The Presidential Library marking the Prosecutor’s Day

Our country traditionally celebrates the Prosecutor’s Day of the Russian Federation on January 12. The Presidential Library’s collections contain a large number of a variety of materials on the history and activities of the department in different years.

298 years ago, on January 12, 1722, Peter I, who understood the necessity of reforming the obsolete judicial system, issued the Highest Decree to the Governing Senate: “The Prosecutor General and the Ober Prosecutor must be at the Senate, as well as in any Board of Prosecutors, who will have to report To the Attorney General”. It also says that the prosecutor’s office was initially tasked with “...destroying or weakening the evil stemming from unrest in business, injustice, bribery, and lawlessness”. The full text of the document is provided in the 40th volume of the Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire.

The emperor appointed Count Pavel Ivanovich Yaguzhinsky as the first prosecutor general. Introducing him to the senators, the tsar said: “Here is my eye, with whom I will see everything. He knows my intentions and desires, that he will choose what you do; and even though it seemed to you that he is acting contrary to My and state benefits, you, however, then do it and, notifying Me of that, await My command”. A digitized copy of the Instructions on the post of Attorney General of the Senate (1722), written by Peter the Great, is available on the portal of the Presidential Library.

Under Peter I, the Senate and the Attorney General were closely connected. The emperor even proposed combining them into one solid and unshakable institution. These "two elements - personal, represented by the prosecutor general, and collegial, represented by the Senate presence - not only do not war, but act together, with full knowledge that their strength depends on their organic combination" – wrote the famous historian jurist Alexander Gradovsky, whose collected works are also presented on the Presidential Library’s portal.

According to Gradovsky, the establishment of the position of Attorney General was of great importance: “I began to look for among the mass of institutions that would characterize the entire system of the then administration, and involuntarily settled on the curious institution of the prosecutor general. The tremendous importance of this post for the entire administration of the eighteenth century, its connection with the most important institutions of this era, and especially with the governing senate, the trust in them of our best monarchs, sufficiently explain this choice. This position was destined to play a huge, one might say, a primitive role in the administration of the XVIII century. Each part of the state mechanism felt its irresistible influence on itself”.

The works of Alexander Gradovsky provide a detailed history of the prosecutor general’s government in Russia from its inception to the time of its actual disappearance at the merger of the post of prosecutor general with the post of Minister of Justice, which happened at the beginning of the 19th century with the establishment of ministries.

Courts, institutes of judicial investigators, prosecutorial supervision, as well as jury and private advocacy were abolished in November 1917, when the Council of People's Commissars passed a Court Decree. The functions of the bodies passed to the people's courts, as well as to the revolutionary tribunals.

In 1922, on the initiative of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the prosecutor’s office nevertheless appeared in the Soviet Union. “The prosecutor, - according to Lenin, has the right and duty to do only one thing: to monitor the establishment of a truly uniform understanding of the rule of law throughout the republic, despite any local differences and in spite of any local influences”.

After the collapse of the USSR in January 1992, a new Federal Law “On the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation” was adopted. As a result of legislative reforms, the prosecutor’s office was finally formed structurally and functionally into an independent state body that is not part of any of the branches of government.

“The prosecutor’s office is characterized by unconditional discipline and professionalism in the work of employees, individual initiative. Therefore, the Russian prosecutor’s office has its own image, professional culture and reputation”, - it is noted in the scientific work of Valery Koshlevsky“ The place and role of the prosecutor’s office in the mechanism of the Russian state” (2008). This work was included in a separate section of the large-scale collection "State Authority", which is formed by the Presidential Library.

Digital collections of the national electronic repository contain many other interesting materials devoted to this subject: these are old books, archival and modern documents, scientific works. Separately, it is worth mentioning a periodical, an organ of the USSR Prosecutor's Office, "For Socialist Rule of Law" for 1934.