By 1589 Russian law had completed the move from the medieval dyadic legal system to the more modern triadic system. In the medieval era, state authority barely existed, and law was as much a device for raising revenue by officials as it was a tool for conflict resolution. In the first third of the sixteenth century, state officials began to play a much more active, inquisitional role in the judicial process and tried both to deter and to solve crimes. Medieval wrongs were treated as torts, but by 1589 they were regarded as crimes. Crimes included murder, arson, battery, robbery, theft, treason, bribe-taking, rebellion, recidivism, sacrilege, slander, and perjury. Sanctions included fines, capital and corporal punishment, mutilation, and incarceration.
Around 1550 the importance of literacy increased dramatically, and Muscovy began its transition from an oral society to one in which documents were increasingly important. The evolution was crucial in the laws of evidence, as faith-based evidence such as oaths, ordeals, and the casting of lots began to yield to written evidence. Witnesses, visual confrontations, general investigations, and confessions also grew in importance.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1497
The law as a revenue instrument for officials remained strong in 1589, and those officials were not supposed to be corrupt. The 1589 code paid considerable attention to establishing judicial procedures.
There was considerable social legislation in the 1589 Sudebnik. Slaves of various sorts were mentioned, as was the fact that the peasants, discussed frequently, were in the process of being enserfed. Only perhaps 2 percent of the population were townsmen, but commerce was important in the Dvina Land. The collection of interest was permitted, at a maximum of 20 percent per year. Like most law, the Sudebnik of 1589 was concerned with cleaning up “social messes” and providing an infrastructure for the orderly resolution of conflicts in property and inheritance disputes, especially important in the Dvina Land where peasants still owned most of the land. Priority was also given to the preservation of the social order, particularly male dominance and other gender distinctions. See also: LAW CODE OF 1649; LEGAL SYSTEMS; MUSCOVY; SUDEBNIK OF 1497; SUDEBNIK OF 1550
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hellie, Richard. (1965). “Muscovite Law and Society: The Ulozhenie of 1649 as a Reflection of the Political and Social Development of Russia since the Sudebnik of 1589.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Hellie, Richard. (1992). “Russian Law From Oleg to Peter the Great.” Foreword to The Laws of Rus’: Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries, tr. and ed. Daniel H. Kaiser. Salt Lake City, UT: Charles Schlacks.
to local authorities and received higher compensation when dishonored. However, Sukonnaya sotnya members were not allowed to purchase estates of patrimonial land or to travel abroad.
Less prosperous than their counterparts in the other two corporations, Sukonnaya sotnya members tended to assist other government merchants and administer smaller enterprises. However, they were held responsible for shortfalls in revenue collection.
In the early seventeenth century, there were 250 members of the Sukonnaya sotnya This figure declined to 130 in 1630 and to 116 by 1649, despite the appointment of 156 members between 1635 and 1646. In spite of the government’s demands, not all members of the Sukonnaya sotnya had houses in Moscow.
Sukonnaya sotnya steadily declined in importance in the second half of the seventeenth century. By 1678 there were only fifty-one houses belonging to Sukonnaya sotnya members in the capital. Apparently, the corporation was effectively disbanded in the 1680s, and many of its members joined the Gostinaya sotnya.
By the early eighteenth century, all members of the Sukonnaya sotnya were registered in guilds, in 1724 in Moscow and four years later in the rest of the country. See also: GOSTI; GOSTINAYA SOTNYA; MERCHANTS
JARMO T. KOTILAINE
A privileged corporation of merchants.
Sukonnaya sotnya (Cloth[iers’] Hundred) was a privileged corporation of merchants who were ranked third in importance and wealth below the gosti and members of the Gostinaya sotnya. Sukonnaya sotnya was formed in the late sixteenth century and based on previously extant corporations of clothiers in Moscow and elsewhere.
The legal status of Sukonnaya sotnya members was defined by a charter issued to them at the turn of the seventeenth century. Members were exempt from direct taxation. They were not subject
1498
(1892-1940), prominent Tatar Bolshevik and Soviet activist during the Russian Revolution and civil war.
Mirza Khaidargalievich Sultan-Galiev’s rapid rise to prominence, sudden fall from grace, and subsequent vilification in Stalin’s Russia has provided several generations with a metaphor for the promise and frustrations of early Soviet nationality policy.
Born in Ufa province in 1892, Sultan-Galiev had brief careers as a schoolteacher, librarian, and journalist, turning to revolutionary activities around 1913. In July 1917 he joined the Bolshevik party in Kazan, but maintained ties to many intellectuals and moderate socialists in the Muslim community.
Sultan-Galiev played a major role in the establishment of Soviet power in Kazan and helped suppress an anti-Bolshevik Tatar nationalist revolt there in the first part of 1918. He was an early advocate of the ill-fated Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic, promulgated in March 1918 but never implemented, and of the Tatar Autonomous Republic founded in 1920 (today the Republic of Tatarstan). An able organizer and public speaker, Sultan-Galiev served the Soviet state during the civil war as chairman of the Central Muslim Military Collegium, chairman of the Central Bureau of Communist Organizations of Peoples of the East, and member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat of Nationality Affairs. This last position made him the highest-ranking member of a Muslim nationality in Soviet Russia.
Sultan-Galiev’s numerous newspaper articles and speeches outlined a messianic role for Russia’s Muslim peoples, who would bring socialist revolution to the subject peoples of Asia and help them overthrow the chains of European empires. Chief theorist of the so-called right wing among the Tatar intelligentsia, he hoped to reconcile communism with nationalism. Although personally an atheist, he advocated a cautious approach toward anti- religious propaganda among Russia’s Muslim population. These views cause some emigr? and foreign scholars to characterize Sultan-Galiev as a prophet of the national liberation struggle against colonial rule.
By the end of 1922 Sultan-Galiev had come into direct conflict with Josef Stalin’s nationality policy, which he openly attacked in party meetings. He was particularly concerned with two issues, (1) plans for the new federal government (USSR), which would disadvantage Tatars and other Muslim groups that were not granted union republic status, and (2) the persistence of Russian chauvinism and of a dominant Russian role in governing Muslim republics. In an effort to silence this criticism, officials acting on Stalin’s initiative arrested Sultan-Galiev in May 1923 and charged him with conspiring to undermine Soviet nationality policy and with illegally contacting Basmachi rebels. Although Sultan-Galiev was soon released-stripped of his party membership and all positions-a major conference on the nationality question in June 1923 emphasized that Stalin’s policies in this area were not to be challenged.
By the end of the 1920s, Sultan-Galievism (sul-tangalievshchina) had become a common charge leveled against Tatars and other Muslims and was later deployed widely during the purges. Sultan-Galiev was rearrested in 1928 and tried with seventy-six others as part of a “Sultan-Galievist
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
counterrevolutionary organization” in 1930. His death penalty was soon commuted, and he was released in 1934 and permitted to live in Saratov province. However, his third arrest in 1937 was followed by execution in January 1940. The case of Sultan-Galiev was reviewed by the Central Committee in 1990, leading to his complete rehabilitation and emergence as a new and old national hero in post-Soviet Tatarstan. See also: ISLAM;
