Residence was the principal determinant of judicial venue. Different chancelleries administered discrete regions ofthe country, and sent out governorsto their delegated parts of the realm. The Military Service Chancellery (Razriad) administered the southern frontier; the Kazan' Palace and Siberia Chancellery oversaw those areas. A handful of territorial chancelleries called chetverti (Novgorod, Ustiug, Kostroma and Galich) oversaw the north-west and northern areas to the Urals. The chancellery that oversaw the governor provided the higher instance for local cases. A significant exception was the city of Moscow, which did not have a governor. There the Moscow Administrative Chancellery enforced law and order for the taxpaying populace of the town.
A governor's administration varied according to the region he governed. Siberia, the middle Volga and the southern frontier were sparsely populated, had a high percentage of servitors of a contract service type, and relatively few taxpaying peasants to pay the costs of elected administration such as the guba system. The governor therefore ruled rather autonomously. But in the north - the lands stretching from the Novgorodian hinterland, to the Dvina watershed, eastward to the Urals and north to the White and Arctic Seas - peasant communities balanced meagre farming with forest exploitation, fishing, hunting, modest artisan work and trade and they organised themselves into self-governing communes at the regional (volost') and village levels here. Those belonging to the large monasteries so dominant in the north (Solovetskii, Kirillo-Belozerskii monasteries) were dependant on them, but the majority of the population was not enserfed, subject only to the tsars. For petty crimes, such as minor theft, brawls, land disputes, disagreements between neighbours, drunkenness, these communities handled their own affairs, with limited oversight by the governor. In criminal affairs they were overseen by governors and sometimes by guba institutions, although these were weakly developed in the north.[151]
Following Dmitriev's second principle - social status - many corporate groups were subordinate in fiscal, administrative and judicial matters to one of the chancelleries in Moscow, bypassing the jurisdiction of the local governor. The Foreign Affairs Chancellery had jurisdiction over most foreigners visiting Moscow as well as the Don cossacks, while the Foreign Military Chancellery had jurisdiction over European soldiers in Russian service. The Postal Chancellery had jurisdiction over post riders, the Stonework for stone and brick-workers on the southern frontier, the Armoury for factory workers, the Musketeer for musketeers and cossacks serving in towns, the Engineers' Chancellery for artillerymen. Privileged Moscow merchants were granted jurisdiction by the Chancellery of the Great Treasury, while the Moscow and Vladimir Judicial Chancelleries judged the higher ranks of landed servitors in civil issues. The Chancellery of the Great Palace was court of appeal for the tsar's (dvortsovye) properties, for non-enserfed communes, and in principle for Church people. When a plaintiff presented a case, he followed the rule that the venue was determined by the defendant's jurisdiction.
Finally, Dmitriev's third principle - type of crime - also determined jurisdiction. As we have seen, the Church claimed jurisdiction over spiritual issues. The Felony Chancellery had authority over the criminal law through the guba system. The Slavery Chancellery handled disputes about slave ownership, while the Service Land Chancellery handled probably the greatest volume of litigation in the seventeenth century, over land.
All in all, the Muscovite state was riddled with pockets ofjudicial autonomies within the overarching law asserted by the centre. These pockets included ethnic, religious and political communities in non-Russian colonial areas; courts of private landlords and the Church; ecclesiastical courts for religious and moral issues. The law interacted with 'society' in myriad venues and laws depending upon one's social status, religion, ethnicity and crime.
The practice of the law
The 1649 Ulozhenie declared itself authoritative over 'all people of the Muscovite state, from highest to lowest rank' (10: 1). In practice we see the full social range active in litigations. Even slaves could initiate suits, testify and offer evidence. Landlords also represented their dependants in court. Women could participate in court cases, although they were often represented by male kinsmen and spouses when such were available. Widows could litigate on their own behalf. Some limitations were introduced in this century: minors could not take an oath or sue (10: 185; 14: 5); the mentally incompetent could not litigate; peasants could not sue their landlords, nor spouses their partners, nor children their parents; freed slaves could not sue their former masters (10:174, 176-7).[152]
A striking aspect of Muscovite judicial practice in the seventeenth century was the lack of a specialised class of lawyers serving as judges or advocates. Muscovy had no professional legal schools. Most judges did not specialise in judging - provincial governors were jacks of all trades and relied upon the expertise of local under-secretaries or state secretaries assigned from Moscow chancelleries. The situation was somewhat different in the chancelleries, particularly by the second half ofthe century, when judges began to serve consistently in one chancellery, building up expertise.
Moscow's bureaucratic stratum - state secretaries (d'iaki) and undersecretaries (pod'iachie) - constituted a repository of practical judicial knowledge.[153] These men wrote the documentation for stages of a suit, selected relevant excerpts from law codes to advise the judge and hired themselves out to write petitions for litigants. We also find parish priests writing petitions and signing documents in place of illiterate litigants. But in the seventeenth century these literate judicial experts did not develop into a notarial class or a stratum of lawyers and legal advocates.
Corruption and bribery were constants in this judicial system, so much so that we do well to reorient our thinking on the topic. Local governors lived off fees collected injudicial and bureaucratic activities and from payments in cash and kind from their communities. They stood in a gift-exchange relationship with their community: they expected gifts from their subjects and the subjects in turn expected attention and concern. Muscovites recognised several types of gifts to judges and officials, only one of which - excessive fees for services not rendered - was considered illegal. The others - gifts at holidays, gifts to the official's family - were just considered the cost of doing business.[154]
For reasons of lack of specialisation, or the press of other duties, or conflicts over venue, or corruption or a host of other causes, the law was not a highly professional arena in seventeenth-century Russia. Delay was endemic, as well as complaints against judges for favouritism and enmity. Moscow chancelleries were responsive to replacing a judge when a litigant complained, and law codes are replete with exhortations, incentives and punishments to ensure speedy and honest justice. The late seventeenth century saw several efforts to reform governors' authority to make it less predatory on the taxpaying and merchant populations, and in a few celebrated cases governors were punished for excessive graft and corruption.[155]
151
A classic study ofgovernment in the north: M. M. Bogoslovskii,
152
Good surveys include A. G. Man'kov,
153
N. F. Demidova,
154
Brian L. Davies, 'The Politics of Give and Take:
155
Christoph Shmidt,