Russian law

“ Petersburg, sitting as a court of cassation, and the highest judicial tribunal of the empire in civil matters, has declined to execute a French judgment upon the grounds that, by the settled law of Russia, 'it is a principle in the Russian empire that only the decisions of the authorities to whom jurisdiction has been delegated by the sovereign power have legal value by themselves and of full right,' and that, 'in all questions of international law, reciprocity must be observed and maintained as a fundamental principle.' Adam v. ”

“ One might further appeal to the fact that in unlimited monarchies (in Russia, for instance) the law is based solely on the will of one man, who is not himself subject to it. But Russian law is not based on the czar's will at all; the czar is a weak individual man, and his will in itself is totally unqualified to affect many millions of Russians in their procedure. Russian law is based rather on the will of all those Russians—peasants, soldiers, officials—who, for the most various reasons—patriotism, self-interest, superstition—will that what the czar wills shall be law in Russia. ”

“ Ah, gentlemen, on the very day when we were being tried for conspiracy and overt acts, your city officials and representatives welcomed with music and festivities the Russian Commission. Are you aware of the fact that nearly all of the members of that Commission have only recently been released from exile? The ideas they propagated were never within the law. For nearly a hundred years, from 1825 to 1917, the Tree of Liberty in Russia was watered by the blood of her martyrs. No greater heroism, no nobler lives had ever been dedicated to humanity. ”

“ Any one 101who destroys the present law and order of Moscow will, I believe, destroy what is left of law and order in Russia. A brigand monarchist government will leave a trail of fresh blood across the Russian scene, show what gentlemen can do when they are roused in a tremendous pogrom and White Terror, flourish horribly for a time, break up and vanish. ”

“ The possibility and necessity of ceasing to submit to human power and of returning to the laws of God, is dimly felt by all men, and especially vividly by the Russian people just now. And in this dim consciousness of the possibility and necessity of re-establishing their obedience to the law of God and ceasing to obey human power, lies the essence of the movement now taking place in Russia.
What is happening in Russia is — not, as many people suppose a rebellion of the people against their Government in order to replace one Government by another ”

“ Where the children of a proprietor had been implicated in the revolt, it was maintained during the lifetime of both parents. Nor was it employed merely to prevent the guilty son from inheriting the ancestral property; for, by the civil law of Russia, all political criminals become necessarily dead in law, and are incapable of either inheriting or transmitting any property whatever: whether exiled to Siberia, or living as an emigrant in Western Europe, the very existence of the offender is ignored by Russian law, except when punishment can be inflicted on him. ”

“ All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to construct and administer law? Russia—gelid, frigid Russia—can not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its partner emotion, love to man, in emancipating thirty million serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given. ”

“ Only the authority that granted the first electoral law, the historical authority of the Russian tsar, is adequate to abolish that law and replace it with a new one.
The Lord God had entrusted Us with monarchical authority over Our people. It is before His throne that We shall give account for the fate of the Russian realm. ”

“ And if we wish to test the truth of this, it can be done by the same method which showed us that Russia, if her race or religion could sometimes make her an invader and an oppressor, could also be made an emancipator and a knight errant. In the same way, if the Russian institutions are old-fashioned, they honestly exhibit the good as well as the bad that can be found in old-fashioned things. In their police system they have an inequality which is against our ideas of law. ”

“ And there is another aspect of the law, which, though it [92] has been denied, still obtains in Russia, and that is the power of the law to keep an untried man whose guilt is not proved in prison indefinitely, and to subject him to such mental or physical torture that, to escape from it, the victim either confesses to a crime of which he is innocent or goes raving mad. To understand this, one must bear in mind that, while in our country a man is considered innocent until he is proved guilty, in Russia, as soon as ever he falls under suspicion, he is regarded as a criminal. ”

“ The law was for the weak alone, the strong being left to avenge their own wrongs. The punishment of crime was provided for by judicial combats, which the law did not even regulate. Every strong man was a law unto himself.
Where no avengers of crime appeared, murder was to be settled by fines. For the murder of a boyar eighty grivnas were to be paid, and forty for the murder of a free Russian, but only half as much if the victim was a woman. Here we have a standard of value for the women of that age. ”

“ Judges, whose duty it is to judge and condemn criminals, conduct their trials in such a fashion as to prove them innocent; thus the Russian government, when it desires the condemnation of those it wishes to punish, never confides them to the ordinary tribunals; it tries them by court-martial, which is but a parody of justice. The same may be said of lawyers, who often refuse to accuse, and, twisting round the law, defend those they should accuse. ”

“ Just as in its legislation, it is not so much the law as it stands which determines the state of things social in Russia, as the trend and aim and [Pg 227] purpose of every new enactment, and the present actual life of the people. All that is in one direction in Russia. Government becomes ever more and more constitutional. It is the same with respect to religious life and prospects. There has been no change whatever in the actual formal and legal relations of the Russian and Anglican Churches ”

“ This ought to be remembered also when we are thinking over future relations between our own people and theirs. The Russians are not a downtrodden and oppressed people struggling to throw off the yoke of a harsh and despotic rule, but are contented, loyal, and law-abiding. ”

“ No one may bear responsibility for an action which was not regarded as a crime when it was committed. If after violating the law the relevant responsibility is eliminated or mitigated, the new law shall be applied.
Article 55 1. The listing in the Constitution of the Russian Federation of the fundamental rights and freedoms shall not be interpreted as a rejection or derogation of other universally recognized human rights and freedoms.
2. In the Russian Federation no laws shall be adopted cancelling or derogating human rights and freedoms. ”

“ So that until the revolutionary movement began, cases of capital punishment, which only occurred in virtue of martial law, were rare, and from 1866 to 1903 only 114 men suffered the penalty of death throughout the whole of the Russian Empire, including the outlying districts such as Caucasus, Transbaikalia, and Turkestan; [2] and even at the present moment, when the country is still practically governed by martial law, which was established in order to cope with the revolutionary movement, you can in Russia kill a man and only receive a few years’ imprisonment. ”

“ Some made a bid for liberty, and rushed off, but could not get far; the cordon was too strong to be broken through. Others, with a wild despair, prepared to sell their lives and liberties dearly. But, as is well known, Continental police, and particularly the Russian police, stand on no ceremony when resistance to their authority is offered. The maudlin sentiment which we in England so often display, even when the most desperate ruffians are concerned, is quite unknown abroad. Resistance to the law generally means injury, and often death, to the resister. ”

“ Deprived of the guidance given by divine law (that is, the highest capacity of human nature) men inevitably sink to that lowest grade of human existence where the only motives of their actions are their personal passions and the hypnotism to which they are subject. Under such an hypnotic suggestion of the necessity of obedience to Government, lie all the nations that live in the unions called States ; and the Russian people are in the same condition. ”

“ Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society. Nor can this be otherwise, since always and everywhere a Government, by its very nature, must put in the place of the highest, eternal, religious law (not written in books but in the hearts of men, and binding on every one) its own unjust, man-made laws, the object of which is neither justice nor the common good of all but various considerations of home and foreign expediency. ”

“ The army of Russia previous to 1874 was drawn entirely from the classes of artisans and peasants by means of a conscription and the enrolment of the sons of soldiers. In that year a new law was approved by the Emperor making all men who had completed their twenty-first year, and were not physically exempt, liable to service. The purchase of substitutes is not permitted by the new law; each man drawn by the conscription is required to pass six years in active service and nine years in the reserve, making a total of fifteen years in all. ”

“ Every package bore the State seal. Anyone unlawfully breaking the seal was guilty, according to the law of Russia, of treason, and liable to death or banishment to Siberia. In due course the train reached St. Petersburg, where the packages of money were examined, counted in the train, and found correct. They were then loaded into a covered Government waggon, counted and examined again, and also found correct; and all being ready, the waggon drove off, accompanied by the four officials and the gendarmes. ”

“ When you are going to leave Russia, a few days' notice must be given at the police-office; and if any creditors have filed their claims against you with the police, you must settle them before you can have your passport. If any one owes you money, and you have reason to believe he intends leaving the country, you can stop him or get your money by leaving your account with the police for collection. Absconding debtors are nearly as rare in Russia as absconding hotel-patrons, for the simple reason that the law restricts their movements. ”

“ All those persons who are united by the fact of their belonging to the Russian state must have, within the limits of the empire, the minimum of rights, which, to our shame, are refused the Jews. This minimum each one of us receives not for his personal or racial deserts or distinctive traits, but as a citizen of the state. To obey the common Russian laws, to pay the established taxes, to serve in the army,—all these are the duties of a Russian subject, corresponding to the amount of rights of which he can be deprived only by a court ruling for a crime. ”

“ The Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, recognizing the equal rights of all citizens, irrespective of their racial or national connections, proclaims all privileges on this ground, as well as oppression of national minorities, to be contrary to the fundamental laws of the Republic. ”

“ In its effort to create a league- free and voluntary, and for that reason all the more complete and secure- of the working classes of all the peoples of Russia, the Third Congress of Soviets merely establishes the fundamental principles of the Federation of Russian Soviet Republics, leaving to the workers and peasants of every people to decide the following question at their plenary sessions of their soviets, namely, whether or not they desire to participate, and on what basis, in the Federal government and other Federal soviet institutions. ”

“ I saw a working class which had been oppressed under czardom itself turn oppressor; an army that had been starved and betrayed use its freedom to starve and betray its own people. I saw elected delegates to the people’s councils turn into sneak thieves and looters. I saw law and order and decency and all regard for human life or human rights set aside, and I saw responsible statesmen in power allow all this to go on, allow their country to rush toward an abyss of ruin and shame because they were afraid to lose popularity with the mob. ”

“ The fundamental problem of the constitution of the Russian Socialist federated Soviet Republic involves, in view of the present transition period, the establishment of a dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry in the form of a powerful All-Russian soviet authority, for the purpose of abolishing the exploitation of men by men and introduction of socialism, in which their will be neither a division into classes nor a state of autocracy. ”

“ Not freedom of action alone, but even freedom of thought, is a crime in Russia. It is a land of innumerable spies, of secret arrest and rapid condemnation, in which the captive may find himself on the road to Siberia without knowing with what crime he is charged, while his friends, even his wife and family, may remain in ignorance of his fate. ”