Russkaya Pravda
legal code of Yaroslav the Wise
The Russkaya Pravda (sometimes translated as Rus' Justice, Rus' Truth, or Russian Justice) was the legal code of Kievan Rus' and its principalities during the period of feudal fragmentation. It was written at the beginning of the 12th century and remade during many centuries. The basis of the Russkaya Pravda, the Pravda of Yaroslav, was written at the beginning of the 11th century. The Russkaya Pravda was a main source of the law of Kievan Rus'.
In spite of great influence of Byzantine legislation on the contemporary world, and in spite of great cultural and commercial ties between Byzantium and Kievan Rus', the Russkaya Pravda bore no similarity whatsoever to the law of the Byzantine Empire. The absence of capital and corporal punishment rather reflects Norse jurisprudence.
Editions
Three recensions of the Russkaya Pravda are known: the Short Edition (Kratkaya Pravda), the Extensive Edition (Prostrannaya Pravda), and the Abridged Edition (Sokrashchyonnaya Pravda). The shortest version numbers around 850 words, while the longest version is around four times as long. The abridged version is known from two 17th-century copies. 13 copies of the Kratkaya Pravda are extant, while an additional four are known to have existed but are now lost.
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This entry incorporates text from “Russkaya Pravda” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.