LEGAL CONTINUITY IN THE STATE DRINKING POLICY IN RUSSIA: FROM ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH TO PETER I

Abstract

Purpose. Determination of the ratio of legal succession and legal innovation in the state regulation of drinking activity, which was the most important source of budget revenues of the Moscow State during the second half of the XVII early XVIII centuries. Methods. Historical-legal and comparative legal analysis of published legislative sources of this period of time characterizing the main directions of state policy in the sphere of regulation of production and turnover of alcoholic beverages. Results. It was established that the main directions of the drinking policy of the state, which took shape during the period of the Moscow State and which were legally fixed in the articles of the Cathedral Code of 1649, were the struggle against rudeness (illegal private production and trafficking in alcohol) and the regulation of the sale of alcoholic beverages to the population through taverns of two kinds: on faith and on redemption. The decisive role in the systematization of the alcohol legislation of the Moscow State by the decree of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich was substantiated on July 18, 1681. It is proved that, despite the transition of Peter I from 1698 to transformations in various spheres of society, in its drinking policy the tendency to legal succession and following prevailed in the main course, developed with his immediate predecessors on the throne. Scientific novelty. The article discusses the issue of legal succession in drinking policy, which has not been fully covered in pre-revolutionary and modern historico-legal historiography. Disclosure on the specific example of the drinking policy of the Moscow State the importance of a flexible combination in the legislative process at the stage of transition to a cardinal reform of the traditional society of continuity and novelty is an additional argument in favor of historiographical position denying the gap with the past in the legal policy of the Russian Empire.