345 opment, which, tliroughout the period dealt with here, revealed several parallels to Sweden’s socio-economic and political developmentd^**’ Not least important, of course, was the commission’s task of reinforcing the apparatus of the absolutist state with effective procedural and executive instruments. This draft of a uniform and general code of laws for the Russian Empire, however, was never enacted into law. Nevertheless, since it can be used to illustrate the procedural legislation promulgated during the first part of the 1720s, we shall return to its contents concerning procedural law. The so-called “Ukaz concerning the form of trials,” or LJkaz o forme suda, which contained rules for simplified, and thus shorter, procedures, was issued in 1723 as part of the reform of the court system. The reason for its being issued, according to the ukaz itself, was that “the courts allow them to talk very needlessly and they write a great deal that is unnecessary, which is entirely forbidden, its slowness and arbitrariness, which often resulted from one of the parties delaying a decision by either failing to show up in court or by bribing the judge. There are many accounts of judges who, under threat of reprisals or promises of economic gain, gave into “powerful persons” (sil’nye liudi) and postponed the conclusion of trials. The procedural legislation of 1723 was based partly on the Swedish statute on trials (processtadga) of 1695, which had also been issued to meet the need for a more effective and faster trial procedure. In fact, this motive was mentioned in the introduction to the statute, which stated that it was “for the shortening of verbosity and relief in the trials for the contending parties both in superior and lower courts. The adversary structure of the Swedish trial was especially emphasized during the preparation of the Ukaz o forme stida: Russian trial procedure was known for ” 1(>7 ’’ ie!> 170 in Swedish law they proceed in civil disputes {grazhdanskie chelobitchikovy dela), as well as in state and criminal matters (gosudarstvennye i kriminaVnye dela) in accordance with the trial form {protsessnaia forma), for in the same manner as each private plaintiff sues in civil matters, the prosecutor sues in public and state matters as a plaintiff, and the defendent not only receives a copy of the indictment {iskovoe chelobWe), but an advocate is named for him and gives him a satisfactory possibility to clear himself, and he is treated in a manner which is used in other trials, so that no one shall be able to complain that he has been sentenced without a proper trial and not allowed to clear himself sufficiently and exculpate himself and defend himself. 2/4 (no. 395), 400. Bogoslovskii (1902), 251—252. SCHMEDEMAN, 1414. !■'' 2A (no. 393), 396. 168 169
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