Zubarev M.V.

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.

Purpose. Identification of social factors that had an impact on the development of Russian civil legislation in the context of accelerating the modernization of society as a result of the reforms of Alexander II. Methods. Carry out a comparative historical analysis of the dynamics of the development of civil legislation and the processes of social change in Russian society, using the research of pre-revolutionary and modern jurists and historians. Results. It was determined that the main trend of the transformation of Russian civil legislation in the conditions of post-reform development was the transition from the Code of Civil Law to the Civil Code. This transition could not be completed, not only because of the lack of a unified position of the professional legal community and the existence of bureaucratic obstacles on the part of the authorities, but also because of the transitional social structure of society that influenced the split of mass legal awareness. Scientific novelty. It is established that the incompleteness of the transformation of civil legislation in the Russian Empire was a reflection of the similar incompleteness of the social transformation of society in the second stage of Russian modernization.