Russkaia Pravda of Pestel

(Russian Law of Pestel’; full name, Russian Law, or Prescriptive Political Charter of the Great Russian Nation, to Serve as Precept for the Improvement of the Political Organization of Russia and Containing a Just Instruction for the People as well as for the Provisional Supreme Administration), a document setting forth the political program of the Southern Society of Decembrists. It was written by P. I. Pestel’, who also chose the title, in 1824. The document was prepared as an instruction to the provisional revolutionary government of Russia. It provided for the abolition of both serfdom and a social order based on estates. All citizens were to be equal before the law, and there was to be a republican form of government. The Russkaia Pravda was first published in 1906. The complete text has been published in the documentary series The Decembrist Rebellion (vol. 7, Moscow-Leningrad, 1958).