CONTRACTS WITH FOREIGNERS IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA: DEVELOPMENT OF CONTRACTUAL RELATIONS AND EVOLUTION OF LEGAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The article is devoted to a qualitatively new stage in the development of contractual relations between the Russian state and private individuals — foreigners, the transition to which became obvious in the era of Alexander I. On the basis of deep source analysis founded on the methods of diplomatics, the author demonstrates that in the first quarter of the 19th century the perception of a contract by representatives of power structures (even if the state did not act as a counterparty) was characterized by an awareness of the need for strict compliance with the conditions, the inadmissibility of violation, as well as the recognition of the dominant role of the contract over specific circumstances (including those that made the further execution of the contract meaningless for the treasury). As an illustration, the author selected agreements with mining engineers and administrators invited to the Ural factories in the early 19th century. For comparison, the paper analyzes not only government contracts, but also private-law acts of employment concluded by a German-born entrepreneur Andreas Knauf with other foreigners hired by him during the management of the Zlatoust plants on a leasehold basis. It is concluded that in the epoch under study, the contract could no longer be considered as a kind of “fiction” (V. Zhivov’s expression), which it really was in many ways during the reign of Peter I, when it just entered into mass use due to the active attraction of foreigners to Russia. The strengthening of the legal force of contracts provided hired foreign specialists at the beginning of the 19th century with a fairly stable legal status, and the evolution of the government’s attitude to contractual obligations indicated the convergence of Russian and Western legal cultures.