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Peter I signed the first Russian state legal deed ‘The General regulations’
On February 28 (March10), 1720 ‘… for the correct management of the affairs and the appropriate defining and calculation of the receipts as well as the improvement of the justice and police…’ Peter I signed the first Russian state legal deed ‘The General regulations’. The full name of the deed is: ‘The general regulations according to which the state collegiums including the employees of all the offices under their authority should fulfill their duties in accordance with the deed’.
The general regulations included the introduction, 56 chapters covering the most general principles of the state machinery activities, and appendixes explaining the foreign words the deed included.
The document determined the uniformity of the organization and the office work of all the collegiums, the order of their activity, the rules for receiving and sending the business correspondence, storage of the sums of money, preservation of archives, etc.; it regulated the order of service in all the state institutions; regulated the duties of the president, the vice-president, the members of collegiums, a secretary, a notary public and an interpreter, etc.
In order to improve the work of the state institutions Peter I added to the General regulations some chapters indicating the grounds for the officials’ encouragement and punishment.
The General regulations also defined the relationship between the collegiums, the Senate and the local authorities.
The General regulations directed the central state institutions to pass the documents over to the archives, established the obligatory record keeping of the state papers marking thus the beginning of the archive service in Russia.
The validity of the General regulations was confirmed by a special decree in March of 1724.
The first Russian state document lost its significance when Nikolai I issued the manifesto on January 31 (February 12), 1833 putting in effect the ‘Code of laws of the Russian empire’ from January 1 (13), 1835.
On March 5, 2003 the collegiums of the Federal archive service of Russia in the memory of the General regulations of Peter I decided to establish the date of March 10 as the professional holiday ‘The Archives Day’.
Lit.: Генеральный регламент // Реформы Петра I. Сборник документов. М., 1937; То же [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://www.hist.msu.ru/ER/Etext/general.htm; День архивов в Российской Федерации. Справка (РИА Новости) [Электронный ресурс] // Федеральное архивное агентство. URL: http://archives.ru/mass-media/2011/rian_100311.shtml.
Based on the Presidential Library’s materials:
Legislative acts of Peter I // State Authority: [digital collection];
Полное собрание законов Российской империи, с 1649 года. М., 1830. Т. 6. № 3534. С. 141;
Полное собрание законов Российской империи, с 1649 года. М., 1830. Т. 7. № 4482. С. 267.