18世紀初頭におけるツァーリとエリート－元老院の地位と活動を手がかりとして－
Tsar and the Elite at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century — The Status and Functioning of the Senate in the Petrine Era —

Summary/Abstract: This paper examined two cases of trial to which the Senate was related. One is the Shafirov trial in 1723 that Baron Petr Shafirov stood for his quarrel with the senate procurator G.Skorniakov-Pisare v in a Senate meeting and the other was held in 1721 to inquire into the corruption of the former Siberian governor Matvei Gagarin. These trial cases revealed similar patterns. First, it was the tsar himself that initiated the trials and selected their procedural forms. In the Shafirov case both sides in dispute (Pisarev and Shafirov) petitioned the tsar to settle the quarrel immediately after it, even though he was absent from St. Petersburg then. This means that the administrative organs of those days, including the Senate, lacked such extent of autonomy to solve conflicts between officials. As for the Shafirov case, apparently with the purpose of segregating the trial from clanship within the Senate, the tsar preferred to create an ad hoc “highest court” separated from the Senate, which originally had the status and function of the Supreme Court. In the Gagarin case the tsar charged the Senate with the inquiry, probably because Gagarin did not have a post in the Senate. Another pattern was that both the courts quoted in their judicial decisions the tsar’s decrees, in which we can read the judges’ mentality. In the Shafirov case the highest court, made up of the top elite as well as the Senate, quoted the decrees declaring tsars’ absolute power, especially tsars’ exclusive authority to plan, interpret or amend laws. This showed the elite’s conscious subordination to tsars. In the Gagarin case the decree quoted by the Senate demonstrated the principle of legality, and both the tsar and the Senate took the attitude that they should follow the principle. Moreover, the tsar was not restricted by the elite’s will. In the Shafirov case he made a change in the judicial decision handed down by the highest court, commuting a death sentence on Shafirov to exile. In the Gagarin case the treatment of executed Gagarin’s dead body completely depended on the tsar’s will, and he confiscated Gagarin’s several properties—a measure which was not included in the decision written by the Senate.

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