Law Scholars of the Russian Forest Legislation of the 19th Century

The article analyzes the contribution of law scholars of forest legislation of the 19th century; highlights their creative and life path. No state can exist without laws in general and without development of legislation of specific institutions, industries, structures, clusters, etc. Long-standing underdevelopment of Russian forest legislation can be explained by vastness of forests, lack of access to the seas, and lack of market relations. Transition from artisan mode of production to manufacture, the country's need for a fleet, and awareness of the necessity of replenishing the treasury through timber trade radically changed the picture and drew attention to the forest. All these changes required development of forest legislation, which actually happened in the 18th – 19th centuries. There are certain people behind each phenomenon, and the forest legislation is no exception. Those people, who harmonized fragmented and overlapping forest laws and in part, narratively, gave the legislative forest process itself a problem-chronological and explanatory character, did a huge and very useful theoretical and practical work, fully deserving the good memory of their descendants and recognition of jurists and all engaged in forestry. The empirical basis of the research is sources, which can be divided into several groups: reference books and encyclopedias of forest legislation; works analyzing the formation and improvement of Russian forest legislation; normative legal acts concerning forests. The methodological basis of the study is general dialectical method of cognition contributing to progressive development from specific to the general, as well as method of hermeneutics, lore of understanding and interpretation of legal texts; and approach emphasizing the objective nature of a historical personality’s activities, revealed through causality and conformity of historical development. The approach proposed by the author to consider the formation of the issue and its development by superimposing it with the history of personalities who solved the issue provides a new look on the problem, a better understanding of reasons that prompted scientists to deal with it, and saturates scientific narrative with brighter colors. The peculiarity of biographical research conducted by the author consists in understanding their life path, creative credo, and the history of the Fatherland.