Well-known to historians of the language from numerous publications, the letters were not actually called so, but they were called letters by publishers and researchers. In reality, these texts did not yet have proper names in pre-Petrine times.

At the same time, in a number of business monuments of the XI-XIV centuries, there are already names related to the whole text, but they only name the topic, action or act set out in it, without yet defining the type of the text itself, without describing it as a genre (Charter, Series, Truth).

Before the appearance of business texts with real names, similar business papers were mentioned in the annals: Answer, Testament, Commandment, Strengthening, Finishing. However, contexts do not always allow you to correctly understand the meaning and determine whether it is a document or just an action. It is difficult to rely on the information of the chronicle as a reliable source of the first mention of the document, since all of them were preserved in late lists of the XV-XVII centuries, and scribes could enter the names of contemporary documents in the text.

One of the earliest established types of business text, which received their own special names, was Records. Initially, they are represented by-

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It is a diplomatic document of non-aggression and territorial delimitation (1375).

At the turn of the XIV-XV centuries, texts with names attached to them appear, for example, Unsubscribe - "receipt for receiving property"; Kabala - "document on monetary debt, debt obligation".

One of the most common types of business writing at this time was spiritual orders, called Manuscripts. Expressing his dying wish, the author of such a text communicated the conditions for transferring his property to a monastery, church, or other religious institution. The text of Spiritual Certificates is also similar in content.

There is a noticeable increase in the number of documents related to organizational and administrative activities, for example, a summons to court was made in the XV century by a special document-a Summons card. Moreover, this procedure was adopted for different territories of the Russian state (previously it was considered that only for Pskov).

The Moscow Chancellery extended the principles of activity to the entire territory of the state. However, in the XIV - XV centuries, acts of business writing with local names still appeared and functioned in some lands. This is Sudnitsa-the Pskov name for a Court Certificate - "a court decision on the right to own".

The documents of the Russian center interacted with the documents of the West Russian and South Russian regions. Since the 15th century, Moscow has known the Western Russian document List. However, such documents are only known to Moscow, and not peculiar to it, because they are found in references, references, but are not compiled or sent out from the Moscow chancellery as normative.

As for the main documents of the princely chancellery, texts with the name Gramota began to appear in it quite early, and by the end of the XV century they were strengthened in their use, and in different meanings. Initially, the word gramota was used to refer simply to "written text" (as, for example. Charter of Prince Rostislav 1150). In the XIV century, the use of Letters is noted as a type of text that later turned out to be very stable and means "a document from the head of state to a subject, representing the right to own or use something". Since the middle of the 15th century, the word gramota has had a new meaning: "a business letter of an administrative nature from a central institution to local institutions and officials."

Other genres that were actively developing during this period were implemented in texts with the name List: the first cases of using the word list are related to the meaning of a court document containing the justification of a court decision (sentence). A little later, a document containing a description or record of information about cases, people, and documents gets the same name.

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In the XV-early XVI centuries, the need for written recording and interpersonal contracts increased; various Letters of sale appeared. Records, Cabals, Supports, and other similar documents.

By this time, there are many new mentions that usually precede the appearance of documents with such names: Speeches in the sense of "diplomatic written appeal, note" (1508); Census - "a list of people by name" (1510); Order - "a written order from a superior to a subordinate" (1530); Memorable - "a small written relation or prescription" (1547), etc.

In 1497, Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich III "laid down with his children and with the boyars" Sudebnik, which continued the traditions of Russkaya Pravda. In connection with the presentation of legal norms, the Sudebnik reports on various certificates. The number of names of various types of letters is small, but they are quite common. These are Fluent, Non-Judicial, Spiritual, Vacation, Flight, Full, Right letters. The Court Book also mentions the Typo genre. Some of the documents are named according to their topics: Attached, Urgent unsubscribe form.

The most important documents of the era were mentioned in the Sudebnik, and it is interesting that none of them was lost, but, on the contrary, was repeated in the next Sudebnik in combination with their new types and varieties, analogues of which are usually not found not only in previous Sudebniki, but also in the practice of document management. So, in the 1550 Sudebnik of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich IV, in addition to the previous letters, they are called Free, Labial, Report, Paid vopchaya, Preferential, Bailiff, Urgent, Tarkhannaya, Ustavlennaya, Charter.

Judging by the articles of the Sudebnik, the Russian chancellery of the middle of the XVI century is well known for such documents as the Plaintiff - "an official statement about the illegal actions of an official or private person in relation to the complainants and with a request to restore their rights and protection"; Kabala - "a document establishing the property dependence of one person on another; a document on a monetary debt, debt obligation"; Fortress - "generalizing name of Cabal and Bonded records"; Unsubscribe - "receipt for accepting money, repayable debt"; Sentence - "a separate document or part of a document containing judicial or administrative decisions of persons in authority"; Speeches - "protocol, verbatim recording of the testimony of a certain person" , etc. Sudebniki, of course, had a serious regulatory impact on the life of the Russian state, on its management. But neither these nor other legislative acts prescribed rules for the activity of the office and the preparation of documents.

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Archival materials indicate the appearance of new texts of organizational, administrative and accounting documentation at the beginning of the XVI century. Among them, an unsubscribe is often found in the meaning of a document of official correspondence between local offices. Drawing up various kinds of Estimates - documents containing accounting and settlement data-becomes commonplace.

In the XVI century, a clerical document with the name Memory appeared, until that time it was used only in everyday life and had the meaning of a personal memorial note. Memory at the beginning of the XVI century could also be called a spiritual testament, which was called a Manuscript or a Spiritual One, or a Contribution, or a Given One. Against the background of texts of such a plan, in the middle of the XVI century, Memory was formed as a document that represents an order, an order of a senior person (and soon an institution) for specific actions to his subordinates.

Since the second half of the XVI century, due to the significant territorial growth of the Russian state, the need for transmitting orders on the organization of the internal life of the country has become more acute.

In the XVI century, there are documents related to traveling on the territory of the state in connection with official assignments. The" commander " was given an Order containing instructions on what to do or how to act in this or that case. If the "secondee" went to conduct an investigation on any case, then on the basis of questioning local people, he made a Search - a whole summary report on clarifying the issue, on the investigation conducted. The search was made on the basis of separate Investigations, which set out the results of clarification, research of a specific independent case or issue. Upon their return, the "secondee" submitted a written report on the implementation of an administrative assignment related to the trip to the person sending the order.

The expansion of the state's territory required new accounting and reporting documents. At this time, the number of different types of Murals is growing intensively: they could be a list of things, money, documents; represent a list of employees, be an estimate-an approximate calculation of expenses or upcoming tasks. In the genre of Painting, various lists were compiled, lists of lands, fortifications, and much more.

These examples point to the process of semantic classification of related documents, which is particularly characteristic of the XVI century. Nevertheless, some types of documents similar to a Painting acquired the right to independent existence with their own name. For example, the Tithe list was also mostly a list, but it was "a list of people in territorial divisions". Compo was also slightly different-

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zitsiya Desyatni: at the beginning of the text, it was reported to whom, for what and in what amount a monetary salary was due, and only then a list of service people followed.

Documents with the names List (census of people, inventory of objects, compiled on a specific basis) that appeared at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries are partly similar to Murals. 1618). List (a document on the personnel of a military or administrative division, where all people are listed by name. 1563). Register (list, brief inventory of people, objects, documents). And these documents do not have a complete match either in the content or in the construction. The list, for example, was a more detailed description of people, objects, and documents compared to the Register.

During the period of strengthening of the Russian centralized state, the tasks of business writing are becoming more complex, and its functions are expanding. In the 16th century, and especially in the second half of it, the number of different Books that take into account and record facts on various issues increases dramatically.

Accounting for various information in Books was also characteristic of the chancellery of the XV century, and the Yamskaya Book preserved in 1467 confirms this. It recorded the trips made by coachmen for state needs. There were Cross-drive books (1497), Writing books (1499), State books (1515) and some others on relatively private issues. Common to the entire territory of the Russian state were Scribal books. They were the result of descriptions of peasant households and land in each domain. From the middle of the 16th century, the description of land was combined with the description of the transfer of part of the land to new owners. This was recorded in Scribal and Separate books (1555). Seasoning books (1555) and Watch books (1572) appeared, recording changes in the state of the previously described economy.

The subject matter of Books of the second half of the XVI century is very diverse: Verstalnaya (1566). Zapisnaya and Otvetnaya (1569), Patrimonial (1571). Obisknaya pustoshnaya (1573), Otsennaya (1576). Datochnaya (1582). Especially there are many varieties of Notebooks in which the chancellors registered various Cabals, Ordinal, Loan, Purchase records, etc.

From the new names of documents of the end of the XVI century, let's call a Vacation in the sense of a document with an order to go somewhere. The word Vacation was known to the Russian administration before, but in the XVI century it referred not to a text, but to an action regulated by diplomatic rules: the expulsion of foreign representatives to their state.

In the context of the completion of state centralization, previous ownership rights are reviewed, retained or canceled.

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grants for estates, owners specify their rights to fiefdoms. For this reason, it is very common to use specific secondary business texts - Extracts that certify the existence of the original text of an entire document, mainly a Book. Extracts functioned as independent documents: such, for example, was the role of Extracts from Scribal books (1500). Traveling extracts (1518-19), Extracts from the customs book (1521). Separate extracts (1562). This preferential extract (1564). Land survey extracts (1589). Tolls extracts (1593-94), etc.

The need to confirm their rights to possessions and property also gave rise to a special section of the document that extends and strengthens its credential qualities. This section, located under the main document, was called a Signature or Subscription and was considered an independent document.

At the beginning of the XVII century, the word contract began to be used in everyday meaning. If earlier such a document fixed agreements on the establishment of certain legal relations between principalities and states, now an act with this name approves mutual obligations between individuals.

Since the first half of the 17th century, documents have been increasingly "democratized "in the sense that they now formalize decisions of groups of people of the same social status,"peace" in volost, posadsky, and zemstvo huts. Thus, Worldly sentences are distributed - a kind of contracts between unofficial persons with a common decision on a particular issue. The genre of Choice Appears. Initially, this word is found in references to the right to elect officials from among themselves. The first of the original documents shows how the assistants to the scribe and sub-clerk are chosen from among the "best merchant people", and in the next one the sub-clerk himself is chosen. Interestingly, to name a document of the same genre, but containing a request for the appointment of a clergyman as its leader, the word izlyub is used - with a prefix of Church Slavonic origin.

In the first half of the XVII century, the formation of the Russian document system was completed; in the second half, it was improved, mainly due to the appearance of documents with complex terminological names: Article speech (1645-46), Established contract (1649). Genealogical painting (after 1659-60). Funeral search (1666). Reception receipt (1678), Free letter (1688), and many others. There is a further division of the meaning of the defined word (naming the genre) or the main definition to it, expressed by the use of the second or even third definition: Customs statement (1623), Release customs statement (1705), Customs credit card.

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pis (1715), Proezdaya pamyat (1629), Proezdaya podorozhnaya pamyat (1699).

New genres almost did not appear in the second half of the XVII century, and the legislative approval of many of them by the Council Code of 1649 contributes to the consolidation of those that appeared before. The circulation of the code of 2400 copies allowed to distribute this code of laws, and with it a number of names of the most significant documents throughout the territory of the Russian state. The Code, in particular, gave official life to such new documentary genres of the second half of the XVI - first half of the XVII centuries as an Extract, Unsubscribe, Receipt, Fairy Tale, Turnout, etc.

In the new historical conditions, it was quite natural to lose some of the thematic and other types of genres.

So, the Code does not mention the types of letters familiar from the previous Sudebniki: Fluent, Non-judicial, Free, Lip, Report, Paid vopchaya, Preferential, Flight, Bailiff, Urgent, Tarkhannaya, Ustavlyannaya, Charter. There are no Blurred books in the Code and no Written Record is mentioned, but it supports the traditions of previous Judicial sources and none of the previously established genres was lost, although there were changes in the names of document types.

These lexical substitutions were determined by ideological circumstances. In the princely chancellery, a written request from a lower-ranking person to a higher-ranking person with a request to resolve the issue raised was called a Complaint or Complaint. This emphasized, as it were, the family nature of the relationship between the prince and his subordinates, metaphorically portraying relations in the principality in the form of a feudal house. Under Ivan the Terrible, an appeal to a higher person, and even more so to the tsar, excluded such a form of relations, and it is not by chance that the same genre of request was implemented in a document called a Petition. (Along the way, it can be noted that due to ideological circumstances, under Peter I there was this genre of document, but with a different name-a Petition, and today it is a Statement .)

After the establishment of new names of genres almost do not appear, dialect names and local forms of documents are lost in Russia around the middle of the XVII century. However, during the entire pre-Petrine period, documents that can be attributed to localisms in nature were used. Dialect names of documents are associated with a specific territory or zone, while localisms are the product of specific living conditions and everyday life that are not related to a specific territory. An example is Hang-up - "a document that records the fact of insubordination to the authorities". Opposition to the authorities, of course, could not occur in a large city that had a large population.

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significant police forces, but, for example, in the village, on the churchyard: the priest and the tselovalnik and the deacon of the Saletsky churchyard could not calm the enraged deacon, who "committed a strong (...) from the gate with a knife was thrown" and managed to respond to the fact of insubordination only by making up a Hang-up and sending it to the authorities.

The second half of the 17th century is characterized by the fact that in the generally established document system, words-names of documents have new, mainly special, professional and clerical meanings. These are a note - "a document of certifying or explanatory content, which is given to accompany a clerical case or a person" (1657); A receipt - "an internal document: an act of acceptance of business papers" (1664).;

Extract - "clerical reference in the form of a list, statements from various documents, sometimes with a summary of their contents" (1666); Census - "list, list of documents" (1669); Painting - "estimate, approximate calculation" (1689). New genres were the Drive - " document of protocol a document recording the facts of delivery of a suspect to the investigation" (1697) and Speeches - "text of an official speech" (1665).

The cultural outcome of the seventeenth century in the field of business prose can be considered the addition of the genre system of the Russian document with fairly clear, well-thought-out, subject-related naming of texts.

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