DRAFT CIVIL CODE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND THE NATIONAL LEGAL SCIENCE OF THE LATE XIXTH - EARLY XXTH CENTURIES

Abstract

The development of the Russian civil law science in the last decades of the XIXth century can be characterized as the active search for answers to questions emerging with socio-economic changes in society. These changes revealed nonconformance between the existing civil legislation and real social needs generating plans to develop a Civil Code to serve as a basis for radical transformation of the general civil law in the country. Having begun in 1882 at Alexander III’s direction, the drafting process continued for several decades but did not have any positive result. It is difficult to reconstruct the objective picture of its development in the last decades of the Russian Empire without identifying the reasons of failure of the attempt to reform the civil legislation, which is a problem in the history of the Russian law. Studying the position of the Russian civil law science in relation to the draft Civil Code can contribute to this as some of the prominent representatives (S.V. Pakhman, K.I. Malyshev) directly participated in the project development. The methodological basis for researching this position is a comparative legal approach to analyzing views of the leading Russian civil law scientists provided on the corresponding information basis, featuring the original publications of these scientists on the given issue. The key research result is the identified fundamental differences in the civil society of the pre-revolutionary Russia in terms of content and structure of the future Civil Code, which led to the conclusion that disunity of professional community and mostly critical leading civilists’ views provided for generally negative background for the Editorial Commission developing the project, did not allow to unite the efforts of scientists and officials, which notably diminished the potential for turning this project into the current legislation with all its disadvantages and significant advantages.