This volume contains a collection of the most important Russian constitutional projects from the late 18th to the early 19th century. In accordance with Russian legal tradition, only those texts were selected and edited whose form and content complied as completely as possible with the concept of a modern constitution. These texts reflect the tendency in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century toward reform of the state and social order. The documents cover a period stretching from the last attempt by the enlightened dictatorship to reform the state in around 1800, up to the legal policy doctrines of the Decembrists from the 1820s.
A draft by Alexander Andreevič Bezborodko (1747–1799) from 1799 contains numerous progressive provisions, such as provisions for an assembly of the representatives of the estates, the granting of citizens rights and the reorganizing of the administration and laws.
Also included in this publication is the introduction to the state statute book (Vvedenie k Uloženiju gosudarstvennych zakonov), written by Michail Michailovič Speranskij (1772–1839) ten years later, commissioned by the Czar Alexander I (1777–1825). This statute book aimed, among other things, at a liberalisation of the country’s feudal structures and a representative government.
The draft of a constitutional charter for the Russian Empire (Gosudarstvennaja ustavnaja gramota Rossijskoj imperii) written between 1818 and 1820 under the direction of Nikolaj Nikolaevič Novosil’cevs (1761–1836), draws on the constitutional experiences of other European countries, especially France, Poland, Germany (the constitutions of Bavaria and Württemberg), and influenced subsequent projects of the liberal bureaucracy until the beginning of the 20th century.
In contrast to attempts at reforming the state apparatus undertaken by the Russian government itself, the constitutional projects of the Decembrists of 1825 represented a revolutionary alternative to Czarist rule. Building on the Enlightenment’s concept of natural law and influenced by the constitutions of North America, they endorsed sovereignty of the people, a republican state structure and the abolishment of serfdom.
Thus a scholarly annotated collection of Russian historical constitutional projects based on authentic texts is now available to all researchers, teachers and students of political studies, political philosophy, constitutional law and history.
The volume’s editor, Oleg Subbotin, teaches at the Belarusian State Pedagogical University in Minsk.
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Oleg Subbotin, University of Minsk.
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