[15] Modern scholarship of the Russkaya Pravda began in 1738 when the historian Vasily Tatischev rediscovered the code in the text of one of the manuscripts of the Novgorod chronicles, where it was included under the year 1016.

[16] The first study on the Russkaya Pravda, aside from Tatischev's comments, was an academic address called Discours sur l’origine et les changements des loix russiennes delivered by F. Strube de Piermont in 1756.

[16] The results of two centuries of scholarship were collected in a three-volume edition published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences under the editorship of Boris Grekov.

[20] Due to the Short Edition not being a homogenous legal document, this has given rise to a theory that it is the amalgamation of two independent versions of the Russkaya Pravda.

[23] He then marched against his half-brother Sviatopolk, and after emerging victorious, he dismissed the Novgorodian troops and gave them a law code (pravda).

[25] Subsequent development and improvement of the Russkaya Pravda took place in times of Yaroslav's sons and his grandson Vladimir Monomakh.

The Pravda Yaroslavichey is known as such because it starts with the following: "The law established for the Russian land, when Iziaslav, Vsevolod, Sviatoslav, Kosniachko Pereneg, Mikyfor the Kievan, and Chudin Mikula met together".

[29] The Pskov Judicial Charter in particular was the most significant piece of legislation between the Russkaya Pravda and the Sudebnik of 1497, which was the first milestone of a newly unified Russian state.

The Pravda Yaroslavichey provided severe punishment for arson, deliberate cattle mutilation, and collective encroachment on rich people's property.

In an attempt to abolish the blood feud (that was quite common at that time), the Pravda narrowed its "usage" and limited the number of avengers to the closest relatives of the dead.

The Pravda also protected the health and honor of the free members of the feudal society and provided financial compensation for mutilation or insult by word or deed.

The Pravda had a comprehensive system of punishments and penalties for larceny in a city or countryside, deliberate damage to forests, hunting grounds or lands, trespassing etc.

The Pravda made use of witnesses, oaths and of the trial by water or iron, a kind of a last-resort test used to prove defendant's innocence or guilt in legal proceedings.