Los problemas del desarrollo del campo legal único en Rusia de los primeros tiempos modernos (finales de XV - el comienzo del siglo XVII)

The article deals with the problems associated with the peculiarities of a single legal field development in the Russian state during the epoch of the early modern era (traditionally associated in Russian historiography with the times of a single centralized state formation and development and the emergence of autocracy as a kind of early absolutism). Using a number of provisions of modern concepts for the development of early modern states in Europe, the authors of the article put forward the thesis of a single legal field development in the Russian state during the period under consideration based on the analysis of Russian law monuments at the end of the XVth century (The Code of Law of Ivan III in 1497) and the 16th century (first of all, the code of law by Ivan IV, as well as a number of other legislative and legal acts) and judicial practice. In their opinion, this incompleteness was related with the following circumstances. First of all, the development of political and legal institutions in the early modern Russian state was of an evolutionary nature and, therefore, denied radical changes. Secondly, the poverty of the state caused the relative weakness and a slow development of "sinews of power" and, therefore, prevented the establishment of a more stringent administrative and legal control by the supreme power over the actions of local authorities. Finally, the weakness of the mentioned "sinews of power" conditioned the need of cooperation mode establishment between the supreme authority and local elites, while retaining the access to the exercise of power functions on the ground - also through the preservation of the old legal customs and traditions. Naturally, all this contributed to the preservation and the reproduction of the legal "antiquity" and, consequently, the incompleteness of legal centralization process and the formation of a single legal field throughout the country. The legal field, in the opinion of the authors of the article, had at least 2-level character all this time, the fragmented nature and the dispersion at the low-rank level.