Judicial and Legal Mechanisms of Adaptation and Integration of the Volga and Ural Regions into Russia in the 16th Century

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present the results of the analysis of judicial legal mechanisms of adaptation and integration of the Volga and Ural regions into Russia in the 16th century. The scientific analysis was carried out on the basis of published regulatory legal acts and materials of documentation. The author substantiates that the aggregate of legal means used by the supreme authority for legal regulation of social relations in the field of justice in the 16th century took into account the wide variety of political and administrative statuses of the regions of Russia, the sociocultural and ethno-religious specificity of the local population, allowing them to consistently and successfully consolidate them into citizenship and include in the social system. The elimination of “feedings” in the regions of the Northern Urals continued in 1555—1590 from west to east and ended with the empowering of officials with an individual scope of jurisdiction and selective weakening of the traditions of the Zemstvo government. The judicial authority over the indigenous population of the eastern regions passed to special officials: in the eastern part of the Meshchersky region – to Mordovian clerks, in the former Mongol-Turkic khanates — to the Tatar heads. The people of the Southern Urals entered into an exclusive and formal jurisdiction of the Ufa governor.