Russian Spiritual and Moral Values and their Criminal-Legal Protection in the 16th – 19th Centuries

The author traces the development of the system of officially recognized and publicly declared value orientations during the 16th – 19th centuries in Russia. This system was finally formed on the basis of the Stoglav, Domostroy, the Charter of Decency, as well as a set of legal norms aimed at protecting traditional values, and included the prescriptions of criminal and police law. Structurally, it included preventive norms and provisions on liability for religious crimes, crimes against public morals, sexual offences and family crimes. The author comes to the conclusion that an essential moment in the evolution of this socio-normative system by the end of the 19th century was the recognition of the value of the individual, his or her rights and freedoms, which largely predetermined the further development of the value system of society and its criminal-legal protection. The matter of protection and criminal-legal protection of traditional values and moral norms was recognized as a matter of national importance.