An "ideal Code of Law for Russia": Legal Experts and the Codification Projects in the Commission on Laws 1804-1826

• Applicant: Dr. Alexander Kaplunovsky
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270035948

This project aims to study and reconstruct the codification activities of the Legislative Commission of 1804-1826 in the Russian Empire. These activities are placed in the context of the tensions (noted by Richard Wortman in his seminal work on Russian legal consciousness) between the sacral, autocratic power of the monarch on the one hand, and the tasks of rationalization of imperial administration and justice, on the other. Up to date, the work of the Commission remains practically unexplored as it has always been overshadowed by the figure of the great statesman of the epoch, Mikhail Speransky, and his main work, the Digest of Laws (Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii). The history of the Commission appears to be in many respects a paradigmatic one. Under the leadership of Gustav Rosenkampff, the Commission elaborated since 1803 a conception of codification, which envisioned two formats: a codex (Ulozhenie), and a digest of laws (Svod). The Commission also revised and systematized current legislation of major branches of law, using the patterns of continental European codifications as a model. It also modernized and created legal language and norms and introduced them into the discourses of power. The project will research the following problems: 1) To what extent did the work of legal experts employed by the Commission contributed to the separation of power from the sacral person of the monarch and toward its transfer to the "state"? 2) To what extent did the work of the Commission contributed to the introduction of the categories of "rights" and "law" to the discourses of power, and to what extend did it promote the usage of these categories as an instrument of governmentality (Foucault) in imperial administration and justice? 3) Which codes and legal models were elaborated by the Commission's experts for the socially, culturally and ethnically heterogeneous continental empire? 4) Finally, what place was accorded in the political communication and decision-making of Alexandrine era to legal scholars as subjects and producers of meaning/"thought collective" (Ludwik Fleck)? The research project aspires to supplement the concept of the "imperial rights regime" (Jane Burbank) with the pioneering discussion of the hitherto unexplored legal and ideological aspects of the formation of this regime from the perspective of the monarchical authority, political elites, and legal experts, who elaborated codification projects as well as specific legislative solutions of current problems of imperial governance. Thus, it will also contribute to the ongoing discussion of the influential thesis of Richard Wortman, who defined the legal consciousness and the significance of legal experts in imperial Russia as "cultural fiction."

• DFG Programme: Research Grants