The years 1497-1606 witnessed as much change in Russian local administration as any other period one can think of. In the fifteenth century the prince's agent in any locale was his governor (voevoda, namestnik) to govern a precise area on rotation for periods of one to three years. The governor was expected to take in sufficient revenue (called 'feeding' - kormlenie) to allow him to support himself for another period in Moscow, where he probably served in the cavalry.[244] Voevoda-justice was a dyadic process supreme. The governor went to his assignment and took his slaves with him. Depending on his personal energy level, each governor apportioned the duties between himself and his slaves. There are transcripts extant in which all the people in a trial were slaves: the judge, the plaintiff and the accused. To simplify, by 1556 the Moscow-sent governor was phased out, in favour of locally elected officials who were to manage criminal and civil cases. This was not total decentralisation because Moscow demanded that the elected officials report to the capital immediately upon election and then required them to submit records of their practice either annually or biannually. This was how the Poles found the situation when they arrived in 1606. The 1589 Sudebnik still mentioned the voevoda for reasons that no one comprehends.
Also for reasons no one comprehends, the Sudebniki prohibited bribe-taking. Earlier that form of revenue raising was just regulated.[245]
The hordes of officials had their fees spelled out for almost anything imaginable - for holding of trials, for writing and sealing documents, for travelling on foot and on horseback to perform their missions (such as delivering summonses or bringing someone in for trial); for registering loans and slaves. The Sudebniki also prescribed the percentage of suits to be turned over to the court as well as a host of other fees, all of which were to assure that those carrying out Middle Muscovite law would not go hungry.[246]
As mentioned earlier, Russian law especially worried about 'the law's delay'. Expeditious resolution of conflicts and payment ofthe required fees was almost always uppermost in the oral society of 1497,[247] which was becoming increasingly literate after 1550.[248] Delaying the process, which by 1550 had become triadic, was something the state (at least in theory) would not tolerate.[249]
The most elemental point of the Sudebniki was that judges in no way could make law, by interpretation, by analogy, by 'flexibility' or any other means. The judge had to resolve the case in front of him on the basis of what was presented at trial. Any other case had to be sent to Moscow for resolution.[250]The degree of centralisation called for in 1550 is extraordinary: many cases had to be sent to Moscow for final resolution.[251] The 'Agapetus state' (in which the sovereign believed he was God's vicegerent on earth and most of his subjects concurred in that belief) could not tolerate norms being established anywhere other than in Moscow. In the eighteenth century, this led to a clogging of the Russian courts, which was only undone by Alexander II's famous Judicial Reform of 1864.
There were different levels of courts in early modern Russia - local, peasant, provincial, capital, the ruler's court - but there was no system of appeal.[252] The verdict a litigant got was the verdict the litigant was stuck with. The law's assumption (and also its demand) was that the judge was a disinterested person who weighed the testimony and, following the rules, rendered a verdict which any reasonable person in the same circumstances would issue. A litigant could sue ajudge for malfeasance, but that was another matter-which did not reopen the case. Official malfeasance was a major concern in 1550, and much of the code's severe punishments (high fines, public flogging, jailing) were reserved for officials who abused their positions.[253] A litigant also could appeal to the sovereign (grand prince until 1547, tsar after that), and the ruler, employing what we might call his 'Agapetus powers', could reverse the case. That was not spelled out in the law at all, and if such a reversal occurred, it was an expression of his arbitrariness, not because anyone believed he had divine knowledge of the case. Whether this happened, and, if so, how often, is unknown. The law itself in 1550 became frequently an expression of arbitrariness. Instead of laying down a sanction for an offence, it just said that the culprit would be punished as the tsar decreed, a legal expression of the Agapetus state.[254]
The evolution of the rules of evidence is one of the most interesting developments in the Sudebniki. As just mentioned, the society was making a radical transition in this period from one based primarily on oral tradition[255] to one in which written documents could (it is too early to say 'should') play a major role (already seen in the Pskov Judicial Charter). The major force propelling this forward was the introduction of the chancelleries (prikazy) in 1550, which themselves kept records and demanded that their agents in the provinces keep them informed with a constant flow of information. By the i570s-i580s all officials of the Provincial Felony Administration were required to be literate. Those men were elected by their peers from among the ranks of the middle service class, the provincial cavalrymen.
Another form of evidence was divine revelation, such as the casting of lots,[256]the oath,[257] and the judicial duel (pole), the subject of a surprising number of articles.[258] Trial by combat seems to have been almost the premier form of evidence/proof in 1497 and 1550. At some time at the end of the sixteenth century it went out of use. No one knows why, but a good suggestion has been that the introduction of firearms (especially pistols) cast aspersion on notions that whoever was the better shot was the person designated by God as the righteous one. Another factor putting the duel out of business may have been the introduction of the concept of dishonour in the 1550 Sudebnik,[259] which expanded to the point in 1649 that everyone from the lowest slave or peasant to the highest boyar in Muscovy had a dishonour value either stated in the law or based on his governmental compensation entitlement level. Thus instead of having to fight a physical duel, a person who felt he had been dishonoured could go to court and the court would determine whether or not this was so. The oath suffered a decline in prestige as presumably the populace began to have increasing doubts that the Russian Orthodox Church was the sole source of truth. Material evidence (the stolen goods, for example) was used, as were varying forms of human evidence. One was witnesses (presumably primarily eyewitnesses; character, rumour or hearsay witnesses were no longer distinguished),[260] another was the judicial confrontation (the plaintiff had to confront the defendant face to face and repeat his charges). The last form of evidence was the investigation (a special subset of which was the 'general investigation' (poval'nyi obysk) in which an entire community was interrogated about 'Who owned the cow with the crooked horn?'; the litigant who got the most 'votes' won the case).[261]
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A forerunner can be seen in
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On the investigation