A privilege earned, not bestowed

Civic self-government, a set of certain inalienable socioeconomic rights on which neither the local nor the top national authorities were not allowed to encroach, carefully streamlined (at least from the viewpoint of that distant era) laws which more or less protected the freedoms of the local populace, moreover, the laws that were often won after a long struggle with the ruling upper stratum rather than bestowed by a gracious government... This range of questions still appears to be arousing the interest of those who research into the Ukrainian past. For local self-government is perhaps one of the “eternal” questions in Ukrainian history, and the lessons of fateful victories and ignominious defeats in this field require a serious analysis and critical reconsideration in order to forestall mistakes in the future. What is extremely instructive in this case is studying the history of Magdeburg Law in Ukraine.

A briefly-defined formula of this juridical system might look as follows: a code of medieval laws that relieve Ukrainian cities of feudal lords’ administration and court. Magdeburg Law primarily proceeds from the streamlined and properly codified common-law norms and judicial rulings of the German city of Magdeburg (accordingly, some documents call it German Law). The urban populace was relieved of central governmental jurisdiction and the city was granted the right of rather a broad self-rule on a corporate basis. The judicial institutions of Magdeburg were later borrowed by many urban communities in various countries, such as Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and Lithuania. They were also widely applied in Ukrainian and Belarusian lands. The main sources on which Magdeburg Law was based were the medieval German legal codes Weichbild and Sachsenspiegel.

It should be noted that the adoption of Magdeburg Law norms in Ukrainian (at first Western Ukrainian) lands was a protracted, difficult, and, so to speak, “multidimensional”, process. As early as in the mid-13th century, the famous Prince, later King, Danylo Romanovych of Galicia bestowed on certain categories of citizens (mostly German colonists) a privilege to apply their own law and have relatively independent judicial and administrative institutions. In general, as Magdeburg Law was based on Western “know-how”, the vector of its proliferation on Ukrainian territory was, accordingly, from west to east. Moreover — as a considerable part of the ruling feudal estate put up resistance and this thing was new to many residents — it took several decades and even centuries for these legal norms to adapt to Ukrainian realities.

Briefly, the chronology of this process is as follows. Magdeburg Law was first established in the cities of Transcarpathian Ukraine (about 1328—1330 in Khust, Tiachiv, and Vyshkove). Incidentally, all these lands were part of the Hungarian Kingdom at the time. Almost at the same time, Magdeburg Law privileges began to be extended to Western Ukrainian cities which were gradually losing political independence and falling under the influence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Polish Kingdom (accordingly, these privileges were granted by the leaders of the two countries). In particular, Magdeburg Law was acquired by Volodymyr-Volynskyi in about 1330, Lviv in 1356, Kamianets-Podilsky in 1374, and Berest in 1390. As for a number of other Right Bank Ukraine cities, they began to practically adopt Magdeburg Law norms much later, in the 15th century (for example, Kyiv did so at the end of the century, in 1494—1497.

Researchers are unanimous that at first the basic norms of Magdeburg Law only applied to German settlers in Western Ukraine and then were gradually extended to the entire population. The concrete mechanism of implementation was usually as follows: the Grand Duke of Lithuania (or the King of Poland, in accordance with jurisdiction) issued a special document — privilege — which solemnly proclaimed that residents of a certain city were partially (or even totally) exempt from “local dependence”. Each social estate had its own, greater or lesser, benefits and a concrete approach was to be taken to each estate. Burghers were allowed to have their own bodies of self-government. In the largest cities, the municipal council (magistrate) was such a body as a rule. This council was usually composed of the viit (the magistrate’s head), his aides (burmnistry), and members of two collegiums: rada (raitsi, or councilors) and lava (lavniks, or assessors). In most cases they were elected by a general vote of all the city’s burghers but the viit was sometimes appointed by higher political authorities. The magistrate had its sphere of jurisdiction finally established after quite long disputes and conflicts: it was to oversee the court and municipal administration, address economic and financial problems, control the police, etc.

Tellingly, there were quite essential differences in the setup of cities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (or the Lithuanian-Ruthenian state): only a few cities, which possessed a greater military, political and economic potential, such as Kamianets, Kyiv and Lviv, were able to make full use of Magdeburg Law. The others could only partially establish a Magdeburg-style administration. It should also be remembered that in Ukrainian cities only burghers, in contrast to those who lived in the city on a castle’s or a bishop’s land, were subject to the jurisdiction of local self-governing courts. This was an unbreakable order. Incidentally, among the last cities that were granted Magdeburg law as late as the early 16th century were Kreminets and Lutsk.

Granting Magdeburg Law to cities, grand dukes of Lithuania and Polish kings were also guided by certain political and defense considerations. For in this case every city was supposed to keep its fortifications in order and perform guard duty. Naturally, this assumed extremely great importance in the cities situated near the border, i.e., in Southern and South-Eastern Ukraine. So in this case it was a sober calculation rather than some kind of “philanthropy” or “reformism” of Algirdas, Vytautas, Kazimierz the Great, Jagiello, or other rulers: reinforcing the state’s defense potential, they were thus strengthening their own power.

The burgomaster and the ratmanns were responsible for municipal revenues and expenditures. As a rule, the burgomaster performed his duties for a month only and then surrendered his office to the senior-most ratmann, after this all the ratmanns would succeed each other in a certain order, and finally the most senior of them would reassume the governing duties. Very often the viit (unless he was appointed by the grand duke personally) the lava members were elected for life and could thus execute their powers more independently and actively.

But it would be wrong to think that Magdeburg-style self-government could radically solve all the economic problems of burghers. More often than not, burghers were in fact locked within the walls of their city: they were forbidden to own estates purchased from the nobility and they had no right to sit in the national representative assembly known as sejm. Moreover, there were purely denominational restrictions imposed on Orthodox burghers a long time before by Grand Duke Vytautas. Gradually, Orthodox Ukrainian burghers in such cities as, for example, Kamianets-Podilsky, were superseded by Polish and German entrepreneurs and craftsmen.

It interesting to follow the history of Magdeburg Law cities after the events of 1654. The well-known Pereyaslav Accord guaranteed that the Ukrainian cities that had acquired Magdeburg Law in olden times would preserve this right. So, apart from the above-mentioned Right Bank cities, Magdeburg Law norms were really applied in Chernihiv, Kyiv, Pereyaslav, Nizhyn, Starodub, Kozelets, Poltava, Novhorod-Siversky, Mhlyn, Pochep, and Oster (if we take into account the Hetman State only). What is more, the vast majority of these cities had obtained Magdeburg Law in the Lithuanian-Polish era (before 1648) and then this status was repeatedly confirmed by Ukrainian hetmans. However, Hetman State cities usually made use of a “truncated” Magdeburg Law: the powers of the local judicial (and partly tax-collecting) bodies were essentially limited. And as the Russian tsarist and then imperial government was suppressing the Hetmanate’s autonomy in a coercive and repressive way in the late 18th century, urban self-government went into an irreversible decline. Finally, by decree of Emperor Nicholas I in 1831, Magdeburg Law was abolished in all Ukrainian cities except for Kyiv, but even there it ceased to exist in 1835.

In addition to making instructive conclusions and learning a very useful experience in the history of Magdeburg Law in Ukraine (for local self-government in this country often still remains limited or bogus), it is very interesting to look at this problem from the viewpoint of the so-called common history of Ukraine and Russia. Let us ask ourselves: to what extent was the Magdeburg practice (i.e., independence of the urban community from the political, economic and any other whims of the central government) possible in the cities of the Muscovite Tsardom and then the Russian Empire? What gives an illustrious answer to this question is the destiny of Novgorod, where there was something of the sort, the city that was subjugated by military force by Ivan III in 1471 and physically destroyed (in fact an act of genocide) by Ivan IV the Terrible in 1570.