Talk:Russian law of succession 1797

Errors of fact
With reference to misunderstandings, as expressed in Line of succession to the Russian throne of the vast Fundamental Laws of Russia which governed succession to the throne from 1797 to 1917, the following should be noted: That article, which should be read in conjunction with this one to which it is necessarily closely connected, is poorly written, erratic and unbalanced, openly speculative, and under-sourced, but it has been fairly stable for almost exactly three years. Until a decent re-write with reliable sources is undertaken, there's no point in butchering it piecemeal and re-initiating old edit wars, so I've reverted recent changes based on known inaccuracies (Paul's 1797 law guaranteed succession rights to women on a semi-Salic basis rather than eliminated them; Cyril Toumanov, a Georgian prince, upheld rather than denied the equality of birth of Georgia's forcibly Russianized princely families, including the Bagrationi-Mukhranelis; and the Romanov Family Association's president is Prince Nicholas Romanov, but its charter has always prohibited that organization from endorsing any candidate's claim to be rightful successor to the Russian crown). Here another point that needs clarification has been raised; Russia was an hereditary autocracy until 1906, so there was no law deemed binding upon any of its de jure emperors (as distinct from other Romanov dynasts), including the Pauline laws. Nor was all of the Pauline law considered "unchangeable". Rather, 11 of its 200+ clauses were declared "inviolable articles" of law. Only one of these, establishing the requirement for equality of blood in marriage, was added to that category after Paul's reign. Far from making the succession "controversial", at the time it was accepted by the House of Romanov as the means of solving the problem which arose when Alexander I died leaving two brothers, Constantine & Nicholas, the elder of whom had renounced upon marrying a non-royal. The confusion which resulted over whether Constantine or Nicholas was the new emperor encouraged the Decembrist revolt, which the equality requirement was supposed to prevent from recurring. Paul could not "compel" his heirs to leave these laws unchanged. But he shrewdly enjoined that future tsars treat them as binding by swearing an oath to uphold them at the time of accession and at the coronation. Each tsar (and the Vladimirovich claimant) has so sworn ever since; but it was their sense of honor -- not enforceable law -- which bound each Head of House to enforce the inviolable articles unchanged. At least until the October Manifesto led to the Russian Constitution of 1906 in which the 11 articles were codified and made alterable only by joint decision of the Emperor, State Council and Duma, whereas the other Pauline laws were left within the Emperor's discretion to apply or alter at will. Equality of birth was included from 1906 in the laws which the Emperor could not unilaterally dispense with, and for nearly a century that principle was enforced by Paul's successors as each interpreted it. FactStraight (talk) 07:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)