Periodization of Zemsky Sobors
The periodization of Zemsky Sobors can be divided into 6 periods:
1. The history of zemstvo councils begins during the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible. The first council took place in 1549. Councils convened by the royal authorities - this period lasts until 1565.
2. Starting from the death of Ivan the Terrible and until the fall of Shuisky (1584-1610). This is the time when the prerequisites were formed civil war and foreign intervention, a crisis of autocracy began. The councils performed the function of electing the kingdom and often became an instrument of forces hostile to Russia.
3. 1610-1613 The Zemsky Sobor under the militias turns into the supreme body of power (both legislative and executive), resolving issues of internal and foreign policy. It was during this period of time that the Zemsky Sobor played the most important and significant role in public life Russia.
4. 1613-1622 The Council operates almost continuously, but as an advisory body under the royal power. Resolves ongoing administrative and financial matters. The tsarist government seeks to rely on zemstvo councils when carrying out financial activities: collecting five-dollar money, restoring the damaged economy, eliminating the consequences of the intervention and preventing new aggression from Poland. From 1622, the activity of the cathedrals ceased until 1632.
5. 1632-1653 Councils meet relatively rarely, but to resolve important issues such as domestic policy: drawing up the Code, uprising in Pskov, and external: Russian-Polish and Russian-Crimean relations, annexation of Ukraine, the question of Azov. During this period, the speeches of class groups intensifying, presenting demands to the government, not so much through zemstvo councils, but through petitions submitted.
6. 1653-1684. The importance of zemstvo cathedrals is declining (a slight rise was observed in the 80s). The last full council met in 1653 on the issue of admitting Ukraine to the Russian state.
The first is considered to be the Zemsky Sobor of 1549, which lasted two days and was convened to resolve issues about the new royal Code of Law and the reforms of the “Elected Rada”. During the council, the tsar and the boyars spoke, and later a meeting of the Boyar Duma took place, which adopted a provision on the non-jurisdiction (except in major criminal cases) of boyar children to the governors. According to I.D. Belyaev, elected representatives from all classes participated in the first Zemsky Sobor. The Tsar asked the saints who were at the cathedral for a blessing to correct the Code of Law “in the old way”; then he announced to representatives of the communities that throughout the state, in all cities, suburbs, volosts and churchyards, and even in the private estates of boyars and other landowners, elders and kissers, sotskys and courtiers, should be elected by the residents themselves; Charter charters will be written for all regions, with the help of which the regions could govern themselves without sovereign governors and volosts.

The Zemsky Sobor is a body of class representation.

The prerequisites for its appearance were three circumstances:

• and advice as traditions of Russian history;
• intensification of interclass struggle;
• the country’s difficult position in the foreign policy arena, which requires government support from the estates (not an approving and establishing veche, but an advisory body).

The tsars elected by the Zemsky Sobor are almost all the tsars ruling the Russian state, with the exception of:

• Ivan the Terrible;
• puppet Simeon Bekbulatovich;
• “queens for an hour” - the widow of Irina Godunova;
• Fyodor 2nd Godunov;
• two impostors;
• Fedor 3rd Alekseevich.

The most famous of the elections was the Zemsky Sobor in 1613, at which he was elected. The last rulers to undergo this procedure were Ivan the 5th.

In 1649, the Laid Cathedral took place, which had special meaning: it adopted the Council Code.

All material of the Code was collected into 25 chapters and 967 articles.

The laws formulated in it retained the significance of the law of the Russian state until the 1st half of the 19th century.

The creation of the Compilation Code is the first attempt to collect all existing legal norms into a single set of laws. It was based on:

• decree books of the Local, Zemsky, Robber and other orders;
• collective petitions of nobles and townspeople;
• Pilot's book;
• Lithuanian status 1588, etc.

Throughout the 16th-17th centuries. Many councils were convened. The historian Cherepnin lists 57 cathedrals, and also includes three church and zemstvo cathedrals due to the presence of the zemstvo element on them. In addition, the religious issues raised at these three councils had a secular significance.

Historians are unanimous regarding the first Zemsky Sobor, but there is no consensus on the termination of the convening of councils.

Some consider the last Zemsky Sobor of 1653 (on the annexation of Ukraine to the Russian state), after which conciliar activity became less active and gradually faded away.

Others believe that the last council took place in 1684 (about eternal peace with Poland).

Zemsky Sobors: conditional classification

The Zemsky Sobor can be divided in composition into those present in full, the highest clergy and representatives of various ranks (local nobility and merchants). Craftsmen and peasants were not present.

Zemsky Sobors are divided into complete and incomplete. In the second case, there may be an absolute or partial absence of the “zemsky element,” that is, the local nobility and townspeople.

According to the type of activity, councils are divided into advisory and electoral.

If we consider the social and political significance of the Zemsky Sobor, we can distinguish four groups:

• councils that were convened by the king;
• councils convened by the king on the initiative of the estates;
• convocation by estates;
• electoral - for the kingdom.

To more fully understand the role of cathedrals, consider another classification:

• councils convened on reform issues;
• councils concerning the foreign policy situation;
• cathedrals, decisive issues internal “structure of the state”, suppression of uprisings;
• cathedrals of the Time of Troubles;
• electoral councils.

The classification of cathedrals makes it possible to understand the content of their activities.

The first Zemsky Sobors

The updated political organization of the state, which had developed by the middle of the sixteenth century, also had to correspond to new state institutions- representative and class institutions that could defend the interests of large-scale areas. It was in the role of such a body that the First Zemsky Sobor acted.

In the middle of winter (February) 1549, the Tsar convened the Boyar Duma for a meeting. In addition to the Duma, there were representatives of the nobility and boyars, as well as the Consecrated Cathedral, which represented the “top” of the church. The ruler spoke in his speech about violence and abuse of power, blaming the boyars for this and recalling their cruelty and malice when he was a child. After this, the king called on everyone to forget past grievances and begin to act for the common good of restoring the power of the state. Hence the second name of this cathedral – “Cathedral of Reconciliation”. At this council, it was announced that a new code of law was being prepared and a planned series of new reforms. In addition, by the decision of this meeting, the nobles were freed from the court of the boyar-governors, giving them the court of the ruler of Russia himself.

The convening of the council reflected the establishment in Russia of a developed class-representative monarchy. But the first council was still not distinguished by its elective character. In addition, there were no representatives of peasants, trade and craft population, etc. However, the listed categories of urban residents did not play a big role in future cathedrals. At the same time, the emergence of an estate-representative monarchy in Russia meant that further all the most important permissions would be sanctioned by representatives of the existing ruling class.

It should be noted that Vladimir Solovyov regarded the very name “Zemsky Sobor” as a sign of the strength of the people, which was a real opposition to the will and actions of the ruler. And according to the definition of the famous researcher Cherepnin, the phrase “Zemsky Sobor” is considered “an estate-representative general body of a single power, which was formed in opposition to feudal law, like two scales.”

At the Zemsky Sobor of 1550, an updated Code of Law was adopted, which incorporated the norms of most sections of past law. This Law Code fully complied with the norms of that period. For example, it introduced punishment for bribery for the first time.

ZEMSKY Cathedrals- the highest class-representative institutions with legislative functions, meetings of representatives of the city, regional, commercial and service classes, which appeared at the call of the Moscow government to resolve the most important administrative and political matters in the mid-16th–17th centuries. They included members of the Consecrated Council (archbishops, bishops and others headed by the metropolitan, and from 1589 - by the patriarch, that is, the high-ranking clergy), the Boyar Duma and Duma clerks, the “sovereign court”, elected from the provincial nobility and the top citizens. During the 135 years of its existence (1549–1684), 57 councils were convened. Until 1598, all councils were advisory; after the death of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, electoral councils began to be convened. According to the method of convening, zemstvo councils were divided into those convened by the tsar; convened by the tsar on the initiative of the “people” (we could only talk about its elite, since there were no representatives from the largest class - the peasants - at most councils, except 1613 and 1682); convened by estates or on the initiative of estates in the absence of the king; electoral for the kingdom.

The emergence of zemstvo cathedrals was the result of the unification of Russian lands into single state at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the weakening influence of the princely-boyar aristocracy on the central government, the growth political significance nobility and upper classes. The convening of the first Zemsky Sobor in 1549 coincides with the beginning of the reform period in the reign of Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible and the sharp aggravation of the social confrontation between the “lower classes” and the “higher classes” of society, especially in the capital, with which it was accompanied. Social conflicts forced the privileged elite of society to rally behind policies that strengthened their economic and political position, state power. The Zemsky Sobor arose as a national analogue of the city councils that existed in large county towns previously. The first meeting of the Zemsky Sobor lasted two days, there were three speeches by the tsar, speeches by the boyars, and finally, a meeting of the boyar duma took place, which decided that the governors would not have jurisdiction over the boyar children. The history of Zemsky Sobors began with this event. Starting from this first meeting, discussions began to be held in two “chambers”: the first was made up of boyars, okolnichy, butlers, and treasurers, the second was made up of governors, princes, boyar children, and great nobles.

IN further history Zemstvo cathedrals are distinguished into six periods: 1549–1584 (during the reign of Ivan the Terrible), 1584–1610 (the period of the so-called “interregnum”), 1610–1613 (the period of transformation of cathedrals into the most important part of the state administrative system, since the convening of the council of 1613, which elected Michael Romanov to the kingdom, was a logical consequence of the creation of the Council of the Whole Land in Yaroslavl during the years of the struggle against the Polish and Swedish invaders; at the Zemsky Sobor of 1613 there were representatives even from the black sosh peasantry), 1613–1622 (the period of the formation of cathedrals only as advisory bodies). No councils met in 1622–1632. The period 1632–1653 is marked by rare mentions of councils, which were now convened only to decide critical issues domestic and foreign policy: adoption Cathedral Code in 1649, reunification of Ukraine with Russia in 1653, etc. The last period, 1653–1684, was a period of declining importance of convening zemstvo councils, strengthening the features of absolutism in the system of Russian autocratic government.

The convening of the council was carried out by a letter of conscription, issued by the tsar to well-known persons and localities. The letter contained the agenda items and the number of elected officials. If the number was not determined, it was decided by the population itself.

Elections of representatives to zemstvo councils (the number of members was not determined and ranged from 200 to 500 people) took place in district towns and provincial towns in the form of meetings of certain ranks. The electors were convened by sending letters to the cities, which - with their districts - constituted constituencies. Only those who paid taxes to the treasury, as well as people who served, could participate in the elections held by estate. At the end of the elections, minutes of the meeting were drawn up and certified by all those participating in the elections. The protocol was sent to the Ambassadorial or Discharge Order.

The electors took with them the necessary supply of provisions or money, which the electors supplied them with. Salaries were not paid to elected officials, but petitions for payment of salaries were met. Meetings of councils could last for years, so it was extremely important to stock up on everything necessary for the election. Only wealthy people could afford to be elected (a kind of obstacle for the poor).

Each Zemsky Sobor opened with a solemn service in the Kremlin Assumption Cathedral, sometimes religious processions took place, after which a solemn meeting of the cathedral took place in its entirety. The king gave a speech. Afterwards, deliberative sessions of the elected officials were held among themselves. Each class sat separately. Voting on main issues took place in special “chambers” (rooms). Often, at the end of the Zemsky Assembly, a joint meeting of the entire cathedral was held. Decisions were usually made unanimously. At the closing of the cathedral, the tsar gave a gala dinner for the elect.

The competence of Zemsky Sobors was very extensive. They resolved the issues of electing a new tsar to the kingdom (in 1584 the Zemsky Sobor elected Fyodor Ioanovich, in 1682, at the last council, Peter I was elected). The role of zemstvo councils in matters of codification of law is known (the Code of Law of 1550, the Council Code of 1649 were adopted by the Councils). The councils were also in charge of issues of war and peace, internal and tax administration. "Church dispensation" during the years of the schism. The councils also had the formal right of legislative initiative. The variety of functions of zemstvo councils gives grounds for modern researchers to see in them not so much representative institutions as bureaucratic ones (S.O. Schmidt).

Zemsky councils disappeared (no longer convened) as a result of the strengthening of autocracy and the strengthening of tsarist power during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

Natalia Pushkareva