By listing the penalties, the state is telling you what it doesn't think should be included. If, for example, the state wants universal and unselected loyalty of the younger to the older, it will already tell you by the very list of actions that are considered violations of such loyalty, how it understands this loyalty. When it sets appropriate punishments for a particular violation, it will carefully consider by the ratio of their severity which element of loyalty is more important for it and which is less important.

In this sense, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the great Chinese criminal code of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) "Tang lu Shu yi" for enriching and clarifying our ideas about the spiritual life of traditional Tang China, about the system of priorities of that time, about the ideas of the individual and his rights and duties, about ideal, manifest social and legal values. values.

Criminal regulations. The famous "Tang lui shu yi" - "Tang criminal regulations with explanations", or, in common parlance, the Tang Code, as we know it, did not appear immediately: It was preceded by a centuries-old tradition and the painstaking work of Tang theorists that lasted for many years. The formation of Tang law began with the orders of the founder of the Tang dynasty, Gao-tsu, issued during the final establishment of his power (618), when he, as soon as he established control over the capital of the country, ordered the abolition of the most odious laws of the Sui Dynasty that he overthrew; traditionally, it is believed that the cruelty of its last ruler, and therefore laws, caused general indignation. Gao-tzu reserved the death penalty only for criminals guilty of murder, robbery, desertion, and treason (Tszyu Tan shu, 1936, tsz. 50, p. 1a).

Soon, Gao-tzu ordered his closest associates to draft a criminal code, using as a model the code of laws adopted during the reign of Kai-huang (589-600) in the Sui state , which was replaced under Sui by the much more brutal Code of the years of the reign of Da-ye (605-617). The order was carried out, but only fifty-three articles were modified, which could not suit many people in the new era of stabilization and prosperity. Since that time, the work of Tang legal experts began to create their own Code that fully meets the new realities, which was aimed at reducing punishments as much as possible and bringing the requirements of the Code in line with the practice of life, including the practice of management. This work was carried out in stages, and various groups of the most influential dignitaries of the time worked on the compilation of the texts at different times, until finally, in 653, the final version was created.

"Tang lui shu yi" still belongs to the relatively little-studied legal monuments of medieval China in Russian sinology. At various times, this grandiose code was touched by many, many looked into it in search of this or that information, but perhaps no one has ever done a systematic study of the Tang Code before, with the exception of E. I. Kychanov [Kychanov, 1986], did not study. The colossal volume of the text and the complexity of the language, paradoxically hidden behind its apparent simplicity, limited vocabulary and repeatability of phraseological turns - so, in mathematical works, "therefore", "from here we get", "after a simple substitution it is clear" and so on are repeated every now and then, but what

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exactly what "follows" and after what "substitution" is left out of the picture-they did not allow and do not allow using the Code in passing, casually, along the way.

Meanwhile, the Code contains a lot of material related to various aspects of life in China at that time - the economy and administrative structure, military construction and the fight against corruption, everyday life of ordinary people and the specifics of the administration of justice. A special position is occupied by such a non-surface substance as the ethical and philosophical basis of law, which is visible behind almost every serious prescription, but almost nowhere, with the exception of the most important situations - for example, state crimes or intra-family crimes against older relatives-is not clearly drawn in the text. There are fascinating conceptual abysses hidden behind the meticulous and seemingly self-valuable calculation of caning, hard labor terms, and other purely legal details.

Such a voluminous, interesting and promising monument has long attracted the attention of sinologists. Back in 1880, a book by P. S. Popov entitled "A Brief Historical Sketch of the Chinese criminal law from Ancient Times to the second half of the tenth Century" was published in St. Petersburg, where, despite the brevity of the work, almost the main attention is paid to the Tang Code.

In 1979, the first volume of the English translation of Tang Lui Shu yi was published by Princeton University Press. Translated by Wallace Johnson [The Tang Code, 1979]. By the time the first volume was published, U. Johnson had been working on the Codex for at least fifteen years - in any case, back in 1968, he defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, based on the translation of the first three (out of twelve) sections of Tang Lu Shu yi. In 1997, a huge second and final volume was released [The Tang Code, 1997]. Translation of Yandex. Money Johnson's analysis is very thorough, but sometimes it gives the impression that a person who thinks in a Western way can't really feel some shades and unwittingly modernizes the text, and thereby misinforms the reader; suffice it to say that at every opportunity, from his point of view, even when it is clearly about something Johnson uses the standard expression "have a right" ("has the right").

I started studying the Code of Tang while still in graduate school, in the late 1970s. In 1999, the publishing house "Petersburg Oriental Studies" began publishing a translation of the Code that I had made; to date, three volumes of this very voluminous text have been published. The fourth and final volume is likely to be published in the near future.

Specifics of the official's figure. Marcel Granet, summing up the main tenets of the teachings of Xun-tzu, which, in fact, gave Confucianism the strength to become the dominant ideology of traditional China, very accurately noted: "From the mass of people who are equally mediocre both in their essence and because of the vulgarity of their basically identical aspirations, society, by virtue of a decree, distinguishes a hierarchy of persons who are unevenly ennobled by the service that was entrusted to them. ...Rites oblige him [a person. - V. R.] to do good, that is, to subordinate behavior to his service and his rank, to behave in accordance with the dignity that the service requires of him" [Granet, 2004, p.380].

Specific behavioral stereotypes intended only for officialdom and being ways of implementing official ethics in behavior, attributes of performing official social tasks, required specific norms of criminal law for their power reinforcement. There is a certain set of crimes that can be committed by all people, regardless of their social status and their social functions. These are crimes, so to speak,

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general biological issues: murder, rape, mutilation, robbery, theft, etc.

But the more specific a particular social stratum is, the more specific its social obligations are, and the more the requirements imposed on it are artificially constructed under the influence of the prevailing ideology, the more specific, precisely and only for this stratum, certain groups of criminal laws become. Because some crimes are not general biological; they are either crimes only within the framework of the official system of values, or they can be carried out only within the framework of the implementation of some special social functions, or, finally, only in the fact that they are associated with the distortion or termination of the performance of such functions.

The special ethics of officialdom, due to the fact that an official was obliged to be a beacon of morality and a model of behavior for his subordinates, linked the performance of these public tasks to the service. And the commission by an official of actions that were quite acceptable for a commoner or, conversely, actions that were basically inaccessible for a commoner, both of which were associated with vulgarization, distortion of the bright image of a civil servant, was punished primarily and mainly by temporary suspension from service. A morally damaged person could not be a conductor of the good influence of the imperial center on the ground. Continuing to carry out this work was fraught with the appearance of inevitable distortions in the transmission. If you sinned precisely and only as an official, or, say, tried too hard to become an official or remain one , then it is precisely through the defeat in the official status that you will be punished. There is an impeccable logic here. A kind of closed circle, or rather a Mobius ring, in which both surfaces flow into each other, from opposites becoming a unity; one of several concentric dualities of spirit and work inscribed into each other, the main ones of which were outlined by Confucius in the famous phrase: "... Let the sovereign be the sovereign, the subject-the subject. Let the father be the father, and the son the son..." by: Martynov, 2001, p. 291].

But in a legal society, these dualities were held together by legal reinforcement: if you become an official, then be an official; if you stop being an official in spirit , then stop being an official in functions and documents. Please roll back to the status that you had before you started your career, and reflect at your leisure on your moral character.

However, despite all the ideological and ethical importance of blocking immoral behavior of this kind, the criminal law of Tang China paid much more attention to those crimes of officialdom that, in addition to spiritual ones, caused damage to society either purely material, purely organizational, or both. While remaining crimes that could only be committed by a serving official, they were still more closely related to a number of crimes described above as general biological, because the motives for their commission were directly those same banal and vulgar aspirations that M. Granet spoke about in the above quote.

The traditional Chinese state did not know that it was a state, but considered itself nothing less than a world ordered in accordance with the laws of cosmic ethics, beyond which lies moral, and therefore social, chaos (Martynov, 1972). In such an approach, when all official activities are presented - and consciously exposed - as world-building, the state's claim to determine exactly for each person and each object when and where it should be, when and where to move, and when and how to return to the country is determined by the state.-

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it looks quite natural and even inevitable, strictly logical. If a given person or object does not change its position properly or at the wrong time, then the performance of its social function is interrupted, which means that the world at that point is unsettled.

Since it was already recognized and accepted in the Han period (206 BC - 220 AD) that education and morals dictate proper behavior, and criminal law punishes non-compliance with it, it is natural that any act that reduces the order of the world has become a criminal offense. If the ancient Chinese hadn't been as much rationalists and pragmatists as poets , they would have been mesmerized by their own concepts and started using all the power of a bureaucratic empire to try to set future harvests, plan fish catches for years ahead, or optimize, say, the water cycle in nature - and how much would have been untimely many brilliant quarries were lost due to unsatisfactory evaporation of moisture from swamps and rivers!

Fortunately for the Celestial Empire, ancient Chinese doctrines were sufficiently imbued with respect for the will of Heaven and did not encourage human claims to higher roles, and therefore assigned to optimization only what is actually in human hands. But here they were becoming inflexible.

Such was the theoretical flair. However, if you lift this fascinatingly beautiful gauze, it is not difficult to see that under it is the need that objectively arises in any state and at any stage of development to support the labor and property discipline of the bureaucracy with a set of criminal norms. As a rule , they are very thoroughly developed, because it is both more important and more difficult for the bureaucracy to regulate itself.

We will touch on two complexes - labor and property - as examples of the relationship between criminal norms and the managerial layer.

Labor discipline. First of all, in order to perform their functions, an official must be at their workplace. If an official has received a new assignment, he must move to the place of new service within a certain time and at a certain speed. Without fulfilling these initial conditions, all other conversations about compliance or non-compliance with official ethics, about conscientious or unfair service simply do not make sense.

Criminal law insured the continuity of the link between the person of the official and the point where the official could only function properly.

First, all heads of territorial administrative divisions were prohibited from leaving their units for no reason (i.e., not authorized from above). The text of the relevant article does not say a word about the permissibility of moving within these limits, even if such a move was associated with leaving the local capital, i.e. a formal workplace. Perhaps the Tang legislators believed that granting freedom to move around the entrusted unit, from its center to the very outskirts, only contributed to the official's performance of his functions - it is best to get acquainted with the situation in the "bear corners" by seeing these corners with your own eyes. Anyway, the Code says:

Any chief of a district, chief of a county, head of a militia squad, or his deputy who has privately left the territory of [the entrusted administrative unit], is punished with 100 blows with heavy sticks [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, Article 93. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 17].

The commentary to the article explains that to bring to justice under this law, it was not even necessary to pass a full day - it was enough for the relevant chief to spend the night time of the day outside the unit entrusted to him (night is the time of crimes, robberies and conspiracies).

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For those employees who could not boast of a superior position, the next article of the Code established a completely different situation. Small officials had to be present at their workplaces as part of their shift, and therefore

Anyone who is on duty, who was supposed to be on regular duty and who was not, or who was supposed to be at night [at the workplace] and who was not, in any of these cases, is punished with 20 blows with light sticks. If [we are talking about] day and night at the same time, the penalty is 30 blows with light sticks [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, Article 94. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 18].

And then:

Any official who fails to show up for no reason, or who is absent from the corresponding shift, or who is absent due to a vacation and violates the deadline for [returning], is punished with 20 blows of light sticks for 1 day. For [every subsequent] 3 days, the penalty increases by 1 degree. If you exceed 100 blows with heavy sticks in [every subsequent] 10 days, the penalty is increased by 1 degree. [Zoom in] punishments are limited to 1.5 years of hard labor. For officials of important suburbs, the penalty is increased by 1 degree [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, Article 95. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 20].

Finally,

Anyone who, after being sent to the place of service, has not yet left after the expiration of the time allotted for [training], is punished for 1 day with 10 blows with light sticks. For [every subsequent] 10 days, the penalty increases by 1 degree. [Increase in] the penalty is limited to 1 year of hard labor. For those who do not return [from the place of service] after the arrival of a replacement, the penalty is reduced by 2 degrees [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, Article 96. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 22].

It should be assumed that the article on the terms of sending to and from the place of service, in contrast to, say, the norm on those who were punished in accordance with the number of presence checks, also applied to the heads of administrative units, and not only to grassroots personnel. But, in any case, everywhere here we are not talking about malicious evasion from fulfilling their almost sacred duties for the bureaucratic empire, not about running away from the place of service, but just about a certain carelessness, sluggishness.

The article on the escape of officials from the place of service is included in the Code in the section "Detentions and escapes" and is on a par with all other articles on escapes; it is worth noting that it is located between the article on the escape of slaves and the article on the escape of criminals, and those who have tainted themselves by resisting the authorities by force. This perfectly demonstrates that despite all the theoretical reverence for the functions and status of an official, Tang lawyers, when practical issues came to their attention, remained people with both feet on the ground. As long as you behave properly, you are the hands and feet of the Emperor, the vehicle of his benevolent influence, the beacon of morality, and the center of the local world order. If you overturn this whole sacred complex by your behavior, the ties between the good center and you are severed, and then you are nothing more than an ordinary subject who has run away from where you belong. Moreover, the rigidity of attachment to the place of performance of a bureaucratic function was much higher than, say, the rigidity of attachment of taxable peasants [Rybakov, 1994].

The Code says:

Anyone who, while holding a position, ran away for no reason, for 1 day [on the run] is punished with 50 blows with light sticks. For [every subsequent] 3 days, the penalty increases by 1 degree. If you exceed 100 blows with heavy sticks in [every subsequent] 5 days, the penalty is increased by 1 degree. For those who held positions on the outskirts, [where service is particularly] important, the penalty is increased by 1 degree [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, p. 464].

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It is worth recalling that, for example, the maximum penalty prescribed by the article on vagrancy is only 100 blows with heavy sticks, moreover, for 190 or more days of being on the run [Tang Lu Shu yi, 1939, Article 462]. The closest analogue of the scale of punishments provided for the escape of officials from the place of service is the scale for criminals who escaped from hard labor.

For convicts: in one day - 40 blows with light sticks, and the maximum penalty is a reference to 3000 li 1 (for 59 or more days) [Tang Lu Shu yi, 1939, Article 459]. For officials in office: 50 blows with light sticks in 1 day, and the maximum penalty is a reference to 3000 li (for 56 or more days). For officials who are serving in strategic areas of the outskirts: 60 blows with heavy sticks in 1 day, and the maximum penalty is a reference to 3000 li (for 51 or more days).

This approach cannot be denied a certain amount of respect for social justice.

Property discipline. The second most important component of an official's integrity, after the ability to be present at the workplace for all the appropriate time , is, as you might guess, the ability to overcome self-serving aspirations that are quite natural for an ordinary person2. An official can only be a perfect husband-willy-nilly. If you call yourself gruzdy , get in the back.

The lack of space does not allow us to consider all aspects of this most interesting problem. Inevitably, we have to leave out the articles about bribery, where, in fact, the most interesting thing is that it was the Tang law that also referred to bribery as self-serving use of official position for the so-called theft from oneself (i.e., what was entrusted)3, and violence carried out with the use of their powers against people under their jurisdiction. All of these are crimes that can be committed almost equally by civil servants in any system of government; in some ways they are similar to general biological crimes, and one could probably call them general bureaucratic crimes. But sometimes this area has its own specifics. For example, it is only in the context of state economic management that the special relationship between the official and the portion of state property entrusted to him is much more important than, for example, under feudalism, for the successful functioning of the state apparatus as a whole and, so to speak, for the benefit of the people.

The fact is that in centralized bureaucratic empires, where initially the activity of the bureaucracy was largely focused on the management of the national economy, in empires where without the bureaucracy the economy simply could not function, it clearly implies a massive and continuous movement of state property units between persons who do not have any rights to these units, but who do not have any rights to the right-the obligation to use, move or store them in accordance with the established procedure-is delegated from the state at one time or another.

The state, of course, would prefer never to delegate such opportunities to its subjects, so as not to lead them into temptation - but this is impossible. Impersonate-

1 Li - just over half a kilometer.

2 For example: junzi huai de, xiaoren huai tu-Lun yu ("Judgments and Conversations"). IV-11. Translations of this phrase of Confucius vary in detail and nuances. For example: "The perfect husband takes care of his own good potentials, while the little man takes care of [only! about the earth "[Martynov, 2001, p. 2321. However, in fact, all translators agree on something like this: a noble, virtuous, perfect husband cares about the high, about duty and morality, a petty person - about the mundane, about profit.

3 Literally: zidao [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, V. 283. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2005, p. 951.

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the supreme ruler who controls the empire, who, as it were, owns state property, is physically unable to keep track of all its evolutions on his own. But this is fraught with consequences. Once a certain piece of state property falls into the hands of an employee, he finds himself - even for a while - its actual owner, with all the resulting temptations: to use it for personal purposes, to keep it forever, to sell or exchange it and enrich himself with it. The fact that the duty to control a certain object or object almost inextricably includes the ability to use it was well understood by Tang Chinese lawyers. And they tried to legally break this criminal unity and put prohibition signs in all directions, in which the selfish imagination of a person responsible for certain objects, but who does not have the slightest ownership rights on them, could rush.

Generally speaking, Tang law provided for six main types of property crimes, or "six embezzlement" [Criminal Regulations..., 1999, p. 43-45]: robbery, theft, bribery in violation of the law, bribery without violating the law, obtaining property in the sphere of authority, and misappropriation subject to punishment, which was more often called simply misappropriation. Any other types of illegal movement of property carried out by the criminal were somehow assigned to one or another of these six assignments.

Articles on the financial responsibility of officials are accompanied by a clarification of the concept of "state things". State-owned items, in addition to those actually stored in storage facilities and institutions, included:

...Things that were supposed to be transferred to private hands, if they were already taken out of storage, but not yet handed over, as well as private things that were supposed to be brought for state needs, if they were already sent to the treasury, as well as things that were supposed to be brought to officials, even if they had not yet been brought... if they are in state custody and care... This refers to state-owned items that were supposed to be given as a gift, for temporary use, or for the use of officials or ordinary people - during the period [of time] when they were already taken out of storage, but still remain under the jurisdiction of the treasury and have not been handed over. As well as private things that are taken for temporary use to supplement what is used in state needs, as well as those that were supposed to be collected as a tax and [in situations] of this kind - when they have already been sent to the treasury and are in its care. Either the things of public institutions, the monthly maintenance of officials, or things that were supposed to be brought to officials - when they were, although not yet brought... they are in state custody and custody. As well as [objects] of embezzlement and bribes that are being examined, or property disputed by two parties, and [objects] of this kind [Tang liu shu yi, 1939, Article 223. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 239].

The duties of employees, based on the relevant articles, can be divided into two main groups: ensuring proper statics and ensuring proper dynamics. Violation of the obligations of the first group meant that objects of state property were somehow lost to the state or disappeared, or began to function in private interests; violation of the obligations of the second group meant that the movement of objects of state property from the state of storage and back was not carried out properly.

Statics. If an authorized or supervising official privately borrowed a state-owned slave, slave girl, or any state-owned domestic animal for temporary use, as well as gave them for temporary use to someone else, he was punished with 50 blows with light sticks. If, according to the calculation of the cost of use, the penalty was heavier, it was defined as for receiving property in the scope of authority 4.

4 According to Article 140, the penalty for this crime, increasing depending on the value of the property taken, ranged from 40 blows with light sticks to a banishment of 2000 li.

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In situations with mail donkeys, the penalty was increased by one degree. If a mail horse was taken or given out to someone for temporary use, the penalty was already 100 blows with heavy sticks, and when the period of use reached five days-one year of hard labor [Tang lu shu yi, 1939, Article 208. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 220].

This meant that for the very fact of using the listed objects improperly, taking or giving them for use in private interests (it is very characteristic to establish this equivalence - not the benefit received is important, but the wrong movement of the state-owned object, its exclusion from the norms established for it), the penalty was very small - 50 blows with light sticks (in cases with mail donkeys mentioned above-60 blows with heavy sticks, with horses-100 blows). But if, taking into account the rental or rental rates that existed at that time and in that place, the cost of using this object or objects (or their number could be large, or the period of use could be long), the severity of the punishment on the scale provided for taking property in the sphere of authority exceeded 50 blows with light sticks (and this happened as soon as the value became equal to or greater than 1 pi5 silk), the penalty should be determined already to the maximum, i.e., as for taking property. Especially important for a number of key functions of the state, postal horses - the main means of ensuring the information unity of the empire-were set apart.

An official who privately took for use (obviously, meaning that forever) a state-owned item that remained in preservation, as well as gave it to someone, was punished as theft 6. If any state-owned items collected in state-owned storage facilities or used in public offices and other state-owned buildings were, as the Code says, "taken out" to perform officially sanctioned exchange or purchase and sale operations, and someone began to use them, he was subject to a similar penalty with a reduction of one degree. [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, Article 212. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 228].

From the relevant article of the Code, we can understand that every person leaving the state vault had to be searched by security guards. Senior officials of rank 5 or higher were not supposed to be searched, but the rest of them were supposed to be checked. If the security guard, who was supposed to search the exit, did not do so, he was punished with 20 blows with light sticks. If the security guard's negligence led to the fact that theft was not detected, i.e. the one who was not searched did indeed take something with him, the guilty security guard received a penalty reduced by two degrees relative to the penalty that would have been due for theft of an object of this value. A civil servant of any level, from a simple security guard to the head of the storage facility, who intentionally connived at the culprit, received the same punishment as the culprit himself, that is, as for stealing an object of a given value [Tang Lu shu yi, 1939, Article 210. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 223].

Finally, the storage process itself was fraught with gradual deterioration and loss of government items. Storage was regulated by a whole system of rules provided for "barns" (millet, wheat, etc.), "storehouses" (utensils, weapons, silk fabrics, etc.) and "stocks" (firewood, hay, etc.). All this had to be placed where it was high and dry, dried and ventilated. If a violation of the storage rules caused damage to the stored item or its damage, the cost of damage or what was damaged was calculated, and according to it, the penalty was determined as for misappropriation (stake-

Pi 5 , i.e. a piece of silk, a piece of silk cloth approximately 1244 cm long and 56 cm wide , is the standard unit of value used by Tang law.

6 The severity of the penalty for theft, depending on the value of the stolen goods, ranged from 60 blows with heavy sticks to a banishment of 3,000 li, weighted down by two years of hard labor.

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in the range from 20 blows with light sticks to three years of hard labor) [Tang lui shu yi, 1939, Article 214. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 231].

Dynamics. In various, but rather clearly defined situations, such as "joy or sorrow"7, officials of a certain rank were supposed to provide horse escorts from the treasury, as well as baton bearers, standard bearers and musicians, to give canopies, tents, koshmas, veils, etc. for temporary use. Within 10 days after the completion of the corresponding ceremony, all this was supposed to be returned to the treasury. Anyone who did not return the money after 10 days was punished with 30 blows with light sticks. For each subsequent 10 days, the penalty is increased by one degree. With a delay of 80 days, the penalty reached the maximum severity - 100 blows with heavy sticks and no longer increased, no matter how long the delay period increased. If the official did not just "forget" to return what he received, but "after the joyful or sorrowful business was over," he still continued to use it, the penalty was increased by one degree and after 80 days it reached one year of hard labor. In the event of loss of what was received, if the person who lost claimed the loss himself, he reimbursed the value of the lost item. If he kept silent, he was obliged to reimburse the cost of what was lost and, in addition, received a penalty as for theft of this item with a reduction of three degrees [Tang lu shu yi, 1939, Article 211. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 226].

If there was an issue from the treasury or admission to the treasury, and the receiving or issuing officials unreasonably repaired delays and did not accept what was introduced or did not issue what they were supposed to issue, they were punished with 50 blows of light sticks for one day of delay. For each subsequent three days, the penalty was increased by one degree. The increase in punishment was limited to one year of hard labor. Retribution was provided even for violation of the order of admission or extradition: if the reception or extradition was not carried out in the order of the queue, the guilty official was punished with 40 blows with light sticks [Tang lu shu yi, 1939, Article 219. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 235].

If there was not a delay, but a complete suppression of the movement of material values in the proper direction, the penalty, which is quite logical, was determined based not on certain deadlines, but on the value of the thing itself. When, for example, a verdict was passed on the ownership of disputed public or private property, if it was legally supposed to be given to the treasury, but it was given to private hands, or it was legally supposed to be given to private hands, but it was given to the treasury, or it was given to the wrong person to whom it was supposed to be given the person responsible for this illegal transfer received a penalty as for misappropriation, i.e., without receiving a penny himself, he was responsible as if he had misappropriated this property [Tang lu shu yi, 1939, Article 215. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 232].

Similarly, the penalty was also determined for such a specific property crime of officials as "waste of money"8. Waste management is defined by the Code as the issue of state-owned items for any truly appropriate use (for example, building materials for officially undertaken state-owned construction) or completely legitimate transactions on the market, or for official sacrifices or feasts - but the issue is excessive. The cost of the surplus was calculated and according to it, the verdict of the official guilty of waste was calculated-

7 " Joy refers to coming of age, getting married, or making a sacrifice in the ancestral temple. Grief refers to death, funerals, expressions of grief, funeral rites and [situations] of this kind" [Tang lu shu yi, 1936-1939, Article 143. See also: Criminal regulations... 2001, p. 99-1001.

8 Literally: Fansan

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It was determined under the article on misappropriation. If the items had not yet been used, the surplus issued from the treasury was returned to the treasury [Tang lu shu yi, 1939, article 216. See also: Criminal Regulations..., 2001, p. 233].

Apparently, this was an integral rule: if an official selflessly, without receiving any personal benefit from it himself, was guilty of improper movement of property (and leaving such property in place when it should have been moved was a special case of improper movement), this official was considered as having appropriated the property of the given value.

For example, when there were violations when issuing or receiving state-owned items, the cost of busting or shortfall was calculated, and according to it, the punishment for the guilty person was determined as for misappropriation. By violations, it means that "they accepted fully and gave out poorly, or they should have given out the old and given out the new, or they should have accepted high-quality things and accepted low-quality things, they should have given out the new and given out the old, or they should have accepted high-quality things and accepted things of average quality", etc. lu shu yi, 1939, article 222. See also: Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 238].

The same article points out the criminality of such broadcasts not only in cases where they were incorrectly oriented (i.e., things were transferred to the wrong person to whom they should have been transferred), but also when the broadcasts were incorrectly timed. In cases where things were not supposed to be provided, but they were provided, the penalty was again defined as misappropriation. The commentary to the article explains that we are talking, for example, about premature payment of salaries to officials. In other words, even if the correct recipient received the correct amount, if it happened at the wrong time, the employee responsible for the violation was treated as if he had appropriated this amount.

In short, if we ignore some nuances (with the colossal volume of the Code of criminal regulations of the Tan quite numerous), we can say that any incorrect movement of material values from the treasury or to the treasury, no matter what the wrongness was, was equated with theft. The guilty official, if he did not make any real profit, received punishment according to a scale that was sufficiently sparing in comparison with the other five, but still equating him to a thief, developed for the sixth of the assignments - misappropriation that is subject to punishment. It didn't matter that he didn't take anything. It is enough that by his behavior, his mistake or arbitrariness, he has encroached on something, that is, he has interrupted the measured, verified, natural, like the course of the heavenly bodies, movement of state-owned things from one zone of control to another and has appropriated not them, but something much more important: the right to move them arbitrarily, and therefore, in an unnatural way. In a colossal empire, where the economy was directly dependent on state regulation, and the latter, in turn, was seen as an attempt to implement cosmic laws in human society and thereby turn the original social chaos into a small, but accurate, isomorphic similarity of world harmony, such scrupulousness was by no means surprising.

list of literature

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