Home / Self-development/ How the rules of succession to the throne in Russia changed. Reference

How the rules of succession to the throne in Russia changed. Reference

The procedure for succession to the throne in Rus' was quite simple; it was based on a custom dating back to the founding of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, when succession to the throne was carried out on a clan basis, i.e. the throne almost always passed from father to son.

Only a few times in Russia the throne passed by choice: in 1598, Boris Godunov was elected by the Zemsky Sobor; in 1606, Vasily Shuisky was elected by the boyars and the people; in 1610 - Polish prince Vladislav; in 1613, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov was elected by the Zemsky Sobor.

The order of succession to the throne was changed by Emperor Peter I. Fearing for the fate of his reforms, Peter I decided to change the order of succession to the throne by primogeniture.

On February 5, 1722, he issued the “Charter on the Succession to the Throne,” according to which the previous order of succession to the throne by a direct descendant in the male line was abolished. According to the new rule, inheritance of the Russian Imperial Throne became possible according to the will of the sovereign. According to the new rules, any person worthy, in the opinion of the sovereign, to lead the state could become a successor.

On April 5, 1797, during the coronation of Emperor Paul I in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin, the “Act of Succession to the Throne” was promulgated, which, with minor changes, existed until 1917. The Act determined the preferential right to inherit the throne for male members of the imperial family. Women were not excluded from succession to the throne, but preference was reserved for men by order of primogeniture. The order of succession to the throne was established: first of all, the inheritance of the throne belonged to the eldest son of the reigning emperor, and after him to his entire male generation. After the suppression of this male generation, the inheritance passed to the clan of the emperor’s second son and to his male generation, after the suppression of the second male generation, the inheritance passed to the clan of the third son, and so on. When the last male generation of the emperor's sons was suppressed, the inheritance was left in the same family, but in the female generation.

This order of succession to the throne absolutely excluded the struggle for the throne.

Emperor Paul established the age of majority for sovereigns and heirs at the age of 16, and for other members of the imperial family - 20 years. In case of accession to the throne of a minor sovereign, the appointment of a ruler and a guardian was provided.

The “Act of Succession to the Throne” also contained an extremely important provision about the impossibility of ascending to the Russian throne by a person who does not belong to the Orthodox Church.

In 1820, Emperor Alexander I supplemented the rules on succession to the throne with the requirement of equality of marriages, as a condition for inheritance by children of members of the Russian Imperial House.

The "Act of Succession to the Throne" in edited form, together with later acts relating to this topic, was included in all editions of the Code of Laws Russian Empire.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

Formally, in Russia, before Peter I, succession to the throne was determined by state-legal custom, according to which the right to the throne was given to a male person by right of primogeniture; this principle, established since the time of the Moscow Rurikovichs, was later reinforced by the right of the Zemsky Sobor either to elect a dynasty or to approve a new monarch for the kingdom; sometimes a simple election from several candidates of a person suitable for the royal crown could occur. The last king From the Romanov dynasty, who was formally elected tsar, bypassing, by the way, the principle of primogeniture, Peter I himself became.

In connection with the case of Tsarevich Alexei, Peter Manifesto dated February 3, 1718, identified the main reason that forced him to resort to extreme measures, stating:

“For I cannot leave such an heir, to whom I would lose what my father received through the help of God, and would ruin the glory and honor of the Russian people, for whom I spent my health, not sparing my belly in some cases, and, moreover, being afraid the judgment of God, to entrust such a government, knowing that it is indecent"; in connection with which the following was decided: “And so we regret our state and our loyal subjects, so that from such a ruler, especially the previous one, we would not be brought into a bad state, by the power of the father, about which, according to the rights of our state and each subject, our son is deprived of his inheritance and another son, to whom he wants to determine it, is free, and as an autocratic sovereign, for the benefit of the state, we deprive him, his son Alexei, for those guilts and crimes of the inheritance for us, the throne of our All-Russian, even if not a single person of our surname remains for us." .

The throne was thus transferred to Alexei's half-brother from his marriage to Catherine. However, this was not the end of the issue. Nominal decree dated February 5, 1722, he, in fact abolishing the previous rule established by custom: “only from the old custom that the greatest son was given an inheritance,” referring to previous examples of non-compliance with this rule, established a testamentary order of succession to the throne: “so that this would always be in the will of the ruler The sovereign will determine the inheritance to whomever he wants." True, according to the meaning of the Decree itself, it was obvious that the monarch was still limited in his right of choice by descendant relatives, and not by strangers. Thus, complete freedom of will was not established.

The latter is confirmed by the further practice of transferring the throne: Peter II is the grandson of Peter I, Anna Ioannovna is his niece, the daughter of Peter’s half-brother Tsar John Alekseevich V, John VI is Peter’s great-nephew (grandson of John V), Elizabeth is Peter’s daughter, Peter III is his grandson. Exceptions from the general series of reigns of the 18th century. (until 1797) are only Catherine I and II, whose rights to the throne were determined entirely by the conditions of the coup d'etat. Paul I's rights to the throne are determined by his birth in a legal marriage from Peter III with Catherine II, but subsequently information appeared that cast doubt on his origin precisely from Peter III - historians still cannot establish this with accuracy. But it was Pavel Petrovich - the formal great-grandson of Peter I - who abolished the leapfrog with succession to the throne, establishing a firm and legal order in this important state issue, which was in effect until 1917.

New order succession to the throne was confirmed By decree dated April 14, 1797 Text Decree drawn up even earlier - on January 4, 1786 in the form of an agreement between the then Grand Duke Paul and his wife Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. The latter, however, did not stop the leading lawyer pre-revolutionary Russia N.M. Korkunov to argue that this act, nevertheless, cannot be considered a family agreement, but “it should be recognized as law” [Korkunov. 1893.1: 172], especially since it was subsequently given an undoubtedly legitimate form.

The decree on succession to the throne established the so-called Austrian order of succession to the throne, according to which all descendants of the ancestor emperor received rights to the throne, and this, as is known, was Paul I himself, regardless of gender. The right of advantage, however, was established for males according to the fact of primogeniture. This means that sons precede daughters in succession to the throne. In the event of suppression of male offspring, the daughters of the last reigning Emperor are called upon to inherit, which was called in the act the “right of intercession.”

Norms Decree on succession to the throne 1797 were subsequently supplemented with clarifying decrees. Thus, in 1820, regarding the morganatic marriage of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich with a Catholic woman, the principle of equal marriage was defined, which was legally based on the need to obtain the Emperor’s permission for such a marriage. Children of a misalliance were excluded from inheriting the throne, which was legally confirmed, however, only in 1886. Manifesto dated December 12, 1825 and simultaneously with the one published with it Manifesto Alexander I of August 16, 1823 determined the procedure for abdication from the throne. Next, when compiling Code of Laws in 1830 and included in the first volume of this act Institutions of the Imperial Family it was decided that a person entering into an equal marriage with a representative of the Imperial House must convert to Orthodoxy before the wedding; failure to comply with this provision led to the loss of rights to succession to the throne for children from such an interfaith union. At the same time, in 1886 a new version of Art. 142 Basic state zak., which has now become Art. 60 Basic state zak. T. I Holy Order ed. 1892, which established the requirement to convert to Orthodoxy before marriage only for direct heirs to the throne: “The marriage of the heir to the throne and the eldest male person in his generation from a special other faith is carried out no other way than upon her acceptance of the Orthodox faith”; thus, the old rule, approved by Peter III, was restored: as you know, Alexey Petrovich - the unfortunate son of a reformer father - was married to a Catholic (Austrian princess), who, even after marriage, did not convert to Orthodoxy, accordingly, Peter II's mother was not Orthodox religion. Finally, Manifesto 1826, the right to the throne was established for persons of imperial blood from the moment of conception.

The age of majority of the heir to the throne was established at the age of 16, while the onset of general legal capacity for subjects began only at the age of 21. However, for the Emperor the moment of legal capacity did not have a specific meaning. Until he reached the age of majority, guardianship was established over him, headed by a ruler or regent. The appointment of a regent and guardianship was subject to the authority of the last reigning Emperor; if such an expression of will was impossible, guardianship and the Regency were handed over to the father or mother of the Sovereign, but not to the stepfather or stepmother (Article 44 Holy main state zak. T. I Holy Order ed. 1906). “When there is no father and mother, then the government and guardianship belong to the closest to the succession to the throne from adult relatives of both sexes of the minor Emperor” (Article 45 Ibid.). Under the regent, a Council was established from persons of the first two classes of Tables of ranks consisting of six people, however, the Council had only an advisory role (Article 51 Ibid.).

The accession to the throne of the next Emperor was carried out automatically without any formalities, “by the force of the law of inheritance itself.” Thus, the old monarchical principle: "Le roi est mort: vive le roi" received full confirmation in Russia. The coronation did not have a strictly legal significance and was carried out, so to speak, with the aim of giving due splendor to the beginning of a new reign. In this, coronation differs, for example, from the inauguration of modern Russian presidents, since for the latter this act has legal meaning- only from the day of taking office (inauguration) does the newly elected president begin to perform his duties.

Establishment of the Imperial family.

The circle of blood relatives of the Emperor, both ascending and descending and lateral, constituted in Russia from 1797 to 1917 a special privileged class, the status of which was determined Basic state laws countries. It was said above that Uch. Imp. Fam. was included as a special section in the first volume of the Code of Laws from the first to the last edition. Until 1885, this act did not undergo significant changes, however, due to the expansion of the dynasty and the increase in its number, it was necessary to more accurately determine both the status of its members, the size of their privileges, and the amount of money paid annually. To the Emperor's honor Alexandra III It should be noted that he was, perhaps, the only one in the history of Russia who made a radical reduction in the costs of maintaining the country's ruling layer. In many ways, the reduction amounted to a reduction in amounts by 3 or 5 times, and some expense columns, for example, for the Emperor’s great-great-grandchildren, were abolished altogether. The reform of 1885 significantly narrowed the circle of the Imperial family.

The management of the dynasty's property was under the authority of the Ministry of the Court and Appanages.

§ 2. The highest representative power in the Russian Empire

In the initial period of the existence of statehood in Rus', problems with succession to the throne and continuity of princely power, in general, did not exist. From the hands of the dying Rurik, the reins of power were seized by his wife's brother Oleg, who was officially considered the guardian of the young Igor, who was able to reign only after the death of his power-hungry uncle. After the inglorious death of Igor, the head of the principality for some time was his widow, the guardian of the young Prince Svyatoslav, Princess Olga, who transferred power to her son when he reached the age of seventeen. Complications began with the Svyatoslavichs, who, at the instigation of their advisers, unleashed a fratricidal war, from which Vladimir, born of a slave - housekeeper Malusha, emerged victorious.

This feud, but on a larger scale, continued under his children and ended disastrously: the offspring of ten of the twelve Vladimirovichs were cut short. Yaroslav became the only ruler and owner of Rus' - after him, by the way, the existence of whole and indivisible Rus' was interrupted for centuries. The reason for this tragedy was that the princes who replaced the tribal leaders were guided by the ancient order of inheritance of tribal seniority, characteristic of both eastern and Western Slavs, which indirectly confirms Slavic origin Rurik.

Let us remember that the clan then consisted of a father, sons, grandchildren, etc. When a father died, his place was taken by the eldest son, who became “in place of a father” to his younger brothers, and his own children turned into, as it were, the younger brothers of their uncles. Thus, they had a hypothetical opportunity to achieve physical seniority and lead the clan. After the death of the elder brother, the next oldest brother became the “father of the clan”. His sons, in turn, like the sons of their elder brother, moved into the category of their uncles' brothers and lined up in a kind of queue for seniority in the clan. But if one of the brothers died during the life of their father, then his children remained in the position of nephews and grandchildren and could never claim seniority with living uncles and living cousins.

This order was the basis of the Kyiv succession to the throne. These orphans, innocently guilty princes, were called outcasts, and their future depended entirely on the will of the Grand Duke or the congress of princes, who allocated special volosts for them “for feeding.” All subsequent generations of the outcast existed at the expense of these ancestral lands. The outcast and his descendants could not succeed other princes. The first such outcast was Bryachislav Izyaslavich, the grandson of Vladimir the Saint, who received the hereditary Principality of Polotsk. Then other “outcast volosts” appeared: Galitskaya, Ryazanskaya, Turovskaya, Muromskaya.

It also happened that an outcast, by the will of his uncles, did not receive a special volost, and therefore no source of livelihood, and therefore he launched a “undercover” and then an armed struggle for his rights, but we will get to know this a little later.

Meanwhile, the Principality of Kiev, except for the outcast volosts, continued to remain in the power of the prince-father and members of his family, who were not excluded from the line of seniority. True, at first the members of the clan were just assistants to the prince and carried out his instructions for managing the lands instead of the previous mayors from among the senior warriors. This family planting began under Svyatoslav, when he, leaving for Bulgaria, seated his young children in the volosts: Yaropolk - in Kyiv, Oleg - in the Drevlyansky land, Vladimir - in Novgorod. Vladimir and Yaroslav continued the same practice.

It is characteristic that the distribution of volosts had a clear hierarchy. Vladimir, for example, arranged his children this way: Vysheslav (son of a Varangian wife) was sent to Novgorod, Izyaslav (Rogneda’s first son) to Polotsk, Svyatopolk (son of two fathers) to Turov, Yaroslav (Rogneda’s second son) to Rostov. . Vsevolod (the third son of Rogneda) received Vladimir-Volynsky, Svyatoslav and Mstislav (sons of the Czechs) - the lands of Drevlyanskaya and Tmutarakanskaya, Stanislav and Sudislav (sons of concubines), respectively - Smolensk and Pskov, Boris and Gleb (sons of Princess Anna) were sent to reign in Murom and Suzdal. As you can see, the eldest sons were placed in the older cities, the younger sons in the younger ones. The older city is liberated - the next oldest prince moves to it from the younger city, yielding his former volost to his younger brother.

One of the record holders of such movements was the most consistent adherent of the laddering order of ascension to power, Vladimir Monomakh, who was “tested” in Rostov, Smolensk, Vladimir-Volynsky, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, twice ceding the right to the great reign, and then the Chernigov reign, to his older brothers.

But such fair and principled champions of antiquity in history Kievan Rus there wasn't much. The greedy, power-hungry, and treacherous prevailed. You don't need to look far for examples.

Saint Vladimir, Equal to the Apostles, came to power at the “bayonets” of mercenaries and through the murder of his elder brother; the future holy noble prince Yaroslav, sensing the weakness of his elderly father, at first refused to pay him tribute, and then, also through the blood of his elder brother, sat down in Kyiv. Fortunately for Rus', both of them, having fought with their brothers for a year or two and sat down on the table, restored the former unity of Rus', and even found the opportunity to annex new lands to it. However, the attitude of Yaroslav the Wise towards the lands under his control as his own estates and the desire to benefit all his children played a cruel joke on him (or rather, on Kievan Rus). Dying in 1054, he divided the principality between his sons, which was regarded by them and their descendants as the transfer of parts of the former unified principality into inheritable ownership.

For the first ten years, the entire princely family was satisfied with this division and Izyaslav Yaroslavich quite successfully fulfilled the role of “in place of the father.” The scandal in the “holy family” was caused by the son of the eldest Yaroslavich, Rostislav Vladimirovich, who was deprived of the volost and fled to Tmutarakan in 1064 (two years later he would be poisoned there); then Vseslav of Polotsk desired more volosts and more income, and even managed to sit on the Kiev throne in the winter of 1068/69.

In 1073, insoluble contradictions arose among the Yaroslavichs. Svyatoslav and Vsevolod expel their elder brother (eldest again!) from Kyiv, and Svyatoslav becomes the Grand Duke. But especially bloody events took place in 1076 after the death of Svyatoslav: his brothers (the previously exiled Izyaslav and Vsevolod), united, turned Svyatoslav’s five sons into outcasts, the most famous of whom was Oleg, who founded the Olgovich dynasty.

The sons of the aforementioned Rostislav and the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise, David Igorevich, also intervened in this quarrel.

Alas, the participants in these events used all acceptable and unacceptable means in the strife: they used poison, hired killers, bribery, and betrayal. Instead of the former Varangians, the princes called Poles, Hungarians, Kosogs, and Polovtsians to Rus'. They tried to drag both the Germans and the Pope into this war under the promise to submit to both the German emperor and the apostolic throne (Izyaslav Yaroslavich). All this once again speaks, of course, not about the state aspirations of the princes, but about their personal selfish interests, this is not concern for the fate of the people (villagers and townspeople), but, on the contrary, neglect of the interests of the people, this is an inhumane attitude towards people, for war is always blood, violence, robbery, full.

In this whole situation, only some of the princes managed to be a caring owner of their volost, take care of the general interests of the Russian land, strive to protect not only their own treasury, but also the “servants” and “cattle”. Such exceptions, happy for Rus', rightfully include Vladimir Monomakh and his son Mstislav. It was Monomakh who managed to temporarily stop the civil strife of his brothers and bring a certain order or, as they said then, series into their relations. And the first thing he did was to refuse in 1093 the Kyiv table, which belonged to him based on the sum of the feats he accomplished for the glory of the Russian land, in favor of his cousin Svyatopolk II, and in next year, in order not to shed the blood of Orthodox people and “not to boast about filthy things,” he made another concession - he gave Chernigov to Oleg Svyatoslavich, who brought the Polovtsian regiments to Rus'.

Nevertheless, Vladimir, remaining in the shadows, continued to be the most honored and most authoritative prince in Rus'. It was he, even under the rule of Svyatopolk II, who managed to pacify the former outcasts of the Svyatoslavichs (Oleg, David and Yaroslav): during their struggle for the inheritance, the Kiev prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich and the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise Boris Vyacheslavich died in 1078, and in 1096 his son Vladimir Monomakh himself Izyaslav. Thus, he saved thousands of warriors and townspeople from death, and tens and hundreds of villages and towns from burning. At the Lyubech Congress of Princes in 1097, a unanimous decision was made on patrimonial right, that is, the right of sons to inherit what their father owned.

Thus, Monomakh put an end to the struggle for the redistribution of Yaroslav's inheritance between his grandchildren. Each of them sat down in his own fiefdom, where his sovereign rights were limited only by conscience and fear of the wrath of God, as well as by nominal seniority Prince of Kyiv, blood relationship with other appanage princes, treaties that existed between them, sealed by the kiss of the cross, and Orthodox dioceses subordinate to the Kyiv Metropolitan. On the other hand, Vladimir continued the fragmentation of Kievan Rus into volosts and appanages, begun by Yaroslav the Wise.

Hereditary monarchy is the most common form of monarchy. Regarding the question of what rights to inherit the throne are given to the heir by the law on the order of succession to the throne, old writers, who generally did not sufficiently distinguish between the principles of public and private law, held the view that the heir has a personal right to the throne and cannot be deprived of this right without his consent . Under the influence of England, the opinion has now been established that the law regulating the order of succession to the throne resolves an issue of national importance, before which the personal interests of the heir recede into the background. The very term “succession to the throne” has been preserved since the times of patrimonial states and cannot correspond modern relations. Succession to the throne is not inheritance. Before his accession to the throne, the heir is only the person designated by law as the successor of the reigning sovereign. After the death of the latter, the heir becomes sovereign by virtue of the law itself. The rights of the head of state cannot be included in the inheritance left after the death of the former monarch, since these rights remained owned by the one who belonged before - the state. Upon ascending the throne, the sovereign does not become the legal successor of his predecessor. No one can inherit the right to be the sovereign of a given country; the successor, by virtue of the law itself, which determined the order of succession to the throne, becomes the sovereign and receives the authority to exercise the rights of the head of state.

The laws determining the hereditary order of succession to the throne are based on different principles. In addition to the transfer of inheritance according to degrees of kinship, there is now a universally accepted system of inheritance in the order of lines. The line of a given person is the totality of descendants descended from him. There are three orders of inheritance:

- seignorate, that is, inheritance of the throne by the oldest representative of a dynasty or reigning line ( Ottoman Empire, V modern world- Saudi Arabia);
- primogeniture, that is, inheritance by a person who is in the closest degree of kinship to the last reigning (as a rule, the son of the monarch), and from the persons who are in the same degree of kinship to him, the eldest is called; thus, for example, a brother (second degree of collateral descent) excludes a grandson (second degree of direct descent), unless the latter is older than the first.
- primogeniture, that is, inheritance by primogeniture. Typically, this order is combined with the exclusion (at least conditionally) of women and comes down to the transfer of the throne first to descending descendants in one line (the eldest son inherits, and if he died before his father, then his eldest son), and after the cessation of permissible heirs to the throne in the senior line to the next highest line.

Depending on the rights of women to succession to the throne, there are following types primogenitures:

- the Salic system (agnatic primogenetura), in which women are completely excluded from the right of inheritance. In the past, such rules were in force in France, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, and Prussia. Throughout the 20th century, this principle was abolished in all European countries, where the monarchy remains, and now operates only in Japan.
- the Castilian system (cognatic primogeniture), in which women are excluded from inheritance only within one line, for example, a younger brother eliminates an older sister, but the daughter of an older brother excludes an uncle (Spain, Monaco, formerly also Portugal).
- the Swedish system (absolute primogeniture), in which the heir is the eldest child of the monarch, regardless of gender (that is, the preference for males over females is generally abolished). This new type of succession to the throne was first introduced in Sweden in 1980 and has since been adopted in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. On October 28, 2011, the law on succession to the throne of 1701 was changed in Great Britain, equalizing the rights of heirs of both sexes.
- the Austrian or semi-Salic system (agnatic-cognathic primogenetura), in which women are allowed to inherit only in the complete absence of all male descendants of a given dynasty (Austria, Russian Empire, Greece, Bavaria); In Russia, primogeniture was adopted according to the Austrian (semi-Salic) system in accordance with the act of April 5, 1797.

For minor lands of a crown, additional orders are sometimes established: secundogenitura, that is, the transfer of inheritance rights or a certain part of the inheritance to the second son, tertiogenitura to the third son, and so on. At present, with the establishment of single inheritance (in Russia it was established with Ivan the Terrible), which does not allow the fragmentation of the state, the inheritance rights of younger sons have been lost practical significance. According to the principles of secondogeniture and tertiogeniture, only some honorary titles of members of the reigning houses are transferred (in Great Britain, the title of Duke of Edinburgh goes to the second son of the English king, Duke of Kent to the third son, etc.).

Thus, we can draw the following conclusions: of the three existing types of succession to the throne (by election, by appointment by predecessor and by legal inheritance), the hereditary monarchy is currently considered the most progressive.

The abdication of Constantine and the fact that a manifesto was prepared on the transfer of the throne to Nicholas is discussed in sufficient detail in the essay dedicated to Alexander I. We note here only what influenced the development of events in which Nicholas was already the main character.

Remaining undisclosed, the manifesto, as it turned out, had no legal force. This was subsequently confirmed by the events of November 1825. The matter was done just in case, but continued to be kept secret. Besides the emperor, Constantine and their mother, only three people in the country knew about the manifesto: Filaret, A.N. Golitsyn, who rewrote the document, and A.A. Arakcheev. This secret became the factor that created the interregnum situation in 1825 and provoked the uprising of December 14. If Alexander had published a legally prepared manifesto in 1823, such a situation would not have arisen two years later.

Could all this be completely hidden from Nikolai, as he later claimed in his memoirs? Unlikely. Rumors that envelopes sealed with the imperial seal, the contents of which were kept secret, had been sent to the State Council, Senate and Synod, greatly intrigued St. Petersburg society in October 1823. According to M.A. Korfa, “the public, even the highest dignitaries, did not know anything: they were lost in considerations, guesses, but could not settle on anything true. We thought and talked for a long time about the mysterious envelopes; Finally, the news about them, having circulated in the city, was comprehended by general participation: they stopped pursuing it.” It is impossible to believe that these rumors did not reach the ears of the Grand Duke, and it was, of course, not difficult to grasp the connection between the mysterious envelopes and the directly expressed will of Alexander. However, there is no doubt that he did not see the documents and their exact meaning indeed remained unknown to him.

There were, however, two more persons whom Alexander I considered necessary to inform about documenting his intention to make Nicholas heir to the throne. The first was Alexandra Feodorovna's brother, the Prussian Prince Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (future German Emperor Wilhelm I), who came to Russia in 1823. He later wrote: “I alone, due to the special trust of Emperor Alexander in me, knew about the abdication of Grand Duke Constantine in favor of Nicholas. This message was made to me in Gatchina in mid-October 1823.” Returning to Berlin, the prince “reported this to the king, to his, the king’s, greatest amazement. Apart from him, no one heard a single word about it from me.” The second was the Prince of Orange (later the Dutch King William II), who visited St. Petersburg in the spring of 1825. M.A. Korf wrote: “The sovereign also believed him in his desire to step down from the throne. The prince was horrified. In a fit of fiery heart, he tried to prove, first in words, then even in writing, how detrimental the implementation of such an intention would be for Russia. Alexander listened graciously to all the objections and remained adamant.” It is interesting that, according to Korf, the prince had a “special friendship with Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich.” Despite all the confidentiality, this news even appeared in a printed publication - in the Prussian court calendar for 1825, Nikolai Pavlovich was shown as the heir to the Russian throne.

Let us now try to imagine the psychological state of Nikolai Pavlovich over the next two years. He already knows that, as a result of his brother Constantine’s refusal to reign, he, Nicholas, must in the future take the Russian throne - either as a result of Alexander’s abdication (about which the question was never raised again), or after the death of his elder brother, still, most likely, very distant (we also note that in 1825 the emperor was 46 years old and nothing foreshadowed the brevity of the years of his remaining life). However, all this continues to remain a family secret, and in the eyes of society, the heir to the throne, the crown prince with all the required regalia, is Constantine. And Nicholas is still just one of the two younger Grand Dukes, a brigade commander. And this field of activity, which so pleased him at first, can no longer correspond to his natural ambitions in such a situation. This is evidenced, in particular, by the entry in the diary of A.S. Menshikova dated November 15, 1823, conveying the story of A.F. Orlova. When Orlov told Nikolai, his close friend, that “he would like to get rid of command of the brigade, Nikolai Pavlovich blushed and exclaimed: “You are Alexey Fedorovich Orlov and I am Nikolai Pavlovich, there is a difference between us, and if you are sick of the brigade, what I should command a brigade, having under my command an engineering corps with the right to approve criminal sentences up to the level of colonel!” But the point, of course, was not only a sharp reaction to one’s position in general and its ambiguity hidden from everyone.

Decembrist A.M. Bulatov, in a letter from the fortress to Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, explained the unpopularity of his brother Nicholas in society: “There was a very small part on the side of the now reigning emperor. There were various reasons for dislike for the sovereign: they said that he was angry, vindictive, and stingy; the military is dissatisfied with frequent training exercises and troubles in the service; Most of all, they were afraid that Count Alexey Andreevich (Arakcheev) would remain in his power.” The review of another Decembrist, G.S., is very close to this. Batenkova. He testified at the investigation: “I had a prejudice against the person of the current sovereign based on the opinions of young officers, who considered His Majesty to be very partial to the front, strict for all the little things and of a vindictive disposition.”

This reputation of a potential emperor had a decisive influence on the events that unfolded after the death of Alexander I, and on the behavior of Nicholas himself. As the same Steingeil said in his memoirs, “if they did not directly swear allegiance to Nikolai Pavlovich, then the reason for this was Miloradovich, who warned the Grand Duke that he was not responsible for the peace of the capital due to the hatred that the guards had for him.” Let's move on, however, to these events themselves.

Only a few times in Russia the throne passed by choice: in 1598, Boris Godunov was elected by the Zemsky Sobor; in 1606, Vasily Shuisky was elected by the boyars and the people; in 1610 _ Polish prince Vladislav; in 1613, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov was elected by the Zemsky Sobor.

The order of succession to the throne was changed by Emperor Peter I. Fearing for the fate of his reforms, Peter I decided to change the order of succession to the throne by primogeniture.

However, Peter the Great himself did not leave a will. As a result, from 1725 to 1761, three palace coups took place: in 1725 (the widow of Peter I - Catherine I came to power), in 1741 (the daughter of Peter I - Elizaveta Petrovna came to power) and in 1761 (the overthrow of Peter III and transfer of the throne to Catherine II).

In order to prevent future coups d'etat and all sorts of intrigues, Emperor Paul I decided to replace the previous system introduced by Peter the Great with a new one, which clearly established the order of succession to the Russian Imperial Throne.

This order of succession to the throne absolutely excluded the struggle for the throne.

The “Act of Succession to the Throne” in edited form, together with later acts relating to this topic, was included in all editions of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire.

How the rules of succession to the throne in Russia changed. Reference

Password recovery