To the Issue of Legislative Initiatives of Emperor Paul I (1797–1801)

This paper analyzes the legislative initiatives of Pavel I Petrovich in the field of social, financial and economic policy. The material for the study was the laws of Paul, published in lifetime collections of laws and available in electronic form, as well as scientific research on the reform of the “Pavlovian” period. The methodology includes historical-genetic, historical-systemic, historiographical, historical-comparative, structural-diachronic, retrospective and other methods. During the reign of Pavel I Petrovich, 2,179 legislative acts were signed, or an average of 42 per month, which was four times more than during the reign of his predecessor, Catherine II. These statistics indicate a very energetic legislative activity. At the same time, pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern historians point to its inconsistency. Pavel Petrovich's legislative initiatives in reforming the legal status of the peasant class turned out to be positive, since the situation of serfs was insignificant, but still facilitated; first of all, it is important that the law began to see peasants as individuals, not property. Legislative initiatives in the financial and economic sphere were rational and very urgent, but foreign policy activities (namely, the confrontation with revolutionary France in Italy) negated all the advantages of financial reform. Assessing the legislative activity in relation to the nobility, we note that many of the initiatives of Paul I had a rational grain, strengthened the centralization of power, tried to force the nobility to take up estates and pay taxes, thus returning the original position of the nobility primarily as a servant, rather than a privileged class. Many historians, including us, believe that social legislative initiatives against the nobility led to the conspiracy and coup of 1801. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.