsarist Majesty for treasonous purposes, and then investigation be conducted into it, such traitors should be executed.
4. And should anyone consciously and treacherously burn either a city or manors, and then be apprehended during his act or afterwards, and an inquiry be conducted into his evil act, such person should be burned mercilessly.
5. Service estates, hereditary estates, and livestock of all traitors should be transferred to the possession of the Sovereign.
6. Wives and children of traitors, if they were aware of their treasons, should be executed.
7. If a wife knew nothing of the treason of her husband, or children of the treason of their father, and if this be verified by an investigation, such persons should be neither executed nor punished; the Sovereign will determine how much of the service and hereditary estates they should be allowed to retain for their livelihood.
8. If a traitor had children, but they, prior to his treason, were separated from him, did not live with him, and hence knew nothing of his treason, and if they had their own livestock and their own hereditary estates, from such children neither livestock nor hereditary estates should be confiscated.
9. And if someone should commit treason and leave [as survivors] in the Muscovite state either his father, or his mother, or his brothers, or his cousins, or his uncles, or any other member of his family, and if he lived with them and they jointly owned their livestock and their hereditary estates, such traitor should be thoroughly investigated in order to determine whether his father, or his mother, or his relatives knew of his treason. Should an investigation determine that they knew of his treason, they should be executed and their livestock and hereditary and service estates transferred to the Sovereign.
10. If, however, an investigation should determine that they knew nothing of the treason of the traitor, they should not be executed and their livestock and their service and hereditary estates should not be confiscated.
11. If a traitor should return from a foreign country to the Muscovite state, and if the Sovereign should pardon him and forgive his guilty action, and then if he should obtain a new service estate through service, the Sovereign may return his old hereditary estate to him, but he cannot grant him his old service estate.
12. If someone should report that another person has revealed a great state secret, but he does not have witnesses to substantiate his report, does not convince anyone [with his arguments], and no evidence exists to aid in the investigation into the revelation of state secrets, a decree should be issued on this problem, following an inquiry, as the Sovereign should direct.
13. And if someone should reveal the state of the Sovereign's health, or if they should disclose information about people whom they serve, or, if they be peasants, to whom they belong, and if such reports are not convincing, they should not be believed. After they have been severely punished for spreading lies, through merciless whipping with a knut [a type of whip], such individuals should then be returned to those persons to whom they belong. Such informers should not be believed or listened to in the future on anything except matters of great importance.
14. And should anyone, regardless of his status, say that he is a government official, and then should it be determined that he is not, such person should be knuted for impersonating a government official, and afterwards he should be returned to those persons to whom he belongs.
15. And if someone apprehends a traitor on the road, and either kills him or captures him and returns him to the Sovereign, that traitor should [in the latter case] be executed, and the person who apprehended or killed him should be given the livestock of the traitor as the Sovereign should decree.
16. And whoever should report that another person had revealed state secrets or was about to commit treason, and the person who had been reported on is absent at the time, that person must be found and he must confront the accuser face to face. If a thorough investigation should verify the validity of the charge, a decree should be issued as stipulated above.
17. If a person should report that another is about to reveal state secrets or to commit treason, and then fail to prove it, and if an investigation should determine that he fabricated his evidence, such an informer should be punished in the same manner that the person who had been reported upon would have been punished if he had been found guilty.
18. Should a person in the Muscovite state, regardless of his social status, learn of the existence of mass discontent, or conspiracy, or any other evil design, [in Moscow] the existence of such plots should be reported either to Aleksei Mikhailovich, the Sovereign Tsar and Grand Prince of All Russia, or to his boyars or his high assistants, or [in the provinces], to local voevodas [provincial governors] or other officials of the central government.
19. If someone should know or hear of the existence of mass discontent or a conspiracy or any other evil design against his Tsarist Majesty, but fails to report it either to the Sovereign, or his boiars, or his high assistants, or voevodas, or other officials of the central government in provincial cities, and then the Sovereign should find out that that person was aware of the existence of such action but failed to report it, and an inquiry be conducted into it, such persons should be sentenced to death without mercy.
20. During an insurrection, mass discontent, or conspiracy, no one should break into, or rob, or inflict bodily harm on his Tsarist Majesty, his boyars, his high assistants, members of the boiarskaia duma [Council of Notables], his advisers, his voevodas in regiments, and other officials in provincial cities.
21. Whoever should initiate mass discontent or a conspiracy against his Tsarist Majesty or his boiars, or his high assistants, or members of the boiarskaia duma or his advisers, or voevodas in regiments, or other officials of the central government in provincial cities, and pillage or inflict bodily harm on them, those persons who initiate it should be condemned to death without mercy.
22. Should voevodas of regiments or officials of the central government in provincial cities inform the Sovereign that either service people or people of other classes had approached them in numbers resembling mass discontent or a conspiracy and threatened to kill them, and if those people who had been reported on should petition the Sovereign to investigate those voevodas and officials of the central government and deny that they had approached them with any mass discontent or a conspiracy and say that they came only in small numbers to petition them, upon such petition of the Sovereign a thorough investigation should be conducted of those city officials and, in the regiments, of the military personnel. If this investigation in cities and regiments should determine that these people really came to the voevodas and to the officials of the central government with genuine petitions and not for robbery purposes [as it had been reported], such people should not be sentenced to death. Those voevodas and officials of the central government who erroneously reported to the Tsar should be severely punished as the Tsar may determine. . . .

Chapter IV: Forgers of Documents, Signatures, and Seals

1. If someone should forge a charter of the Sovereign, or the Sovereign's signature on a charter, or if he should alter anything on an official document without the Sovereign's authorization, or the approval of either the boiars, or members of the boiarskaia duma, or of lesser officials, and forge the signature of a clerk, or if someone should make for himself a seal similar to the Sovereign's seal, such individual, upon investigation, should be executed for such crimes.
2. If someone should steal the Sovereign's seal from the Sovereign's charters or other official documents and attach these seals to forged documents, or if he should write illegal documents and then attach such seals to them without the Sovereign's permission, such individuals should be executed and their forged documents invalidated.
3. If a person should forge some documents and then die, and after his death these documents should be discovered by members of his family or his officials, and if either members of his family or his officials should petition the Sovereign on the basis of these documents, such petitions should be investigated to determine how they obtained these documents, where they found them, and whether they were aware that these documents were forged. If, in the course of the investigation, these persons should acknowledge their complicity or knowledge that these documents were forged and that they held them for personal gain, such individuals should be sentenced to death.
4. But if the investigation should determine that they held those forged documents without being aware that they were forged, such people should not be sentenced to death; the documents must be invalidated and no one should stand trial.

Chapter V: Mint Masters Who May Counterfeit Money

1. If mint masters should make either copper, or tin, or economical money [that is, adulterated money], or if they should add copper, tin, or lead to silver and thereby cause harm to the Sovereign's treasury, such mint masters should be executed by pouring molten matter down their throats.
2. And if gold or silver masters accept someone's gold or silver work and start adding either copper, or tin, or lead to the silver or gold, upon discovery of this [alteration] they should be knuted. And those people who were hurt by this action, that is, by [the mint master's] alteration of gold and silver through copper, tin, or lead, should be compensated for the loss suffered.

Chapter VI: Permits to Travel into Other Countries

1. And should someone wish to travel for trade purposes or other private matters from the Muscovite state into a foreign country which is on peaceful terms with the Muscovite state, such person in Moscow must petition the Tsar, and in [other] cities [petitions are to be addressed to the local] voevodas for a travel permit. Without a travel permit no person should travel. Voevodas in cities must issue travel permits without delays.
2. If a voevoda should delay issuing a travel permit and thereby cause delay and a loss, and then if a petition of grievance be submitted about it [to the Tsar], and then an inquiry be held about it, those voevodas will incur the Tsar's great anger. And if they cause a loss they must pay it double, and this [the fine] should go to the petitioner.
3. And if someone should travel into another country without a travel permit, and having been in another state then return to the Muscovite state, and then be reported by someone that he had travelled without a travel permit for treasonous purposes or for some other foolishness, such reports about illegal travels into foreign countries without the Sovereign's permission should be thoroughly investigated. And if an investigation should establish that a person travelled into another country without a travel permit for treasonous purposes or other evil matter, such person, upon investigation, should be sentenced to death.
4. And should investigation establish that a person travelled into another country without a travel permit for trade purposes and not for treason, he should be penalised by knuting, so that others, seeing it, might learn that they should not do the same.
5. And in those border cities and districts where villages of the Sovereign and villages of state peasants, and hereditary and service estates adjoin Lithuanian or German border lands, and where the Sovereign's lands thrust into the Lithuanian or German side or where Lithuanian or German lands thrust into the Sovereign's side, in such case free people and peasants living in the Sovereign's villages, or in villages of state peasants, or on hereditary and service estates, are permitted to travel through those Lithuanian or German border lands without permits from one city to another; they are also allowed to meet Lithuanian or German people; it should not be held against them that they live adjacent to those Lithuanians or Germans who live in border areas.
6. Should service or hereditary nobles of border areas hear that some of their own people or their peasants are trying to commit treason or some other foolishness, they should notify the Sovereign, and in cities they should also provide appropriate information to local voevodas and bring such people or peasants before them. The voevodas should thoroughly interrogate and investigate such suspects who had been reported upon, using all possible means, and then should report their findings to the Sovereign. Such people should be held in prison until the Sovereign decides what to do with them.

Chapter XI: Legal Procedure Concerning the Peasants

1. All peasants who have fled from lands belonging to the Tsar and are now living on lands belonging to church officials, votchinniki (hereditary landowners), and pomeschiki (service landowners) are to be returned to the Tsar's lands according to the [land registers] of 1627-31 regardless of the urochney leta [Note: this refers to a previous fifteen-year limit on forcing escaped serfs to return to the masters]. . . .
3. Fugitive peasants must be returned with their wives, children, and movable property, plus their standing grain and threshed grain. But the possessions which the fugitive peasants owned in the years prior to this code are not to be claimed. If a fugitive peasant gave his daughter, sister, or niece in marriage to a local peasant, do not break up the marriage. Leave the girl with the local peasant. It was not a crime in the past to receive fugitive peasants — there was only a time limit for recovering them. Therefore the lord of the local peasant should not be deprived of his labor, especially as lands have changed hands frequently so that the present lord may not have been the person who received the fugitives anyway.
4. All hereditary landowners, service landowners, and officials managing the Tsar’s lands must have proper documents identifying their peasants in case of dispute. Such documents must be written by public scribes. ... Illiterate landholders must have their documents signed by impartial, trustworthy persons. ...
6. Hereditary and service landowners are not to be held responsible for the taxes of fugitive peasants who were registered on their lands in the census of 1646-47 after they have been returned to their rightful lords. Future taxes will be collected from the lords to whom they are returned on the basis of the documents legalizing the return.
7. A hereditary landowner who buys an estate has a right to all the peasants who were inscribed in the [land register] of 1627-31. If all such peasants are not on the estate as listed in the purchase documents, the purchaser may take from the seller's other estates replacement peasants with all their movable property, their standing grain, and their threshed grain.
8. All cases concerning fugitive peasants which were settled either by a royal decree or by amicable agreement prior to this code may not be reopened.
9. All peasants who have fled or flee henceforth from the landholder with whom they were registered in the census books of 1646-47 must be returned with their brothers, nephews, grandsons, wives, movable property, standing grain, and threshed grain without any time limit. Henceforth no one may receive another's peasant and harbor them for himself.
10. Henceforth a person who harbors another's peasants must pay the rightful lord ten rubles per year for each fugitive to compensate the plaintiff for his lost income and the taxes he paid while the peasant was absent and must surrender the fugitive peasants to him.
11. The census records of 1646-47 may be used in disputes over fugitive peasants in cases where the peasants in question or their fathers were not registered in the [land register] of 1627-31.
12. If a girl flees after the promulgation of this code and marries another landholder’s peasant, then her husband and children will be returned with her to her former landholder. The movable property of her husband, however, will not be returned with them.
13. When a widower marries a fugitive peasant girl, any children he had by a previous marriage will not be surrendered with him to the lord of his new wife, but will remain with the lord of his first wife.
14. When a plaintiff funds property with the fugitive girl, a court will decide the deposition of the property.
15. If a widowed peasant remarries in flight, then both she and her husband will be returned to the lord of her first husband, provided her first husband was registered with a landholder.
16. If the peasant widow's first husband was not registered with a landholder, then she must live on the premises belonging to the lord of the peasant she married.
17. If a peasant in flight marries off his daughter, then his son-in-law will be returned to the landholder of his wife. And if that son-in-law has children by a first wife, then the children will not be surrendered to the plaintiff.
18. A peasant woman in flight who marries will be returned with her husband to her former landholder.
19. Peasant women who are permitted to marry another landholder's peasant must be given release documents in which they are precisely described.
20. When peasants arrive in a hereditary estate or in a service estate and say that they are free people and wish to live with the landholder as peasants, the landholder must ascertain the truth of their claim. Within a year such people must be brought to Moscow or another large city for certification.
21. The lord who did not check carefully whether such people were free must pay the plaintiff to whom the peasants rightfully belong ten rubles per year per fugitive to compensate the plaintiff for his lost income and the taxes he paid while the peasant was absent.
22. Peasant children who deny their parents must be tortured.
23. Those people of any rank who give loans to another lord's peasants to entice them to their lands will lose the loans when the peasants are returned to their rightful lords.
24. The brothers, children, and relatives of the peasants of some service landowners and hereditary landowners were registered in the census books as living in the houses of their fathers and relatives. After the census they separated and began to live by themselves in their own houses. The census of 1646-47 was taken under oath . . .; if mistakes were made, people were punished severely and others retook the census. Therefore the census is to be regarded as just and definitive and after September 1, 1648, no one may complain that lords attempted to conceal households by such doubling up to reduce their taxes. . . .
26. If a defendant [landholder] admits that he has fugitive peasants but denies that the peasants came to him with any property; and if the plaintiff lists the property in his suit and then wins the case by an oath, award him five rubles for the movable property of each peasant and return the peasants to him.
27. If [a landholder] denies during a trial that he has someone's [fugitive] peasant and takes an oath on this, and later the peasant turns up on his estate, return the peasant to the plaintiff with all the movable property listed in the suit. Beat the false oath taker with the knut for three days in the market place as an example to others and then jail him for a year. Henceforth do not believe him in any matter and do not grant him a trial against anyone for anything.
28. The children of peasants who are taken from a defendant and surrendered to a plaintiff by a court order must be surrendered even though they were not inscribed in the [land register] of 1627-31--provided they are living with their parents and not separately.
29. A defendant who denies in legal proceedings that he has another's [fugitive] peasants and property, but then under oath confesses that he has the peasants on his estate, but continues to deny having the property, must pay for the property as well as return the peasants because he lied about the peasants.
30. Hereditary and service landowners may not transfer their service estate peasants to their hereditary estate and thus lay waste to their service estates.
31. If peasants are transferred from a service estate to a hereditary estate and subsequently the service estate is granted to another landowner, then the new holder of the service estate may petition the Tsar for the return of the peasants to his service estate with their movable property, standing grain, and threshed grain.
32. Peasants may voluntarily hire themselves out to work for people of all ranks, but the latter may not hire them on condition of servitude or bondage. When the hirelings finish their work, they must be discharged without any hindrance.
33. Bondmen and peasants who flee abroad and then return to Russia cannot claim that they are free men, but must be returned to their former master.
34. When fugitive peasants of different landowners marry abroad, and then return to Russia, the landholders will cast lots for the couple. The winning service landowner gets the couple and must pay five rubles to the landholder who lost because both of the peasants were in flight abroad.