ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ В.В. СОКОЛЬСЬКИМ МІЖНАРОДНИХ ДОГОВОРІВ КИЇВСЬКОЇ РУСІ Х СТ.

Abstract

Research in the field of the history of Ukraine and the history of law is becoming increasingly urgent due to the fact that it is the subject not only of scientific, but also of political discussions. To a great extent it concerns the history of the Kievan Russia. An important issue of the history of law nowadays is the problem of the essence of Byzantine-Russian treaties of the X-th century. This problem was rather actively discussed in the XIX-th century, and one of the participants of that process was a historian of law, and later a professor of Odessa University, VV Sokolskii. Until now there has been not a single publication devoted to the scientifi c contribution by professor VV Sokolskii in the sphere of historical and legal science. There is only some biographical information and a very concise description of his scientific activities in encyclopedias and reference books. That is why our task is to investigate the scientific heritage of VV Sokolskii, first of all his views regarding the legal aspects of the Russian-Byzantine treaties of the X-th century. In this sense his paper (precisely, the text of lectures) dated 1870 “On treaties between Russians and Greeks” presents the greatest interest. In that work V.V. Sokolskii thoroughly analyzes the main aspects of the Russian-Byzantine treaties differentiating their elements of international, state, criminal, procedural, and civil law. Most of his conclusions reflected the advanced tendencies in developing the history of law in the Russian empire of that time. The researcher defended his views in polemics with many outstanding scholars in that field, he did it with confidence and good reason, though when preparing that work he aspired only to get a position of a privat-docent. All that testifies to the fact that his paper has basically not lost its importance up to the present day.