326 CODIFYING RUSSIAN LAWwont, Speransky supervised all the phases and details of the work
personally. He set the schedule and made the plans, and at every stage.
the entire material was presented to him; he went over every sheet
prepared for publication. pencil in hand. His direct participation was
particularly noticeable and important in the compilation of the Digest.
His method to a large extent determined the character of the results. 1.
Before proceeding to a more detailed examination of the end product
of the Second Section's labors, let us first mention some of the by.
products of its activity. Not only are they of significance for the history
of Russian jurisprudence; they also illustrate characteristic traits of
Speransky's approach.
Copies of the laws of the Russian Empire were scattered among
many archives, libraries, and government institutions. As a first step,
therefore, they had to be gathered (or copied) so that they could be
included in the Complete Collection. It had to be decided with what
date the Collection should start. 1649 was an obvious enough date, as
the last code had been issued in that year by Tsar Alexis. But should
the Code of 1649 itself be included? Previous codifiers (and Alexander
I) had tended to answer in the negative. Speransky on the other hand,
rightly felt that all the succeeding laws had some connection with the
Code of 1649 and to exclude it would deprive Russian legislation of its
basis. It was not true, as he himself had thought at one time, that
later legislation had completely eliminated the usefulness of the Code
of 1649.^2 To this end, he sent for the original copies of the Code ot
Tsar Alexis so as to collate the various versions. Search for copies of
the code led to the realization that other legislation was to be found,
forgotten in various archival depositories. Speransky therefore became
interested in the work of P. Stroev who was then just beginning his
explorations and surveys of archives and old libraries. He encouraged
this kind of activity by all the means at his disposal. 3 The results of
these searches showed that if the Collection were going to be complete,
the Second Section could not rely exclusively on the materials available
in the files of the former Commission on Laws. Other depositories had
to be combed as well. And while at the beginning the Second Section
1 Nicholas I followed the progress of the Second Section's labors very closely, too.
Cf. G. Tel'berg. "Uchastie imperatora Nikolaia I v kodifikalsionnoi rabolc ego
tsarstvovaniia," Zhurnal Ministerstva Iustitsii, XXII, No. I, Gan. 1916), pp. 233-244
passim.
2 A. Filippov, "K voprosu 0 sostave pervogo Polnogo Sobraniia Zakonov Rossiiskoi
Imperii," Otchet Imperatorskogo Moskovskogo Universiteta za 1915 g. (Moscow
1916), part I, pp. 78-79 (separate offprint used).
3 Cf. N. Barsukov, Zhizn' j trudy P. M. Stroeva (St. Pbg. 1878), pp. 133, 134, 157,
213-215.