«…By Our Care for the Common Good»: Political and Legal Vectors of the Rule of Law Policy in the Russian Empire (1700–1730s)

The article provides the author›s view concerning an organizational role of the rule of law policy in construction of an institutional state and in the formation of the public law basis of the supreme state power. This problem is considered in the context of implementation of the legislative policy of Peter I and Anna Ioannovna. The author put the focus on turning the monarch into the sole guarantor of justice and increasing his socio-political image in the perception of social groups of subjects endowed with various rights of estate. Measures in the field of strengthening the rule of law are considered through the prism of supranational political and legal strategies of the Russian autocracy, ensuring the dominance of the monarch in the political system of the Russian Empire against the background of the slow formation of imperial state law institutions, an archaic legal system and the absence of systematized legislation. The article describes main synchronous directions of legislative initiatives that ensure the formation of a special status of ruling persons in lawmaking and the judicial system. On the one hand, it is a block of nominal decrees and other normative legal acts initiated by the monarch, formalizing the activities of a number of state institutions and increasing the personal responsibility of officials for violating official instructions. On the other hand, the development of mechanisms for the monarch›s personal intervention in the justice system in order to fill gaps in legislation mitigates criminal liability of individuals, strengthens socio-political support for the supreme state power by establishing a balance between the ideal of the «common good» and the private interests of all members of society. Based on the historical material, the conclusion is made about the decisive importance of the rule of law policy in achieving consensus between the state and society with the help of organizational and legal means that provide an individual or a social group with the illusion of social stability and inviolability of the state legal system.

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