The Lillian Goldman Law Library is one of the few U.S. libraries that owns a set of the Complete Collected Laws of the Russian Empire (Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii). We now know that our set is an Imperial set, one that came from a palace of the Tsars.

Tatjana Lorkovic, Curator of Slavic and East European Collections, Yale University Library, provides a detailed account of the set's acquisition in her recent article, "The Past as Prologue: Building Yale University Library’s Slavic and East European Collection from the Beginning of the Twentieth Century until Today; Part One: 1896-1956," SOLANUS: International Journal for the Study of the Printed and Written Word in Russia and East-Central Europe, New Series, vol. 22 (2011), pp. 43-62. In summary, it came about as follows.

In 1927 Professor George Vernadsky, a Russian emigre, was hired by Yale to teach Russian history, and also to help the library develop its Russian holdings. Vernadsky reported that the most significant gap in Yale's collection was a set of the Complete Collected Laws of the Russian Empire (Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii), a 232-volume set. Vernadsky found a set for sale and warned that it could be Yale's last chance to acquire a complete set. The hefty price tag was initially an obstacle, but Law Librarian Frederick C. Hicks (1875-1956) stepped forward and committed the Law Library to the purchase. The set was purchased from a New York dealer, Simeon J. Bolan, who specialized in Russian books.

The 1920s-30s were the Golden Age for accessioning choice items of Russian origin as the Soviet State sold off unwanted early books in order to earn desperately needed foreign currency and finance ambitious economic plans.

The set is bound in a stunning bright green morocco with the Imperial arms in gold stamped on the front cover as a super libros (see the image below). The Imperial arms are sufficient to indicate Imperial provenance, but precisely to whom did the set belong? The answer lies in at the base of the spine, where the Russian text identifies the origin of the set as the Elagin Palace (see the image at right).

The Elagin Palace, located on the Elagin Island in St. Petersburg, became the summer home of the Empress Maria Fedorovna (1759-1828), mother of Emperor Alexander I (1777-1825). The original building was commissioned by I. P. Elagin, a St. Petersburg merchant, who is believed to have retained Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817), the most noted architect of his day in Russia and a pre-eminent practitioner of the Palladian style, to design the edifice. Emperor Alexander purchased the Palace to ease the burdens of travel for his mother, who found the trip to the outlying palaces at Tsarskoe selo to be too strenuous. Carlo di Giovanni Rossi (1775-1849) was retained to redesign and enlarge the estate. After the death of Maria Fedorovna, Elagin Palace declined into a summer residence for the Imperial family and gradually a place of diversion for Russian prime ministers, among them S. Witte (1849-1915) and P. A. Stolypin (1862-1911). The buildings sustained heavy damage during the Second World War. After restoration the palace became and remains a museum devoted to porcelain, glass, and some folk arts. The island is a popular park these days and has been used in Soviet films as a backdrop.

Although Empress Maria Fedorovna had a bookplate (represented in the Yale bookplate collection), the Collected Laws of the Russian Empire was published shortly after her death and therefore represented a “Palace set” rather than a personal copy.

• W. E. Butler, Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania State University
  Mike Widener, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," now on display in the Yale Law Library, is perhaps the first rare book exhibit in the U.S. to focus on the history of Russian law. The exhibit's lead curator, Professor William E. Butler of Penn State, will give a talk on the exhibit on May 9, in Room 121 of the Yale Law School (127 Wall Street, New Haven).

Butler is the pre-eminent U.S. authority on the law of the former Soviet Union. He is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of more than 120 books on Soviet, Russian, Ukrainian, and post-Soviet legal systems. He is a member of the Grolier Club, the leading U.S. society for book collectors, and the Organization of Russian Bibliophiles. He is also a leading bookplate collector who has authored several reference works on bookplates, and serves as Executive Secretary of the International Federation of Ex-Libris Societies.

The exhibit features principal landmarks in Russia's pre-1917 legal literature. Among these are the first printed collection of Russian laws, the 1649 "Sobornoe ulozhenie", and three versions of the "Nakaz", the law code that earned Empress Catherine the Great her reputation.

The exhibit is on display through May 25, 2012 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, located on Level L2 of the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street. The exhibit is open to the public, 9am-10pm daily.

Image: Portrait of Empress Catherine the Great, the frontispiece from Instruction donnée par Catherine II., impératrice et législatrice de toutes les Russies: a la commission établie par cette souveraine, pour travailler à la rédaction d'un nouveau code de loix (Lausanne: François Grasset & Comp., 1769). Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library.

The exhibit curators wish to thank the following individuals for their help in organizing this exhibit:

Karen S. Beck
Manager, Historical & Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

Molly Dotson
Bookplate Project Archivist, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, Yale University

Paula Zyats
Assistant Chief Conservator, Yale University Libraries

Marjorie F. B. Lemmon
Risk Manager, Yale University

Shana Jackson
Lillian Goldman Law Library

Basia Olszowa
Lillian Goldman Law Library

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Szeftel, Marc. The Russian Constitution of April 23, 1906: Political Institutions of the Duma Monarchy. Brussels: Librairie Encyclopédique, 1976. Yale University Library

The Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 weakened the monarchy sufficiently for demands to introduce a "constitution" limiting the powers of the Emperor and creating a parliament called the State Duma to be realized. Although the word "constitution" was never used in the document itself, the expression "Basic Law" has come to mean the equivalent of a constitution in Russian political theory and practice.

Even though the canons of Marx, Engels, and Lenin did not contemplate the enactment of a post-revolutionary constitution, the Bolshevik Party together with the other Russian political parties and movements in existence after the abdication of the Tsar in February 1917 supported the preparation of a Constitution for the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, ultimately introduced in 1918. In the post-Soviet era those who prepared the present 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation looked back to the Basic Law of 1906 for inspiration and experience.

Marc Szeftel's book contains the only English-language translation of the 1906 Russian Basic Law.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Wortman, Richard S. The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). Lillian Goldman Law Library

The period 1864 to 1917 is widely known as "The Golden Age" of Russian law and the Russian legal profession. The reforms of the Russian judiciary and establishment of the "Advokatura" (the professional society of legal professionals who represented litigants) were perceived to be the principal reasons for this "Golden Age".

Wortman's study (recently translated into Russian) fundamentally altered our perception of these legal reforms. Doubting that a "Golden Age" could appear spontaneously and suddenly, he persuasively traced the reforms back to the professionalization of the Russian civil service under Alexander I, the foundation of law faculties in other urban centers besides Moscow (St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kazan, and others), the formation of a cadre of Russian jurists gradually appointed to administrative, judicial, and academic posts, the inclination of these jurists to regard law as an independent source of authority, the codification of Russian legislation, the publication of treatises and textbooks based on positive Russian law (rather than natural law), and the gradual emergence of an authentic Russian jurisprudence.

For Wortman the judicial reforms of 1864 were not the inexplicable commencement of a Golden Age, but the ultimate culmination of institutional modernization and the happy confluence of personalities. In due course these institutions, and the sense of legal consciousness which they encouraged, proved to be incompatible with the Russian brand of autocratic absolutism and contributed to the appearance of a constitutional monarchy in 1906.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 – May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Tomsinov, V. A. Kvestianskaia reforma 1861 goda v Rossii [Peasant Reform of 1861 in Russia]. Moscow: Zertsalo, 2012. Private Collection

Sometimes reforms are born in the bowels of revolution, but like as not also in the measured reflections of a leadership committed to change. The emancipation of Russia’s serfs is properly dated to 19 February 1861, when Alexander II issued the necessary documents to fundamentally reshape the legal relationship between landowner and serf that had subsisted for centuries. In the United States analogous legal relationships had led to a devastating Civil War.

The emancipation of Russian serfs opened a series of “Great State Transformations” that during the 1860-70s brought far-reaching changes to the socio-economic and political life of Russia. Out of a population of 67 million persons (1858-59 census), some 23 million were serfs. It was this segment of the population that was liberated and granted civil rights under Russian law. The reforms immediately demonstrated inadequacies in the judicial system, still appointed on the basis of the old system of estates and incapable of adapting to new circumstances without major changes in court organization and procedure. Other reforms would ensue in higher education, land assemblies, urban affairs, and the military.

Preparations for the emancipation of the serfs commenced as early as November 1857, and by January 1858 a Chief Committee of Peasant Affairs had been established together with numerous provincial committees, charged with reporting to the Government on peasant reform. Once the legislation had been prepared, the drafts were submitted to the State Council, which met on fourteen occasions to discuss them. Finally, on 19 February 1861 the Emperor signed and issued eighteen manifestos, edicts, statutes and rules to introduce and give effect to the emancipation.

The book shown here contains the principal preparatory enactments adopted from 1857 to 1860 and all of the enactments of 19 February 1861. The editor relates the volume to the contemporary issues confronting Russia: “Russia stands at present, as it did 150 years ago, on the edge of an era of Great Reforms” (p. xiv). Twenty years after emancipating the serfs, Emperor Alexander II remarked to his Minister of Finances, A.A. Abaze, on 20 February 1881: “Of all that I have been able to do, I consider the peasant reform the most important achievement of my entire reign”.

See: Alan P. Pollard (ed. & transl.), The Laws of February 18-19, 1861 on the Emancipation of the Russian Peasants (2008).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 – May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Speranskii, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1772-1839). Rukovodstvo k poznaniiu zakonov [Manual for Knowledge of Laws]. St. Petersburg, 1845. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library

M.M. Speranskii is the individual most closely associated with Russian achievements in the systematization of laws. He was deeply involved during the early nineteenth century in promoting Benthamite and Napoleonic models for Russia. Educated in theology rather than law, Speranskii acquired his formidable command of legal history and theory, Roman law, and skills in legal analysis while serving in various civil service positions. He assisted in drafting the reforms of Alexander I and from 1807 rose rapidly in rank and responsibility. During 1808-09 he helped prepare draft legislation that, if enacted, would have transformed Russia into a constitutional monarchy. Exiled from 1812 to 1816, upon his return he held a number of administrative posts. Emperor Nicholas I, however, directed him to undertake the systematization of Russian legislation, which resulted in the publication of the PSZ and Digest of Laws.

Speranskii’s archive in St. Petersburg contains more than 1,000 notes and articles devoted to legal matters, mostly unpublished. He left three major works on law, including the one shown here, which addresses legal history and codification.

See: Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia 1772-1839 (2d rev. ed.; 1969); “Speranskii, Mikhail Mikhailovich”, in W.E. Butler & V.A. Tomsinov, Russian Legal Biography (2007).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii [Complete Collected Laws of the Russian Empire]. 1st series. 48 vols. St. Petersburg, 1830. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library

Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii [Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire]. 16 vols. St. Petersburg, 1904-1905. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library

Emperor Alexander I laid the ground work for major law reforms. He introduced ministerial reforms to supplant the collegial model of Peter the Great, accompanied by an expansion of the educational system, founding of new universities, and introduction of civil service examinations. Foreign law professors were gradually replaced by Russian-trained candidates. With the abandonment of codification models based on foreign schemes, codification work fell into desuetude. When revived in the spirit of von Savigny, progress was slow.

Nicholas I (1796-1855) acceded to the throne in 1825 and immediately accelerated the pace and altered the direction of systematization. Drawing upon the presence and talents of a small group of lawyers at St. Petersburg University, M.A. Balugianskii (1769-1847), of Hungarian origin, and M.M. Speranskii (1772-1839) brought to completion the most ambitious and comprehensive systematization of legislation attempted in the world.

First to appear was the volume exhibited here, the Complete Collected Laws of the Russian Empire (known by its Russian acronym: PSZ), a chronological collection of Russian legislation (more than 30,000 enactments) commencing with the 1649 Sobornoe Ulozhenie to 1825. The second series of the PSZ was published annually from 1826 to 1881, and the third series from 1881 to 1916. A four-volume addendum to the PSZ includes illustrations such as the guide to weights and measures shown here.

The PSZ formed the foundation for the next stage of systematization, the Digest of Laws of the Russian Empire.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832). Papers Relative to Codification and Public Instruction: Including Correspondence with The Russian Emperor, and Divers Constituted Authorities in the American United States. London: Printed by J. M'Creery, 1817. Yale University Library

Bentham had genuine expectations of being invited to Russia to help codify the laws of the Russian Empire. The published translation of his work on codification had enjoyed the support of the Emperor himself, who was known to have read the work, and Bentham quietly lobbied his friends in London and in St. Petersburg to further this project.

Napoleon's invasion of Russia derailed the project. Bentham perhaps did not appreciate how deeply the Napoleonic wars had antagonized the Russian court towards anything French, including the example of the Napoleonic codes. Rightly or wrongly, Bentham was seen as being part of the French codification movement. Emperor Alexander I did not pursue Bentham's intimations that he would welcome a return to the project, whereupon Bentham, partly in annoyance, published his correspondence and the Reply of the Emperor, together with collateral correspondence conducted along the same lines with American politicians and statesmen -- for Bentham likewise entertained hopes of contributing to codification in the United States. Bentham's correspondents in the United States included Simon Snyder (1759-1819), the Governor of Pennsylvania, and James Madison (1751-1836), late President of the United States.

Rather than pursue codification of law based on abstract principles and logic, Russia turned to its own historical traditions in law. In this Russia was influenced by the thinking of, among others, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861), a leading proponent of the historical method and severe critic of the Code system imposed on Europe by Napoleon. Savigny's attack on codification was first published in 1814 and revised in 1828; for an English version, see Of the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence, transl. A. Hayward (1831).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

 Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832). Izbrannyie sochinieniia Ieremii Bentama. Tom Pervyi. [Selected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Volume One. Introduction to the Bases of Morality and Legislation. Basic Principles of a Civil Code. Basic Principles of a Criminal Code], transl. A.N. Pypin & A.N. Nevedomskii. Preface by Iu. G. Zhukovskii. St. Petersburg, 1867. Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

Jeremy Bentham, the noted jurist and legal philosopher, spent nearly all of 1786 in Russia, visiting his younger brother Samuel (1757-1831), who was in Russian service for more than two decades. The two brothers were unusually close, Jeremy supporting Samuel financially, morally, and intellectually. Samuel made important contributions to Russian industry, shipping, naval victories, and commerce. The two brothers corresponded frequently.

While in residence at the estate of Prince G.A. Potemkin (1739-1791) at Krichev in modern Belarus, Jeremy Bentham composed and sent back to London for printing his celebrated Defence of Usury (1787) and commenced work on his ideas for a modern penal institution, eventually published as his Panopticon (an outline of which appeared in 1790). The Benthams were close to the Russian Ambassador in London, S.R. Vorontsov (1744-1832), and the family of Admiral N.S. Mordvinov (1754-1845).

M.M. Speranskii and Emperor Alexander I were attracted by Bentham's early writings in French on codification and invited Bentham's secretary, Etienne Dumont (1759-1829), to St. Petersburg to supervise a translation of Bentham's writings on codification into the Russian language (published in three volumes, 1805-1810, omitting only Bentham's strictures on press censorship). Every major law reform in Russia through the end of the Imperial Period was attended, in one fashion or another, by a translation and publication of one of Bentham's works.

The present volume contains Bentham's classic treatise on codification. First published in 1803, the edition shown here appeared soon after the celebrated Russian judicial reforms of 1864, in a fresh translation and with additional materials added from the Collected Works of Bentham edited by Sir John Bowring (1792-1872) and the French versions of Dumont. Only volume one appeared.

See: Ian Christie, The Benthams in Russia: 1780-1791 (1993).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Blackstone, Sir William (1723-1780). Istolkovaniia angliiskikh zahonov [Commentary on English Laws of Mr. Blackstone]. Moscow, 1780-82. 3 vols. Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

Catherine II became aware of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) through the French translation. It became her bedside book, replacing Montesquieu, and greatly influenced her ideas on law and administration. Only volume I of Blackstone was translated into Russian, at her behest by S.E. Desnitskii (c. 1740-1789), the Glasgow-educated first Russian professor of law, and A.M. Briantsev (1749-1821). While Catherine had a special need for the book, it was part of her larger commitment to translations expressed in the establishment of a Society for the Translation of Foreign Books, which survived until 1783 and which she subsidized handsomely.

Among the 700 pages of notes which Catherine II took while reading Blackstone were drafts for a High Court of Justice. On her trip to the Crimea in 1787 Catherine II took her notes on Blackstone and her Nakaz with her to compare the two texts and work on further plans for constitutional reform. Her scheme for a High Court of Justice drawn from Blackstone seemed to combine legislative features of Parliament in England with judicial elements. Her contemplated High Court would have chambers consisting of appointed councilors and assessors elected by the local nobility, urban dwellers, and State peasants.

Blackstone wrote approvingly of Catherinian reforms in penal law:

"Was the vast territory of all the Russias worse regulated under the late Empress Elizabeth, than under her more sanguinary predecessors? Is it now under Catherine II less civilized, less social, less secure? And yet we are assured, that neither of these illustrious princesses have, throughout their whole administration, inflicted the penalty of death; and the latter has, upon full persuasion of its being useless, nay, even pernicious, given orders for abolishing it entirely throughout her extensive dominions." -- William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 4, p. 10.

See: I. de Madariaga, Catherine the Great: A Short History (1990).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

[Catherine II (1729-1796), Empress of Russia]. Armorial bookplate, engraved. Text: Catherine Alexievna II, | Imperatrice de toutes les Russies. Second half 18th century, after 1762. Irene D. Andrews Pace Memorial Collection, Haas Family Arts Library Special Collections, Yale University

Catherine II was a voracious reader and formed a substantial personal library. Two bookplates are attributed to her collections, neither of which has been actually found in a book. The present plate is the only copy known and came to Yale from Irene D. Pace, a well-known American bookplate collector.

See: News from the Yale Library 10 (1996), 2.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

[Catherine II (1729-1796), Empress of Russia]. Instruction donnée par Catherine II., impératrice et législatrice de toutes les Russies: a la commission établie par cette souveraine, pour travailler à la rédaction d'un nouveau code de loix, telle qu'elle e été imprimée en Russe & en Allemand, dans l'Imprimerie Impériale de Moscow. Lausanne: François Grasset & Comp., 1769. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library

This is the last of three French editions of the Nakaz, testimony to the wide interest in Catherine's law reform project in Western Europe. The translator was the Swiss historian Joseph Anton Felix von Balthasar. The year this edition appeared, the French crown placed the "libertine" Nakaz on its list of prohibited books.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Medal awarded to deputies of Catherine II's Legislative Commission. Private Collection

The Legislative Commission summoned to Moscow has been seen as a "major, highly personal political experiment" formed by election and intended to represent the "estates" of the Russian Empire (I. de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (1981), p. 139). Representation was accorded to state institutions, landowners, and social groups not otherwise included in the first two categories. Deputies were paid a salary, enjoyed certain privileges and immunities, and were awarded a badge of office that nobles were entitled to incorporate in their coats of arms.

Each member of Catherine the Great's Legislative Assembly was awarded a medal in commemoration of their participation, such as the one exhibited here.

Aware that much of her population was illiterate, including some deputies elected to the Legislative Commission, Catherine II composed her Nakaz in a style suitable for reading aloud, imparting to the text an "urgent rhythm" in imitation of Montesquieu's series of short staccato chapters in his Spirit of the Laws. The entire text was read aloud to the assembled deputies, who were said to have received the text with rapture. Many were moved to tears.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

[Catherine II (1729-1796), Empress of Russia]. Nakaz jeio impieratorskogo velichestva Ekateriny Vtoroi samodevzhitsy vserossijskaia olannyi Kommissii o Sochinenii proekta novogo ulozheniia | Instructio Sacrae Imperatoriae Maiestatis Aecaterinae Secundae Autocratorissae Omnium Rossiarum Coetvi Auspiciis Illius Convocato ad Conficiendam ideam Novi Legum Codicis | Ihrer Kayserlichen Majestät Instruction für die zu Verfestigung des Entwurfs zu einem neuen Gesetz-Buche verordnete Commission  | Instruction de sa Majesté Impériale Catherine II. pour la Commission Chargée de dresser le project d'un Nouveau Code de Loix. St. Petersburg, 1770. Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

The Nakaz has been described as "one of the most remarkable political treatises ever compiled and published by a reigning sovereign in modern times" (I. de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (1981), p. 151).

The most magnificent and desirable of the more than 40 editions of the Nakaz, this four-language version is spread across two quarto pages, two columns to a page. There are four separate title pages, respectively in Russian, Latin, German, and French. The opening and closing pages include allegorical engravings designed by Jacob Shtelin (1709-1785) and engraved by a Swabian artist then resident in Moscow, Christopher Melhior Roth (d. 1798). The Latin translation was by Catherineís state secretary and current favorite, Grigorii Kozitskii (1724-1775). The translators of the French and German texts have never been identified.

Catherine II presented copies of the four-language version to contemporaries throughout Europe. The copy shown here was given to the Earl of Chesterfield, accompanied by a letter of presentation in her own hand.

The four-language version evidently enjoyed a large print run. In 1808 the Academy of Sciences remaindered 1,421 copies by weight of the paper; whether they were pulped is unknown. By 1861 this edition of the Nakaz was bringing a substantial auction price.

See: A bibliography of 43 editions of the Nakaz appears in W.E. Butler & V.A. Tomsinov (eds.), The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts (2010).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

[Catherine II (1729-1796), Empress of Russia]. The Grand Instructions to the Commissioners Appointed to Frame a New Code of Laws for the Russian Empire. London: T. Jeffreys, 1768. Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library

The enduring contribution of Catherine II (1729-1796) to Russian law commenced in 1767, when Catherine herself composed a new law code, the Nakaz, mostly in the French language with extensive borrowings from leading Enlightenment thinkers, notably Beccaria, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. Although the Nakaz was never enacted, its translations into the major European tongues and issuance in more than twenty editions made the Nakaz the single piece of Russian legislative material best known abroad. It secured for Catherine the encomium "the Great".

Two contemporary English translations are known of the Nakaz. Shown here is the version published at London in 1768 by Mikhail Tatishchev, of whom little is known except that he was attached to the Russian Embassy in London. The second is a manuscript held by the Library of Congress, acquired in 1942 from the Collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), one of the foremost bibliophiles of all time. The manuscript was originally owned and perhaps commissioned (or even translated) by Sir George Earl Macartney, Ambassador to the Court of St. Petersburg. Macartney returned to England two months before Catherine actually convened her Great Commission, but the text of her draft was circulating in Europe by early Spring 1767. Jeremy Bentham owned a copy of this edition.

See: Both the Tatishchev and Macartney/Phillipps versions are reprinted in W E. Butler & V. A. Tomsinov (eds.), The Nakaz of Catherine the Great: Collected Texts (2010).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Strube de Piermont, Friedrich Heinrich (1704-1790). Lettres russiennes: suivies des notes de Catherine II. Pisa: Goliardica, 1978. Facsimile reprint; originally published 1760 in St. Petersburg. Yale University Library

Peter the Great set in motion the measures required to found the Academy of Sciences in Russia, which opened shortly after his death in 1725. Law was among the sciences to be pursued. The Academy was to be simultaneously a research and a teaching institution, an Academy and a University. In 1738 Friedrich Heinrich Strube de Piermont (1704-1790) was appointed to be the Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics. He published at St. Petersburg in 1740 a major study in the French language on the origins of natural law. A revised edition issued at Amsterdam in 1744 was reprinted several times with emendations.

In 1748 Strube was assigned by the Academy to "expound the natural law and the law of nations", for which he prepared a syllabus in Russian and Latin. Later that same year Strube petitioned the Academy to prepare ìa concise manual on Russian lawsî. He devoted the remainder of his life to the project, producing outlines and draft chapters, but never completing the work to the satisfaction of the Academy. He wrote in German, mostly copying from manuscript versions of early legislative compilations (relying on translators to tell him what they said). Although never published, the draft gave Strube his materials for a lecture treating the origins of Russian law that was published in Russian and Latin in 1756 and assisted a codification commission which used the draft in 1754.

Strube's "Russian Letters," shown here, were an extension of his studies of Russian law and history, especially his views on the origins of the Russian people. In this work he undertakes to "prove that the government of Russia is not a despotic government properly speaking" and makes mention of the "five" principal Russian law codes and the Commission formed in 1753 to prepare a new Code.

See: W.E. Butler, "F.G. Strube de Piermont and the Origins of Russian Legal History", in Butler, Russia and the Law of Nations in Historical Perspective (2009).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Zertsalo. Russia. ca. 1750-80. Russian Historical Museum, Moscow. Photograph by M. Kravtsova.

Peter the Great spent the majority of his years in power at war with his neighbors. His reforms were directed principally towards modernizing the structure of the Russian State, which had implications for Russian administrative law. He recognized the need for the continual systematization of legislation and appointed three commissions between 1700 and 1720 to attend to the matter. None progressed very far. Peter's reforms of the State apparatus and of military and naval law gave him claim to the title of law reformer. The Russian government was reorganized with close account being taken of practices in Sweden and Prussia. In 1722 Peter established the Procuracy, which has endured to this day as a component of the Russian legal system. His Military Statute (1716) and Naval Statute (1720) both drew upon European models, including German, French, Swedish, Dutch, and English; these two statutes remained in force with minor modifications for more than a century and extended to certain civilian matters.

Peter's enduring legacy to Russian law was a visual image of law and legal consciousness in the person of the Zertsalo, a trihedral object reproducing the text on each of its three sides of designated edicts issued between 1722 and 1724 on preserving civil rights, offenses in courts, and the importance of complying with State statutes. Atop the prism was placed a Russian crowned double-headed eagle, often removable.

The presence of the Zertsalo was required if a court was formally in session; in the presence of the Zertsalo, the court officials were considered to be performing their official duties. If the court moved on to unofficial matters or other events were held on court premises, the Zertsalo was to be taken from the room or the double-headed eagle was to be removed and carried out of the room. Penalties were established if these strictures were violated, the guilty official being subject to a fine and, after 1840, a reprimand. At least thirteen Zertsalos are known to survive today in Russian and Ukrainian museums -- all different, often dramatically so.

See: W.E. Butler, "On the Formation of a Russian Legal Consciousness: the Zertsalo", in Butler, Russia and the Law of Nations in Historical Perspective (2009).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Kormchaia Kniga [Book of the Pilot]. Moscow, 1650. Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

Ecclesiastical jurisdiction remained intact under the 1649 Ulozhenie. The Russian Orthodox Church immediately set about producing a modern version of the Book of the Pilot. This was approved by an ecclesiastical council and printed in 1650 and, with revisions, again in 1653.

For the remainder of the Imperial era (and beyond in some territories where Russian Orthodoxy continued to prevail), this ecclesiastical "code" remained in force with minor modifications introduced in the late eighteenth century. Here were preserved tenets of Byzantine and medieval Russian law. In 1656 the Patriarch Nikon, acting through the Novgorod ecclesiastical court, ruled on the extent to which a widow's dowry was liable for her late husband's debts by applying the relevant provisions of the Ecloga preserved in the Book of the Pilot.

See: Ivan Žužek, Kormčaja kniga: Studies on the Chief Code of Russian Canon Law (1964).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

[Sobornoe ulozhenie]. [Moscow], 1649. Special Collections, Harvard Law School Library

Throughout Europe the period 1648 to 1650 was a watershed. During those years in Russia, two major law codes, unprecedented in scope and size, became the first printed law books in Russian history. Following the 1497 and 1550 Sudebniks, there were hundreds of supplemental enactments that circulated in manuscript, as did the Sudebniks themselves. Tsar Aleksei Mikkhailovich (1629-1676) summoned a Land Assembly in late 1648 and gave the delegates two months to prepare the Sobornoe ulozhenie, the most substantial and important achievement of medieval Russian law. The book has no title page; its name is acquired from the Assembly which produced it. The text is in Church Slavonic, the literary language of the time, later to be simplified in 1708 by Peter the Great, who introduced a civil script.

Comprising 967 articles divided haphazardly into 25 chapters, the Ulozhenie consolidated provisions drawn from the Russkaia Pravda, the Sudebniks, the Litovskii statut (Lithuanian Statute) of 1588, countless individual edicts, and introduced some new provisions. Representing the turning point in the transition from feudalism to absolutism in Russia, the Ulozhenie summarized the heritage of the medieval past and simultaneously became the point of departure for Imperial Russian codification. A Latin text was translated by Baron von Mayerburg and printed by him in 1661 (a manuscript Danish translation was prepared by Rasmus Ereboe in 1721 at Copenhagen).

Legal historians continue to debate the extent to which the Ulozhenie represented a reception of Polish-Lithuanian and even Byzantine law in Russia. It addresses sacrilege, deference to the Tsar, the Tsar’s household, forgery and counterfeiting, jewellers, goldsmiths, and coiners, legal procedure, trials of various classes of the population, oaths, land law, succession, land tax, serfdom, robbery, capital crimes, the Cossacks, and liquor licensing. Its severe criminal penalties attracted the attention of foreign observers. The gradual enserfment of the peasantry was confirmed and consolidated by the Ulozhenie, which prohibited peasants from leaving their landlords’ estates for any reason whatsoever.

Three states of the book exist. The print run was substantial, for all local offices and officials needed to be supplied. Printing enabled the Russian administrative apparatus, including the judges, to have for the first time a uniform official authoritative text in quantity of the Tsar’s commands.

See: Richard Hellie (transl. & ed.), The Muscovite Law Code (Ulozhenie) of 1649 (1988).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Iaroslav I (c. 978-1054), Russkaia Pravda. [Bound with:] Ivan IV, the Terrible (1530-1584), Note on the Sudebnik of Tsar Ivan Vasil'evich. Russia, 18th century manuscript. Private Collection

Virtually all surviving documents from the Kievan period of early Russian and Ukrainian history are legal texts of one kind or another. The earliest are peace treaties concluded between Kievan Rus and Byzantium in or about 907, 911, 944, and 971. The supposition is compelling that the Slavic peoples inhabiting the lands of what became Kievan Rus had rules for interpersonal and interclan or intertribal behavior long before Kievan princes consolidated their authority.

The Russkaia Pravda (also known as Lex Russica) is the earliest surviving compilation of Russian laws. Whether it is a creative codification or a reduction of customary law to written form continues to be debated. So too does the extent to which the substance of the Russkaia Pravda, which contains striking parallels with aspects of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon law, was the result of mutual influence or an independent development.

No contemporary versions of the Russkaia Pravda survive; there are only three texts prior to the fifteenth century and ninety-two texts dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The traditional approach is to consider that there exist three versions of a single law (Russkaia Pravda, Expanded Pravda Russkaia, and Short Pravda Russkaia), but it is conceivable that each version may comprise an autonomous enactment. The initial version, believed to date from the reign of Iaroslav the Wise, began with the rules of blood feud, which the Expanded version relates was abolished by Iaroslav’s sons and replaced by a system of monetary compositions. Matters addressed were stealing, interest, custody of property, suits for money, shipwreck, beekeeping, succession, oaths, slavery, and ownership. The versions suggest that the Prince’s court played a minor role in prosecution and litigation. The system relied upon party initiative; there were no permanent judges, merely officials who presided over proceedings. There was no appeal, no systems of courts, no legal profession, no legal commentaries. Nor can we be certain of the territorial jurisdiction of the Russkaia Pravda.

In the manuscript exhibited here the Russkaia Pravda is accompanied by commentary on what has been called the first national Russian law code, the Sudebnik of 1497, here represented by an expanded and polished version from 1550. The Sudebniks are essentially manuals of procedure and to some extent of criminal law. The few articles devoted to civil law may reflect the inability of the compilers to consolidate satisfactorily the diversity of local rules. The extent to which the Sudebniks created new rules of procedure or embodied pre-existing patterns is much debated. The evidence of judgment charters prior to 1497 suggests that the transition to a vertical system of justice with a hierarchy of courts and judges was a gradual process rather than an innovation in 1497. The 1550 Sudebnik is known only through forty later copies, of which thirteen are of the sixteenth century. The text was adopted with the participation of the Boyar Duma in 1550 and confirmed by the Stoglav Assembly in 1551. Consisting of 99 or 100 articles, depending upon which copy is consulted, this document had no official title. The 1550 Sudebnik lay the foundations of a Russian administrative system at the central and local levels, reflecting the enhanced stature of the Tsar and the further centralization of power in Russia.

On exhibition is a previously unrecorded 18th-century manuscript of the short version of the Russkaia Pravda and the 1550 Sudebnik, with notes by V.N. Tatishchev (1686-1750), regarded by some as the first proper historian in Russia. He began editing the Russkaia Pravda in 1738, but it was published for the first time in Russia only in 1786, long after his death. Five other manuscript versions of the short version of the Russkaia Pravda are known with Tatishchev notes, all from the eighteenth century and all held by St. Petersburg institutions. The version exhibited here differs from the printed authoritative text in the numbering of clauses and in the precise text of the Tatishchev notes.

See: W.E. Butler, Russian Law (3d ed. 2009), Chapter 2; D.H. Kaiser, The Growth of Law in Medieval Russia (1980); D.H. Kaiser, The Laws of Rus': Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries (1992).

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

The post-Soviet era of Russian history has made the legacy of the pre-1917 era newly relevant in ways unimaginable. It is not merely a country recovering historical experience suppressed or distorted for ideological reasons during the Soviet regime, but a country seeking to modernize partly on the basis of its earlier legal legacy. A transition to the legal foundations of a market economy is happening before our eyes in Russia, partly an adaptation of foreign legal experience and institutions, partly the preservation and re-adaptation of those elements of Russian legal experience that are essential in the twenty-first century, partly the pioneering of new legal approaches to achieve a transition that is without precedent in human experience.

This exhibition contains principal landmarks of the pre-1917 era, drawing upon the riches of Yale University and augmented by a loans from the Harvard Law School Library and a private collection. So far as we can determine, this is the first occasion in the United States that an exhibition has been mounted on this topic. Wonderful exhibitions devoted to Russian relations with the west or to elements of Russian history generally have omitted law and the legal system.

The notes which follow situate each book in the fabric of Russian legal history. As a general observation, it may be observed that the systematization of legislation is among the larger contributions that Russian law has made to civilization. The story of that contribution is well told by the materials here.

In accordance with normal Russian practice, the relevant titles and other data are provided in Library of Congress transliteration, short form.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," curated by William E. Butler and Mike Widener, is on display Mar. 1 - May 25, 2012, in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

"Monuments of Imperial Russian Law," the latest exhibit from the Yale Law Library's Rare Book Collection, is perhaps the first rare book exhibit in the U.S. to focus on the history of Russian law.

The exhibition features principal landmarks in Russia's pre-1917 legal literature. Among these are the first printed collection of Russian laws, the 1649 Sobornoe ulozhenie, and three versions of the Nakaz, the law code that earned Empress Catherine the Great her reputation.

The exhibit draws on the riches of Yale University libraries, augmented by loans from the Harvard Law School Library and a private collection.

"The post-Soviet era of Russian history has made the legacy of the pre-1917 era newly relevant in ways unimaginable," writes William E. Butler, one of the exhibit curators. "It is not merely a country recovering historical experience suppressed or distorted for ideological reasons during the Soviet regime, but a country seeking to modernize partly on the basis of its earlier legal legacy."

Butler is the John Edward Fowler Distinguished Professor of Law and International Affairs at the Dickinson School of Law,  Pennsylvania State University. The exhibit's co-curator is Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian at the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Butler is the pre-eminent U.S. authority on the law of the former Soviet Union. He is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of more than 120 books on Soviet, Russian, Ukrainian, and post-Soviet legal systems. He is a member of the Grolier Club, the leading U.S. society for book collectors, and the Organization of Russian Bibliophiles. He is also a leading bookplate collector who has authored several reference works on bookplates.

Widener has been Rare Book Librarian at the Lillian Goldman Law Library since 2006. He is a member of the Grolier Club and a faculty member of the Rare Book School, University of Virginia.

The exhibit is on display through May 25, 2012 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, located on Level L2 of the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street. The exhibit is open to the public, 9am-10pm daily. The exhibit will also go online via the Yale Law Library Rare Books Blog.

For more information, contact Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian, at (203) 432-4494 or <mike.widener@yale.edu>.