Disciplinary Responsibility of Civil Servants of the Russian Empire

The paper is devoted to examining legal, factual and procedural grounds of disciplinary responsibility of civil servants in the Russian Empire on the basis of the Statutes of Civil Service, Regulations on Punishments in Criminal and Correctional Proceedings, the Statute of Criminal Proceedings. The author defines the concept of official misconduct (malfeasance in office), the legislatively established list of disciplinary offences and relevant measures of influence, their substantive characteristics, the peculiarities of simple (extrajudicial) and judicial procedure of proceedings in disciplinary cases initiated against civil servants of administrative departments. The analysis made it possible to draw a conclusion about the existence in the second half of the 18th century in the system of the Russian public service of a disciplinary process that has all the features of the legal process and a procedural form of criminal proceedings. The use of disciplinary sanctions was subject to certain rules that protected subordinates from arbitrary use of disciplinary power by their principals. The most stringent forms of disciplinary sanctions involving dismissal from service could only be applied by the court. A number of provisions existing at the time can be used to improve the legal basis of the proceedings in disciplinary cases of civil servants of the Russian Federation.