Legal regulation of communal land ownership in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries

Аbstract. The study is devoted to the peculiarities of legal regulation of communal land ownership in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries; it is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon that requires new theoretical understanding. At that period, the Russian peasant land community was the subject of heated discussions and debates among representatives of various layers of socio-political thought in pre-revolutionary Russia. The article investigates legal regulation of communal land ownership and legislation of the specified period (Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire) and is resulted in findings and conclusions. It is concluded that the complexity of legal regulation of communal land ownership in the Russian Empire in the period under study was associated with the lack of genuine economic freedom of peasants in relation to land, its ownership, use and disposal. The specifics of legal regulation of communal land ownership in the Russian Empire in that period represented the combination of customary law, whose norms governed the peasant community, and official statutory regulation. The study features chronological framework and periodization of legal regulation of communal land ownership. The examples stem from practice and pre-revolutionary literature based on the archival documents.