Sobornoye Ulozheniye

The Russian nobility agreed to serve in the army, but were granted the exclusive privilege of owning serfs.

It attacked the influence of the clergy by refusing them to accept landed estates and reduced the competence of the ecclesiastical courts.

[1] As the Time of Troubles ended, a new dynastic government, the Romanovs, commenced active law-making.

The Salt Riot, which broke out in Moscow in 1648, also contributed to the promulgation of the Sobornoye Ulozheniye, one of the demands of the rioters being to call the Zemsky Sobor and to make a new legal code.

The riot was suppressed, but as one of the concessions to the rioters, the tsar called the Zemsky Sobor, which continued to work until the promulgation of Sobornoye Ulozheniye in 1649.

A special committee headed by Prince Nikita Odoyevsky was created to draft the new legal code.

Deputies of the nobility and posad people had a major impact on the adoption of many of the norms of the Ulozheniye.

Centuries later, during the reign of Catherine II, a silver ark was created to store this original scroll.