The general survey plan is to establish the exact boundaries of land plots, peasant communities, cities and villages. Officially, land surveying was begun in the mid-18th century and continued until the mid-19th. However, back in the 13th century there were documents describing land boundaries.
Historical essays
From the 15th century, scribes dealt with the description of property. They compiled scribe books in which they painted territories (fortresses, churches, villages, etc.), the quality of the land, and the number of people.
The reason for the general land survey was the lack of a unified system of accounting for the land fund and the legal disorder of land documents. In 1765, when the decree of Catherine the Great was issued, the territory of the Russian Empire stretched from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait, and even Moscow and Kiev did not have clear boundaries, not like the Krasnodar Territory.
The land plots have been describing land allotments for a long time, not land surveyors, recording information in chronicles. Therefore, in practice, land ownership was determined by its population of the master serfs. Borders of ownership - the boundaries of economic areas. And since besides the cultivated fields there were also forests, rivers and lakes, such a system led to constant land disputes, the seizure of "empty" territories by gentlemen and the complication of the right to "enter" foreign territory.
In terms of general land surveying, the upper strata of society were interested, striving once and for all to outline the boundaries of their territory.
Start
The first land surveying instructions relate to the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna (1754), but dramatic changes did not occur. Only under Catherine II did these documents find their application.
On October 16, 1762, Catherine the Great ordered that the Main Border Office be moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow and transferred to Ingermanlandia (part of the Empire on the border with Sweden) to be transferred to the St. Petersburg Patrimony Office. Now the office was located on the territory of the Kremlin and remained there for almost one and a half hundred years, until the beginning of the 20th century.
On December 20, 1965, Catherine ordered the preparation of new instructions based on their predecessors of 1754. The Manifesto of September 19, 1765 (according to the new style) began the survey, on the same day the General Rules were published, according to which the commission conducted the process of land surveying. The Empress ordered all the approximate boundaries of the land on September 19 to be considered correct and legally approved. The survey continued until 1861.
Principles of the boundary commission
A land surveyor from the time of Catherine II is not a judge fighting opponents of reform, as it was during the time of Elizabeth, but a conciliator arguing over land ownership.
The principle of "amicable allotment" of land by their owners was proposed. It consisted in the fact that the owners independently outlined the borders of adjacent territories and indicated the outlying villages, mills, rivers, etc. Then they brought the results to the office. In order for the principle to work, the ministry deprived privileges of disputes over rough lands. In addition, the debaters could get no more than 10 quarters of the land out of 100, and the rest went to the treasury.
Starting with the reign of Catherine the Great, land surveying was considered sacred, for everyone gradually realized that land wealth was the future of the country.
Land Separation Procedure
At the first level, plans for summer cottages were made. The task of land surveyors is to measure and establish the boundaries between adjacent possessions (dachas) by amicable divorce or mutual consent of the masters. After such a separation, it was possible to proceed to the second level of land surveying.
In order to divide large lands, lands of disputed possession, communal or "no man's land ", they were first designated by affiliation: church, treasury, landlord, etc. Further divided by population: villages, villages, wasteland, forests, etc. Note that these lands were not divided by the names of the owners, namely by population. The physical boundaries of the territories were inter-rails or clearings, pits, and poles on bends.
The measurement of the earth was carried out by an astrolabe or a chain, the general survey plan was drawn up along the magnetic meridian indicating the deviations of the magnetic needle.
How did cartographers work?
More than 6,000 copies were sent from the capital to the district Mezhevyi chancery and land surveyors annually. Moreover, at first these had to go through many instances and get the approval of the empress. Naturally, not a month or even a year passed from the drawing to approval.
First, a general map of the province or summer cottage was compiled, then, on separate canvases, each house, mill, church, field, etc. was outlined. Notes were added to each map, and an empty table was left for land surveyors.
As a result, it turned out that not one month of work of several people and not one canvas took one average summer cottage.
The first land surveys were the dachas and territories adjacent to the capital, which they could not divide in a judicial proceeding, but after the city and counties.
Land surveying procedure
Boundary plans and maps were not drawn up at the initiative of the metropolitan cartographers, but on the basis of land information from proxies in each city or from the owners of cottages. The general survey procedure was as follows:
- Collection of "tales" from the local government of the cities and the owners of the adjacent territories.
- Notification of the beginning of measuring work.
- Field work - bypassing areas with measuring instruments, placing boundary marks.
- Drawing up field work records, description of actions, measurements.
- Drawing up boundary books and plans, sending them to the owners of the territories for certification.
- Amendment and preparation of economic notes to the general survey plans.
PS Economic notes are the decoding of numbers on maps. For convenience, most small buildings or empty areas were marked with numbers so as not to load a map.
First results
For the first year, the commission described 2710 summer cottages with a total area of โโ1,020,153 tithing (about 1,122,168 hectares).
By the end of the 70s of the XVIII century, the general survey plan became so widespread that it was supervised by almost all instances in the Empire: the Government Senate, the Border Chancellery, and the Border Survey. At the provincial level, land issues were resolved in boundary and intermediary offices that make up drawings for regional land surveying.
Social trends
Despite the fact that the nobility, basically, was quite a reform, the minds of the common people were greatly disturbed by the general survey plan. For this reason, the main period of the โcensusโ of lands lasted almost a hundred years (1765-1850). In 1850, a personal decree was issued, which significantly accelerated the lawsuits on the issue of land rights and, as a consequence, the process of land surveying.
Provincial surveying plans
At the end of the 18th century, 35 general land surveying plans were compiled and partially implemented. The first dates back to 1778, before this, private territories were subjected to land surveying.
- Moscow;
- Kharkov;
- Voronezh;
- Novgorod;
- Ryazan;
- Smolenskaya;
- Yaroslavl;
- Vladimirskaya;
- Kaluga;
- Mogilev;
- Tverskaya;
- Oryol;
- Kostroma;
- Olonetskaya;
- St. Petersburg;
- Tambov;
- Penza;
- Vologda;
- Vitebsk;
- Tula;
- Kazan;
- Simbirsk;
- Orenburg
- Nizhny Novgorod;
- Saratov;
- Samara;
- Kherson;
- Perm;
- Vyatka;
- Ekaterinoslavskaya;
- Arkhangelsk;
- Tauride;
- Astrakhan;
- Pskov;
- Kursk.
The land survey according to the new instructions of 1765 was started from the Moscow province, so to speak, for testing. Seeing the clear success of the reform, the empress ordered to survey the Sloboda province and the Vladimir province. Each planned map consisted of several parts, so as not to miss the small details: a farm, a mill, a church, etc. Each part described one or two versts of the terrain. One mile is 420 meters. Therefore, they were completely drafted only by the 80s.
For example, it is worth considering the capital's work - plans for a general survey of the Moscow province.
Examples of boundary plans
The first of the provinces were land surveying Tula and Moscow. They adjoined each other and were ideally suited for the โverificationโ of reform in large parts of Russia.
The first plan of the Moscow province was completed in 1779. He gathered from 26 county plans. The general map looked like this.
From this map, plans were drawn for a general survey of the Tula province, Kaluga, Oryol and other border lands. Beyond the border were distant provinces, then, border regions.
Special land surveying
In land disputes, agreement between the owners was achieved with great difficulty, despite the possibility of amicable withdrawals and invitations to land surveyors repeatedly. In addition, the invitation of the surveyor at his own expense was considered dishonesty, so the nobles were in no hurry to resolve disputes. The second problem of the general land survey was the attribution of part of cities and fortresses to dachas by surveyors.
To resolve this issue, the government independently began a boundary land surveying. A decree on a special land survey was issued in 1828, along with it new instructions were issued for surveyors. A special land survey was calculated on the initiative of the owners, however, it was not so easy to force conservative nobles to agree with their neighbors. In addition, there were legal obstacles.
The plans of summer cottages for general and special land surveys were sometimes very different from each other.