304 development of legislation and the court system during the period being dealt with here. One characteristic aspect of the seventeenth-century Russian administrative structure was that it made no distinction between administrative and judicial functions; the administration of justice did not constitute an autonomous sphere of activity. On the local level, for example, the voevodas served as judges, just as they served as the highest administrative and military authorities in their respective uezdy. From this first judicial instance, cases went to the prikazy in Moscow, almost all of which served as courts of law as well as administrative offices. The prikazy passed judgement in case belonging to their respective jurisdictions, which could be defined, for example, in terms of geographical areas or specific groups of individuals. There were, however, some prikazy which served exclusively as courts of law, and which thus did not decide cases of an administrative nature. The more serious crimes {ubiistvo, razboi, krazha) were dealt with by a special prikaz—originally called the Razboinyi prikaz, or robbers prikaz, and renamed the Sysknoi prikaz, or Investigatory prikaz, in 1683— whose geographical jurisdiction included the entire country outside of Moscow. The capital had its own judiciary instance for criminal cases, the so-called Zemskii prikaz, or provincial prikaz, which was also responsible for policing the city.^ Civil cases were dealt with by several prikazy, for the Code of 1649 expressly stated that plaintiffs were to present their petitions to the prikazy under whose jurisdiction they belonged (“kto v kotorom prikaze vedom”).- In its capacity as a privileged social group, the nobility had access to two special prikazy for its litigation, and these prikazy served as the first judicial instance in such cases, since noblemen were not subject to the jurisdiction of the voevodas. Instead, the higher categories among the nobility were under the jurisdiction of the Vladimirskii sudnyi prikaz and the lower categories were under the jurisdiction of the Moskovskii sudnyi prikaz.^ Yet another chancellery, the Prikaz kholop’ego suda, dealt with cases concerning serfs.'* It was this prikaz which settled disputes over ‘ N. V. UsTiuGOV, "Tsentrarnoe upravlenic. Prikazy,” Ocherki (1955), 371; Erik Amburger, Geschichte der Behördenorganisation Russlands von Peter dem Grossen bis 1917 (Leiden, 1966), 3. - Sobornoe Ulozhenie 1649 g., edited by M. N. Tikhomirov & P. M. Epieanov (Moscow, 1961), X:20, p. 100; Ustiugov, 372. * E. N. Kusheva & N. V. Ustiugov, “Moskva—politicheskii i administrativnyi tsentr,” in S. V. Bakhrushin et al., eds., Istoriia Moskvy (9 v., Moscow, 1952—1959), I, 547. ■* The so-called kholopy were the second largest group of unfree peasants in Russia after the serfs, or krepostnye krest’iane, although legally speaking they did not
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