Improvement of a municipal formation as an object of administrative and legal protection in the period from the formation of Russian statehood to the reforms of Peter the Great

         At the present stage of development of Russian legislation, there is no generally accepted and federally fixed definition of such a phenomenon as landscaping. This is primarily due to the fact that the subject of landscaping includes a huge number of constituent elements. Landscaping can be compared with a mosaic, the composition of the fragments of which depends on the historical and territorial characteristics of a particular area.

         At the same time, the definition of activities for the implementation of landscaping in practice has been reflected in urban planning legislation. According to paragraph 36 of Article 1 of the Urban Planning Code of the Russian Federation, landscaping refers to activities for the implementation of a set of measures established by the rules for landscaping the territory of a municipality aimed at ensuring and improving the comfort of living conditions for citizens, maintaining and improving the sanitary and aesthetic condition of the territory of a municipality, maintaining the territories of settlements and objects located in such territories, including public areas, land plots, buildings, structures, structures, and adjacent territories ^[1].

Etymologically, the word "beautification" is formed from the fusion of two other words "benefit" and "arrange". The word "good" comes from the Old Slavic word "good" in the meaning of "good" ^[2]. The word "build", in turn, also comes from the Old Slavic language from the word "build" in the sense of "erect, manufacture, customize" ^[3]. Starting from the meaning of the word "landscaping", we can conclude that this concept implies some kind of activity to create something that is good in the public consciousness, containing useful properties both for an individual and for the whole society as a whole. In turn, according to the Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language by Ozhegov S.I., the word "well-maintained" means an object "well-arranged, equipped with all amenities", and the word "beautify" means "equip, make good and convenient" ^[4].

Many people dreamed of creating bright, healthy garden cities with clean air, in a natural environment favorable for human life ^[5]. This was also thought about in Russia to one degree or another at all stages of the formation and development of statehood. Measures to improve the urban area appeared simultaneously with the cities themselves. The first and most common of them is the construction of urban roads. In the era of Ancient Russia, the method of wooden paving was used. Due to favorable soil conditions, the wooden pavements of Veliky Novgorod dating back to the tenth century have been well preserved ^[6]. Such bridges were built everywhere, as evidenced by the results of excavations in Pskov, Toropets, Smolensk, Polotsk, Minsk, Moscow, Kolomna and Vologda ^[7]. The need for wooden paving is associated with the unfavorable weather conditions of the climatic latitudes on which these cities were located. Liquid mud in the off-season made it much more difficult to move around the urban area.  Initially, the citizens had to deal with paving streets with wooden sidewalks on their own. Later, the powers of paving passed to the Zemstvo Order, which collected "bridge money" from the yards for this, depending on the size of the household ^[8].

Nowadays, domestic sanitation and water supply always exist inextricably in conjunction with each other. It is impossible to imagine one without the other. But such a relationship developed only after the advent of centralized water supply. In Ancient Russia, the drainage system was necessary due to the fact that many Russian cities of the forest strip were located in a humid, abundant groundwater area, and therefore land drainage was necessary to expand the living area ^[9].

Various drainage ditches were elements of the medieval landscaping of ancient Russian cities, which performed the functions of drainage. Water from them could be diverted into a wooden settling barrel, into an absorbing well with a wooden attachment, or directly into the river. The most advanced drainage structures were wooden pipes, which were used in Veliky Novgorod starting from the XI century and, much later, from the XV century, in Moscow ^[9].

According to the preserved data, the oldest water supply system in Russia was built in the XI century. on the territory of the princely estate on Yaroslav's Courtyard in Veliky Novgorod ^[10]. However, for quite a long time, almost all water supply was carried out from rivers and ponds. Plumbing in the modern sense of the word appeared only at the beginning of the XVII century. in the royal court and was used for technical purposes ^[11]. In the Russian cities of the XVII century. the most common way of water supply were caches (wells located under the city walls with water supply from the nearest reservoir). This circumstance was dictated by the frequent sieges of cities in those years ^[12].

One of the central landscaping measures at all times has been the fight against garbage and sewage. Especially because this issue is closely related to the epidemiological well-being of the population. All homeowners had to independently monitor the cleanliness of the territory and around their yard. But not everyone faithfully performed their duties, and therefore often because of this, the city's moats were littered, cesspools were not cleaned, but filled in and new ones were dug nearby. The control was carried out by "watchdogs" – employees of the fire watchdog, created by decree of Ivan III ^[13]. The regulation of the activities of this protopolitan body was subsequently reflected in the Decree of 1649 "On the City Deanery" ^[14]. At the same time, there were no sanctions at the legislative level for leaving garbage in the wrong place. 

For the first time, administrative and legal protection of landscaping was secured on April 9, 1699, when Peter I issued a Decree "On the supervision of cleanliness in Moscow and on punishment for throwing litter and all kinds of litter into the streets and alleys." Corporal punishment (whipping) and a fine were provided for dumping garbage on the streets of the city. In case of repeated offense, the punishment was tightened, and the fine increased ^[15]. During the reign of Peter the Great, many decrees were issued introducing legal liability for certain offenses in the field of landscaping. For example, the Decree of 1718 "On the supervision of order and cleanliness in the city of St. Petersburg and on the collection of fines for uncleaning chimneys and for sale in the ranks and in the do. places of spoiled food supplies" ^[16] introduced responsibility for the presence of pollution of chimneys to ensure the purity of urban air from emissions. Decree of 1719 "On the prohibition of releasing livestock onto city streets" ^[17] and the Decree of 1720 "On the non-admission of livestock from yards without shepherds in St. Petersburg, and on hiring them with handwritten records" ^[18] introduced a ban on grazing livestock on city streets. Decree of 1721 "On the maintenance of lanterns in St. Petersburg along the streets, on cleaning and paving streets with stone" ^[19] established a centralized procedure for garbage removal from the city, according to which residents had to clean near their households and arrange in heaps, which in turn had to be taken out by horse-drawn carriages specially allocated for this purpose. 

         Special importance was attached to the landscaping of urban space. The townspeople were obliged to plant trees in front of their houses. Otherwise, the police did it at their expense ^[20]. The measures to protect green spaces were very strict, but they were more individualized than systemic. For example, after cutting down a birch grove on the site of Gostiny Dvor in St. Petersburg, Peter I ordered the perpetrators to be flogged, and the voivode who allowed the cutting was sent into exile for 10 years with the confiscation of his estates ^[21].

Thus, in Russian cities under administrative and legal protection, in particular in the new capital, St. Petersburg, the elements of landscaping during the reign of Peter the Great were the cleaning of streets from garbage and waste products of livestock, clean air and the preservation of green spaces.

The police acted as the supervisory authority for compliance with the requirements in the field of landscaping in the Petrine era, which was an organic continuation of the trend that had emerged at previous stages of the development of Russian statehood ^[22]. By Decree of May 25, 1718, "Points given to the St. Petersburg Police Chief General. – On ensuring that the construction of houses is carried out according to the decree; on keeping the streets clean; on the admission of trading huts in specified places; on food supplies; on suspicious houses, on walking people, on visitors and departing; on the identification of guards from the yards, in every settlement or street of the elders and at every ten yards of the Desyatsky and on the extension of duty to people of all ranks and ranks," Peter I approves the position of police chief General ^[23]. This Decree consisted of 14 points regulating the activities of the police, and in essence was reduced to a more detailed description of the instructions contained in its very title ^[24].

In fact, all the powers of the police at that time could be divided into three large groups: supervision of landscaping and sanitary and epidemiological welfare; fire safety; protection of public order and the fight against crime.  All these areas together were included in one major concept – "deanery" ^[25].

Within the framework of the article, we are only interested in the powers in the field of landscaping. They can be divided into two groups: control and supervisory and directly-landscaping.

The first included the authority to impose penalties on offenders who did not comply with the requirements for cleaning the streets of "droppings and dead bodies" in the assigned territories. The amount of fines ranged from three rubles for a first-time offense to thirty rubles for recidivism ^{[26, p. 578]}. In addition, the discharge of sewage into the streets of the city, failure to clean chimneys and grazing livestock outside specially designated areas were punishable ^{[26, p. 574]}. The list of police functions also included supervision of the quality and timeliness of work carried out by citizens on paving roads and bridges ^{[26, p. 587]}, carrying out shore protection works ^{[27, p. 402]}. For failure to comply with the instructions, the perpetrators were punished with a fine and (or) corporal punishment.

The second group included responsibilities such as, for example, the organization of street lighting. According to the Senate Decree of 1723 "On the collection of land money in St. Petersburg for the maintenance of lanterns and for cleaning streets and on giving it to the police chief's office of the yoke collection", a fee was charged from residents of the city, which was subsequently sent to the Police Chief's Office ^[28]. The police were in charge of the installation and maintenance of street lights. To do this, it even recruited special furman employees who had to keep the lanterns in working order ^{[27, pp. 381-383]}.

Thus, the police of the time of Peter I received broad powers, including in the field of organization and control of landscaping. This period is essentially the starting point in the history of the Russian state, when you can start talking about landscaping as an object of administrative and legal protection. At the same time, the regulation of this sphere occurred spontaneously and for the most part was a reaction to the resistance of residents to improve those areas of urban space that the state obliged them to. Due to the small staff of police officials, penalties for violations of landscaping requirements had to be imposed severely in order to warn other persons from offenses due to fear of them. Nevertheless, the main directions of protective activities in the field of improvement of Russian cities have been laid down. In subsequent periods of state development, the maintenance of such an object of administrative and legal protection as landscaping only increased, including, as urban infrastructure developed, more and more elements.