Senator E. N. Berendts on the work of the Governing Senate in the conditions of the revolutionary transformations of 1917

Abstract

The subject of the study was the updated part of the theoretical and legal heritage of the outstanding Russian lawyer of the late XIX - early XX century, professor, senator of the I Department of the Governing Senate Eduard Nikolaevich Berendts (1860-1930). In this article, the main attention was paid to the memoirs of E. N. Berendts about the work of the Governing Senate in the conditions of the revolutionary transformations of 1917, about the change in the system of public administration, about the transformations in the mechanism of the state in general and the state apparatus in particular, about the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II for himself and for the heir, about the legality of coming to power The Provisional Government. When writing the article, universal, general scientific (primarily systemic, structural and functional, modeling, forecasting methods), special (primarily sociological) and private (primarily formal legal, comparative legal, reconstruction and interpretation of legal ideas) methods were used. The scientific novelty is determined by the absence of comprehensive studies in domestic and foreign legal science devoted to the theoretical legacy of E. N. Berendts. The works of E. N. Berendts, which were not translated into Russian earlier, archival materials, which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, are used. For the first time in historical and legal science, the analysis of E. N. Berendts' views on the role and place of the Governing Senate of the Russian Empire in the mechanism of the state, on the problems of the revolutionary transformations of 1917 and the subsequent changes in the work and functional purpose of the Governing Senate, on the formation and activities of the Provisional Government was carried out