300 Years of the Russian Investigative Body System

The article is dedicated to the 300th anniversary of establishment of the Russian investigative body system — major investigative offices established on December 9, 1717, by typical instructions of Peter the Great. The article notes that the question of the time frame of the Russian investigative body establishment is interpreted differently in historical and legal research works; and reviews the existing approaches to definition of investigative bodies in the narrow sense (as independent state bodies specially authorized to investigate criminal cases at the pre-trial stage) and the broad sense (as all state bodies and their officials having investigated criminal cases at the pre-trial stage along with performance of other functions). The author justifies that the establishment of six investigative offices headed by the officers of the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky Regiments in December, 1717, became the establishment of a system of the first Russian independent preliminary investigative bodies. Attention is paid to the need to study historical experience of the investigative body system structure. The author concludes that Peter the Great’s ideas concerning investigative body arrangement retained their relevance in the modern Russia and were implemented by creation of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation as an independent state body specially authorized to investigate criminal cases, which is governed by the head of the state like in the time of Peter the Great. The article lists the available areas to study history of the Russian investigative bodies; draws attention to the importance of review of lives of specific investigators of the past and the criminal cases they worked on as positive and negative examples for professional, patriotic and moral upbringing of investigators; points out the need to create an academic discipline — History of Russian Investigative Bodies.