«PROFANE WITHOUT THUNDER»: ON A REPRESENTATIVE CAPACITY OF THE LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVES OF PETER I IN THE FIELD OF MODELING POLITICAL AND LEGAL SEMANTICS OF THE IMPERIAL TITLE (1720s)

By using a wide range of normative legal acts, sources of a personal origin and other narrative materials of the first quarter of the 18^th century the author considers the ways of legitimation of an imperial title elected by Peter I in order to institutionalize the supreme autocratic power, form its over-class image and strengthen the international legal status of the Russian state. In the article there is an attempt of historical and legal reconstruction of the main concepts of legislative policies in the field of modeling ideological postulates, which helped to justify legality of imperial claims of Peter the Great, as well as modeling a dynastic myth about association of the West and the East under the power of Romanovs as assignees of the Roman-Byzantine emperors. This problem is investigated by using the techniques of «historical memory» rooted in a historiography of the French «Annals». In the author’s opinion, political and legal semantics of the ceremonial strategies was developed by political elite of the Russian state for the purpose of rising a socio-political prestige of the imperial power and have found reflection at the standard and legal level. It is argued that the conceptual legislative initiatives in this field, which held at the beginning of the 1720s, possessed a powerful representative capacity giving a possibility to address the imperial paradigm of the supreme power to a wide audience of different ages and social levels. Semantics of the majority of the text strategies directed to glorification of political and legal achievements of Peter I was characterized by an expressive eclecticism at the heart of which there was a cultural and historical synthesis of religious and ideological codes of the Orthodox world and Protestant Europe. Thus, by modelling an ideal of the autocratic power capable to undertake a moral responsibility for ensuring the «general welfare» composed from the old Moscow ideas of interdependence of «monarchic business» and «territorial interest», Peter I was able to emphasize the secular nature of the Russian autocracy