Patrimonial law of the Bashkirs of the late XVI century – 30s of the XVIII century: the development of the institute, the specifics of legal regulation.

Khamidullin Usman Postgraduate student, Department of Theory of State and Law, Bashkir State University 450005, Russia, respublika Bashkortostan, g. Ufa, ul. Dostoevskogo, 131 rifeyskiy@mail.ru

Due to the voluntary nature of Bashkiria's entry into the Russian state, which lasted from the middle of the XVI century to the beginning of the XVII century, Bashkirs retained broad autonomy in regulating various aspects of public life. One of the manifestations of the special status of Bashkirs in the political and legal space of the Moscow state was the institute of patrimonial law. N. F. Demidova wrote: "In the XVI–XVII centuries, Bashkiria maintained a special system of governance and a number of privileges for the local population. This specificity was caused by the government's desire to shift the protection of the borders of the region to the Bashkir tribal militia. Thus, the basis for the administration of Bashkiria in the XVI–XVII centuries was the principle of preserving the independence of the intra-feudal administration of Bashkir communities and the recognition by the government of the Bashkir patrimonial right to land" ^[9]. It should be noted that after the annexation of the region, the Moscow authorities did not change the order of land ownership that had developed among the Bashkirs back in the Golden Horde period of history. The Russian government secured the Bashkir clans their ancestral possessions, preserving the old order of ancestral land ownership.

Russian Russian citizenship was perceived by the Bashkirs as a simple change of suzerainty, which had passed from the Horde khans to the Russian tsar. Consequently, the ruler of the Moscow state in the legal consciousness of the Bashkirs was the legitimate successor of the Chingizid Khans. No wonder that in Bashkir shezhers Ivan IV appears under the title "white padishah" ^{[13, p. 41]}. Such an interpretation by Bashkirs of political events in the Southern Urals of the XVI – XVII centuries, reflected in Bashkir legends and chronicles, is not without logic. The fact is that the Moscow government, in its relations with the Bashkirs, applied some principles borrowed from the political and legal tradition of the Golden Horde. The continuity of power of Ivan IV, coming from the Horde khans, found its expression in certain procedural and technological aspects of managing the population of the region. Such manifestations of the succession of the Golden Horde principles in relation to the Bashkirs include the procedure for accepting citizenship (the trip of the heads of the tribal structure to the capital of the supreme ruler in order to establish voluntary citizenship, gift exchange between the lord and the subject), the right of the suzerain to grant the tarkhan status and the right to make land grants with the indication of the boundaries fixed in the label or the charter ^{[3, p. 50-51]}, the establishment of cottage taxation ^{[19, p. 81]}.

Thus, the Moscow government objectively inherited the administrative powers of its predecessors ^{[19, p. 83]}. Such a situation created conditions for the application of customary law. Thus, after the accession of Bashkiria to the Russian state, the old order of land ownership (patrimonial law) was actually preserved, which functioned back in the Golden Horde period of history within the framework of Genghisid law. At the same time, it should be noted that although Moscow used Horde management techniques to the annexed peoples in order to adapt to the new political and legal conditions as painlessly as possible, the Russian state, which by its nature was an Orthodox monarchy with an inherited Byzantine cultural paradigm, cannot be counted among the successors of the Golden Horde. However, this conflict was explained by N. S. Borisov: the Moscow authorities did not adopt ideology from the Horde khanates, but first of all the technology of power ^{[7, p. 11]}. Such "technological" borrowings were directed primarily to the needs of the eastern policy of the government ^{[11, p. 274]}.

Considering the question of the influence of the Golden Horde legal traditions on the Russian legislation of the XVI–XVII centuries, R. Y. Pochekaev notes that it was more formal (for example, the use of forms similar to Horde labels in princely letters), and not substantive, since the content of the norms of the eastern, nomadic, and with ser. XIV century. and the Muslim power could not be largely perceived in Russia, which was a settled and Orthodox country ^{[16, pp. 204-205]}. Thus, the institution of Bashkir patrimonial law, since the middle of the XVI century, has been embedded in a foreign legal system. Because of this, the legislative measures of the Russian state to regulate patrimonial customary legal relations could not objectively preserve Bashkir patrimonial law in its old state of the Horde period.

Thus, the above gives rise to the need to consider a set of issues: firstly, the issue of the development of the Bashkir patrimonial law institute within the legal system of the Russian state, and, secondly, the issue of its legal regulation taking into account genetic specifics (the establishment of the institute within the legal tradition of the Golden Horde).

In order to reconstruct the legal regulation of Bashkir patrimonial land ownership in the period from the end of the XVI century to the 30s of the XVIII century, it is necessary to outline and analyze the range of sources containing norms that, to one degree or another, had a regulatory effect on Bashkir patrimonial legal relations.

Researchers note that in the second half of the XVI – first half of the XVIII centuries, the Bashkir population of Ufa County, due to its weak integration into the administrative and legal system of the Russian state, did not fall within the scope of the all-Russian legislation ^{[4, 5]}. Bashkirs, along with other peoples of the Volga region, were subordinated to the Order of the Kazan Palace. As I. P. Ermolaev wrote, this department acquired the features of an institution with a special profile related to the definition of the general national policy of the government in the state ^{[10, p. 76]}. Relations between the Moscow authorities and Bashkirs were regulated by the norms enshrined in the charters. So, in the instructions of 1728 to the Ufa voivode P. I. Buturlin, it is indicated that in relation to the Bashkirs "to act according to the data from the ancestors of our Great Sovereigns to the charters" ^[20]. However, it should be noted that to date, not a single original of the letters patent has been preserved. Orenburg Governor A. A. Putyatin, back in 1766, explained to the Senate the reasons why the Bashkirs lost the letters of commendation received from Ivan IV: "... Bashkirs for various reasons do not have letters of commendation for their lands, and the surviving copies of letters of commendation in the Ufa provincial chancellery were destroyed by fire in 1759" ^{[22, p. 192]}. The absence of the most valuable primary sources does not allow us to reconstruct the content of the norms of chartered letters regulating the relations of patrimonial land ownership, but sets the task of reconstructing the nature of their prescriptions and regulatory impact.

According to the periodization of the history of Russian law proposed by M. F. Vladimirsky-Budanov, in the Moscow period (XIV—XVI centuries), law and custom prevailed in equal force ^{[8, p. 17]}. Due to the ongoing process of centralization of the Moscow state at that time, the Grand Duke, and later the tsar, was the only source of legal norms. It was during this era that chartered letters became widespread. By their legal nature, the charters granted were privileges or private laws (privalex) ^{[8, p. 256]}. At the same time, from the point of view of the theory of law, such a construction as "private laws" cannot be identified with acts of application of law in the modern sense, since the latter regulate individual relations of a person, whereas private law regulated the relations of a person with an indefinite circle of persons ^{[16, p. 84]}.

R. G. Kuzeev found that some Bashkir shezheres include part of the text from the letters of merit that Bashkirs received in Moscow and Kazan ^{[13, p. 9]}. So, in the general shezhere of the Bashkir clans Usergan, Kypsak, Burzyan, Tamyan and Tangaur, it is indicated: "We have drawn up a decree (contract) letter, in which they wrote specifically about our lands and religion, gave the word and swore to Bashkirs professing Islam never to rape another religion and that we Bashkirs would begin to carry out sincere service, agreeing to these contractual conditions among themselves, taking signatures from each other, our letter in Kazan recorded in the book" ^{[13, p. 79]}. In this fragment there is a link to the specified certificate. Decree letters, as a kind of granted, were protective in nature. General norms are not established by these charters, but are only confirmed and sanctioned by the threat of punishment for their violation; the same norms are assumed to already exist – either by virtue of customary law or by virtue of a grant ^{[8, p. 258]}. It was the general provisions and norms concerning patrimonial land ownership that were stipulated by the Moscow authorities and Bashkirs when the latter accepted citizenship. The privileges granted to Bashkirs by issuing decree letters, in the legal sense, consisted in the fact that the Russian tsar, being a new suzerain, declaratively confirmed the inviolability of the old orders and traditional institutions, including patrimonial law, thereby sanctioned their operation on the territory of Bashkiria. It should be noted that a similar logic of legal regulation aimed at preserving the old order of Bashkir land ownership can be found in relation to other lands annexed to the Moscow state in the XV–XVI centuries. So, V. B. Kobrin notes that the annexation of any large territory was accompanied by the issuance of documents on the observance of "antiquity". These documents could also include the prohibition of the purchase of villages in Novaya Zemlya by newcomers from the Grand Duchy ^{[12, p. 76]}.

The legal policy of the Russian state on the authorization of ownership according to the "antiquity" is confirmed in the judicial practice of the XVII century. on land disputes involving Bashkir patrimonial owners. According to the calculations of B. A. Aznabayev, out of more than 430 documents of judicial proceedings preserved in the archival funds of the RGADA, in 353 (74%) cases Bashkirs argued the following argument in defense of their position: "... great-grandfathers and grandfathers and fathers owned that patrimonial land from time immemorial" ^{[1, p. 243]}. As an example, testifying to the success of the argument of ownership "from the beginning", we can cite the trial of the XVII century. between the Bashkirs of the Minsk volost, who acted as plaintiffs in the case, and the landowners about the lands on the lake. Alder, Swan, Birch and Brass. The defendants had officially approved by the Order of the Kazan Palace refusal and import certificates for disputed lands, by the time of the lawsuit they owned them for 60 years (the statute of limitations of ownership under Russian law of that time was 40 years), and the plaintiffs, in turn, had no documents confirming the payment of yasak from the above-mentioned lands. However, these arguments did not affect the decision of the judicial administration. As a result, the only argument that influenced the outcome of the case in favor of the Bashkirs was the reference to the limitation of ownership: "their fathers and grandfathers owned those lakes and fishing" ^{[1, p. 245]}.

At the same time, with the development of Russian legislation, the reference to "antiquity" ceases to have priority as proof of land rights. This is due to the beginning of an increasing formalization of law in general and ownership rights to land in particular. The actual possession is inferior to the possession documented, legally secured. Thus, since the epoch of the XVI century sudebniki, trends in the development of principles have been manifested, where patrimonial and local fortresses were considered the main evidence for land ownership. According to the Decree of 1624, the search for disputed lands was to be carried out according to the patrimonial, notebook, patrol, scribe books. In case of loss by the owner of the supporting documents for the land, the Decree prescribed to conduct a search for the person belonging to the disputed plot exclusively by scribes according to books and acts. Consequently, witness testimony as evidence in court proceedings was allowed only in extreme cases ^{[23, pp. 58, 59, 62]}. This provision also found its development in the Council Code of 1649 (Articles 51, 52 of Chapter XVI). Thus, the documentary consolidation of the rights to patrimony by the middle of the XVII century becomes an immutable norm ^{[15, p. 84]}. However, in the practice of Ufa voivodes, this rule begins to be applied only since 1697. In accordance with the charter of 1697, it is prescribed: "On lands and all lands in which there were courts and confrontations to set aside, and instead of courts and confrontations to search for serfs in fortress cases." At the same time, it seems that this innovation was not simultaneously introduced into established law enforcement practice. Even in 1701, procedural rules were applied to resolve land disputes, requiring a "general search", i.e., a survey of residents of the neighborhood. For example, the case of defending the patrimonial rights of the Bashkirs of the Giray volost in 1701, in which the testimony of witnesses was collected, and not "investigation by books and acts" ^{[1, p. 251]}.

The consequence of the tendency to replace actual ownership with formal ownership, which was an objective process of land relations development, was the appeal of Bashkirs to local representatives of the judicial administration in order to document their patrimonial rights. Bashkirs needed protection of land rights with the help of existing legal mechanisms and methods. Thus, the petitions of Bashkirs were satisfied through the issuance of letters of protection, which are documents of clerical office work. These certificates were issued on the basis of petitions on behalf of the tsar by the judges of the Order of the Kazan Palace. They contained an instruction to protect the patrimony of petitioners from "violence". So, in the protective memory of January 18, 1672, issued to the Bashkirs of the Gaininsky volost, the following is indicated: "And by the decree of the great sovereign Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich, stolynik and voivode Ivan Timofeyevich Kondyrev ordered them, Bashkirs, to own that patrimony land and rivers, and all sorts of lands, and animal and fishing and beaver runs, and to pay yasak from that patrimony land and lands of the great sovereign to the treasury, and to various people in that patrimonial land should not be repaired from the grounds of violence and tax" ^{[14, p. 37]}.

In addition to the existence of a protective clause prohibiting "fixing violence" in the patrimony, the certificate of protection contained a sanction for self-defense of the patrimony right by detaining the offender and bringing him to the competent authorities for the purpose of his subsequent conviction. For example, in the Bashkir petition of the Kurpes-Tabyn volost, a request is made to issue a certificate in order to "if someone forcibly takes into account their patrimony to enter and repair them, and to invite them and come to Ufa to the Command hut" ^{[2, p. 11]}.

Another mechanism for the protection of Bashkir patrimony was the letters patent. They were issued as a result of the trial to the winning party and proved their right to own the land. The certificate of ownership was a certificate of ownership of the patrimony. This type of document, similar to a letter of protection, contained a sanction for self-defense of rights: "... who will come to those of their patrimony and will fix what kind of violence, and, having them, they are ordered to be brought to the city to Ufa" ^{[2, p. 11]}.

A striking manifestation of the legal policy of the Moscow State on the conservation of the Bashkir patrimonial land relations was the prohibition on the alienation of land in any form. This norm was fixed in the Decree of 1637 with the following wording: "... in the decree of the blessed memory of Sovereign Mikhail Fedorovich, with the attribution of Fyodor Panov in 1637, it was written that it was ordered in Ufa city, in Posad, and in the suburbs, in the counties and in the palace villages, to make a strong order and click on the auction with biryuch many days, so that all sorts of orders and no Russian servants or tenants and all sorts of ranks of people and newly baptized and princes and murzas and Tatarov and votyaks and Bashkirs and Cheremis and Mordvins and their wives and children and local and patrimonial and yasachny and tolls and board lands no land in no debts in mortgage records and in bondage and they did not write to any fortresses and did not pledge themselves with any deeds, but who will take into account any ranks of people in what mortgage records or in bondage and in other fortresses to write to themselves or their wives and children and all sorts of lands and lands to pledge to them and those people for that to be a great sovereign punishment in the death penalty" ^{[1, p. 224]}. This norm was included in the Council Code of 1649 in the form of Article 43 of the XVI chapter. When comparing the decree memory of 1637 and the Cathedral Code of 1649, attention is drawn to the sanction for violating the prohibition on alienation of land. Thus, according to Article 43 of the XVI chapter of the code, the confiscation of illegally acquired patrimonial lands in favor of the state was provided for: "the lands of imati on the sovereign" ^[18]. In turn, the memory of 1637 recognizes all such transactions as invalid, and in the case of the sale of patrimonial land contains a requirement to return them back to the Bashkirs-patrimonial, but not to the treasury: "those fortresses are not in the fortress, and the money will be lost, and those fiefdoms that were fiefdoms of this and were bought, and those fiefdoms were ordered to turn again again" ^{[1, p. 249]}. Thus, we are faced with a classic situation of competition between general and special legal regulation (Lex specialis derogat generali). In the case of the Bashkirs, a special norm of the Decree of 1637 was used to regulate patrimonial relations.

In addition to the above, it is necessary to consider the litigation of 1652 between the Bashkirs of Ilansk and Yeldyatsky volosts. The essence of the dispute was that the Bashkir-Eldiaks paid yasak from the patrimony, which was illegally owned by the Bashkir-Ilans. The defendants, in support of their position, presented a bill of sale dated 1588, which states that "the Bashkir of the Eldyatsky parish, Chikil Epanchin son, sold his patrimony to Sarmash yezy with on-board grooming and animal and with fishing and with all sorts of lands and Bozak and Seitgaley, and took a tritset of martens and two epanchs" ^{[1, p. 225]}. The plaintiffs won the lawsuit, arguing their position with reference to the norm of the Decree of 1637, which prohibits the alienation of patrimony in any form. However, the Ufa governor F. Ya. Miloslavsky interpreted the provision of the Decree in his own way during the consideration of the case. The fact is that the norm in question, fixed in the decree, as well as in Article 43 of the XVI chapter of the Cathedral Code of 1649, does not contain a ban on acquiring patrimony to foreigners, including Bashkirs, from other Bashkir patrimony holders: "In the city of princes, and Murz, and Tatars, and Mordvins, and at chuvash, and at cheremisa, and at votyaks, and at Bashkirs, boyar, and okolnichy, and duma people, and stolnik, and lawyer, and the noble of Moscow, and from the cities the noble, and the boyar's children, and all ranks of Russian people, local and all lands are not bought and not changed and in the mortgage is both here and for hire for many years not imati" ^[18]. Thus, F. Y. Miloslavsky, by virtue of judicial discretion, applied the norm of the Decree of 1637 in order to resolve the dispute through the prism of the principle "everything is prohibited that is not directly permitted by law."

It seems that the above-mentioned precedent acted in favor of the preservation of Bashkir land relations, which allowed to preserve the institution of the patrimony and prevent its destruction, since it implied a ban on transactions on the alienation of land between Bashkirs of different volosts. It is noteworthy that in parallel with this, in accordance with the all-Russian legislation (Article 85 of the 1550 Code of Justice, Chapter XVI of the Council Code of 1649), the right of ancestral redemption of property functioned. Despite the fact that this institution assumed the alienation of the patrimony from the new acquirer, who was forced to yield to the demands of relatives, the ancestral redemption was a right, not an obligation of relatives. Of course, the origin of the institution of ancestral redemption was due to the need to return the departed property back to the family in order to legally protect against the destruction of the integrity of the ancestral patrimony. However, in accordance with the Russian patrimonial legislation, it was necessary to achieve this goal with the help of a dispositive method of regulating relations, while in relation to Bashkir patrimony, an imperative method was chosen to achieve a similar goal.

A cardinal change in the paradigm of legal regulation of patrimonial relations Bashkir laid the Decree of February 11, 1736, "Nominal, given to Lieutenant General Rumyantsev and State Councilor Kirilov. About incontinence of fugitives and about punishments of Bashkirs caught in theft; about fugitives from Russians and gentiles caught between Bashkirs; ... about allowing nobles, officers and petty bourgeois to buy land and lands from Bashkirs..." ^[21]. This document contained a set of measures and tasks drawn up by the head of the Orenburg expedition, I. K. Kirillov, to pacify the Bashkir uprising that broke out in the 30s of the XVIII century. The activities carried out by the authorities in accordance with the Decree of 1736 affected important aspects of the Bashkir patrimonial land ownership. The main innovation was the lifting of the ban on the purchase of Bashkir patrimony: "Although according to previous decrees and voivodeship orders in the Ufa district, Bashkirs were not ordered to buy and strengthen lands and grounds, however, it is now seen that the prohibition against them is not very useful to Bashkirs: for the sake of, for their best benefit from now on, we indicated that the prohibition to cancel and from now on, with this decree, the lands and grounds of the local residents, nobles and officers and petty bourgeois, will be allowed to buy from the Bashkirs and secure for themselves ..." ^[21]. Formally, from the standpoint of civil law, this norm was certainly progressive in nature, since it removed the restrictions imposed by previous legal acts and judicial practices on the disposal of property in the form of its sale. At the same time, it is obvious that the introduction of such a legal novel in relation to the Bashkirs did not pursue the goal of "their best benefit in the future", but, on the contrary, laid the legal basis for the legal factory, landowner and peasant colonization of Bashkir lands. At the same time, the Decree of February 11, 1736 did not cancel the patrimonial rights of Bashkirs. This right was reserved for those Bashkirs who did not take part in the uprising.

The narrow civilistic angle of view does not allow us to fully assess the nature of the influence that the norm of the Decree of 1736 on the lifting of the ban on the purchase of land had on the institution of patrimonial law. The fact is that there are significant differences between the civil law and the traditional concept of land law.

In traditional law, land is owned and controlled by a clan, clan, tribe, and its disposal is carried out by elders and other representatives of the tribal elite. However, individual members of the clan can use it in different ways, due to their social position within this group. For example, Bashkir tarkhans, who occupied a high level in the social stratification of Bashkir society, had the right to choose the best lands for use within the patrimonial patrimony, unlike ordinary patrimonial community members. Moreover, this privilege existed by virtue of customary law, and not positive. In this sense, there is no "collective" property in the traditional law in the modern civilistic sense, since it presupposes the existence of individual rights to land without taking into account the social status of its bearers within the group ^{[17, p. 118]}.

The land in the traditional system of values has a sacred meaning, being the basis of collective (generic, ethnic) identity. As R. G. Kuzeyev emphasized, Bashkir tribes and clans long before joining the Russian state were no longer blood-related associations, but were primarily territorial organizations. The Bashkirs have a tradition of sacralizing the earth, its mythologization was noted by scientists-travelers of the XVIII–XIX centuries. According to the observations of P. S. Pallas, Bashkirs had a complex system of local myths, microtoponyms with their own history: "A lot of adjectives, with which Bashkirs mark large and small mountains, all streams and the smallest channels, valleys, frequent groves and all other tracts" ^{[1, p. 151]}. Such a perception of the Bashkirs of the land was reflected in the nature of land ownership and land use. As B. A. Aznabayev notes: "... if in the tradition of the Russian development of new lands, the practice of land use was widespread, then in Bashkir society the belonging of a territory to a particular genus was determined not by the priority of economic development, but by mythological ideas about the sacred status of the ancestral space" ^{[1, p. 150]}. The traditional concept of land relations considers land as the source of existence of the living members of the group, which they inherited by right of birth, and as the place in which their ancestors rest. This dual nature of the earth is eloquently expressed in the Bashkir saying: "Who sold the land, sold the grave" ^{[6, p. 60]}. In this sense, the collective has a sacred duty to ensure the transfer of the land intact to future generations, from the dead to the living. Because of this, in the traditional system, the principle of non-transferability of land outside the group, the collective, the land acted as the inalienable property of the genus.

Also, from the point of view of the traditional concept, land cannot be considered as property. The fact is that civil law qualifies it as an object that has a monetary value and, accordingly, can be appropriated. The traditional system does not ignore the economic value of land, but this value is not decisive, as is the case in the civil law system based on the capitalist mode of production, in which the exchange (exchange) value of land is calculated and introduced into the common market, where the individualistic organization of exchanges dominates ^{[17, p. 120]}. On the contrary, due to the principle of non-transferability of land rights outside the collective, traditional law puts the non-commercial properties of land in the first place and abstracts from its economic value.

Thus, it seems that with the introduction, in accordance with the Decree of February 11, 1736, of certain elements of the civil property regime in relation to the Bashkir patrimony right (the power to dispose of the patrimony by selling it), the transformation of this institution and the acceleration of its integration into Russian property law began. The involvement of Bashkir patrimony in market relations with representatives of other ethnic and class groups inevitably integrated the former into the legal field of the Russian state. Thus, the ancestral patrimony became the object of property-value relations, which shook the established traditional principle of the non-transferability of land outside the community. The inclusion of the Bashkir patrimony in civil circulation, of course, triggered the mechanism of changing the legal consciousness of Bashkirs. Land, appearing as the subject of various private transactions, became subject to monetary valuation and considered as property in the civil sense. The decree of February 11, 1736 also deprived the tribal elite of the privilege, which existed by virtue of customs, to dispose of the entire patrimony of the clan. The institute of local self-government of Bashkirs, including tribal militia, was based on this right. According to the Decree of 1736, the head of the clan and an ordinary Bashkir patrimony formally had equal rights to dispose of the patrimony. Thus, conditions arose for the transformation of patrimonial law from a complex customary legal institution, which included, in addition to the norms of regulation of land ownership and land use, the norms of communal organization (self-government, military organization), into an institution of collective ownership, in which individual rights to land were conditioned not by the socio-political status of the subject, but by the formal allocation of "shares" in common property.

Summarizing the above, it can be concluded that the institution of Bashkir patrimonial law, starting from the end of the XVI – mid-XVII centuries, developed in the conditions of polyuridism. At the initial stage, the Moscow government used means and methods in relation to the annexed Bashkir territory with the aim of the most effective adaptation of local law and order, including the order of land ownership, which developed back in the Golden Horde period of history within the framework of Chingizid law, in new political and legal conditions. The chartered (decree) letters of the late XVI – mid XVII centuries, through which the Russian tsars confirmed the inviolability of the previous land use regime, laid the general vector of Moscow's legal policy aimed at preserving patrimonial relations. In the future, throughout the XVII century, the general declarative norms of chartered letters concerning Bashkir land ownership were clarified and interpreted during land dispute proceedings. It was in pursuance of the policy of adaptation that the Order of the Kazan Palace, represented by the Ufa command hut, carried out the selection of the most optimal mechanisms for the legal regulation of the patrimonial rights of Bashkirs.  The use by Ufa voivodes, within their discretionary powers, when considering land disputes, of the norms of the Cathedral Code of 1649, as well as the norms of the Decree of 1637, which prescribed a ban on the alienation of Bashkir patrimony to a certain circle of persons, formed judicial practice, which became the basis for special legal regulation of Bashkir patrimony relations aimed at preserving the integrity of ancestral patrimony, preventing them crushing. In general, the establishment of patrimonial law as an institution of customary law took place through judicial (law enforcement) authorization. In most cases, the Russian judicial administration considered the limitation of ownership ("possession according to antiquity") as the legal basis for the recognition of the Bashkirs' ownership rights to the patrimony. Ufa voivodes on petitioning Bashkirs, as well as in cases of a positive decision on land disputes, issued letters of protection and certificates of ownership, which were a certificate of ownership and contained a sanction for self-defense of patrimonial rights. At the same time, as Bashkirs became involved in economic relations with representatives of other ethnic and class groups, objective conditions developed for the inclusion of Bashkir patrimony in civil circulation. A radical change in the paradigm of legal regulation of patrimonial relations was laid by the Bashkir Decree of February 11, 1736, which legalized the possibility of Bashkirs selling their patrimony. The government's rejection of previous legal practices aimed at preserving patrimonial relations laid the foundation for the beginning of the transformation of the customary legal institution of ancestral land ownership of Bashkirs. Thus, the lifting of the ban on the purchase of land plots actually leveled the traditional principles on which the Bashkir patrimonial right was based: the non-transferability of land outside the community, the non-commercial nature of the land, the dependence of the content of individual land rights of the subject on his socio-political status within the clan. In the depths of civil turnover, in which the patrimony became a kind of property, there was a transformation of traditional ancestral land ownership into the institution of collective property in the civil sense, which accelerated the process of its integration into Russian property law. Thus, it seems that the former legal policy on the selection of the most optimal mechanism for the adaptation of patrimonial law is being replaced by a policy of selection (selection) of customs for the possibility of their application within the framework of a single positive Russian law.