On the Admiralty Collegium’s rights to forests on private lands

This article examines the legal relations between the Admiralty Collegium and private landowners of protected forests with shipbuilding timber, as well as the status of such territories, through a case in the Russian judicial practice during the reign of Catherine II (E.K. Nazimova v. the peasants of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Sviyazhsk). The dispute arose after E.K. Nazimova’s steward accused the monastery’s peasants of cutting down protected trees and leaving fire pits unattended. While the allegations were raised with the Kazan Admiralty, the peasants were not barred from entering the forest. A careful analysis of the land ownership documents reveals that the land sale contracts made no reference to any state claims over the forest, thus suggesting that the Kazan Admiralty had not been notified about the change in the land’s ownership. This oversight extends to broader inconsistencies in the Russian forest legislation of that time. The study concludes that the Kazan Admiralty had little interest in shipbuilding timber on private lands: such territories lacked any special legal status, and the agency had no intention to assert jurisdiction over them.