Institute of Contract in the Doctrine of Russian Jurists of the Last Third of XIX - early XX century

In our work we researched the theoretical contract’s concept which was developed by Russian civilians in the third part of the XIX - early XX century. The analysis was based on the study of doctrinal sources of civil law. Such sources are the articles of Russian civilians about issues of contract’s theory, the materials of the current legislation, as well as the legislative practice of its reform. In results we came to the conclusion that in the third part of the XIX - early XX century the interest in studying of the contracts was really increased. The number of works on its study was increased too. During the preparation of the Civil Code, the commission members actively discussed and proposed various ways of reforming the contract law. Fixed descriptions of the contracts in the 10th part of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire were criticized a lot. Also, we noted that the phenomenon of the contract was one of the least unambiguously defined terms of that time. We found that the spread of the practice of contract concerned only the educated part of society, the majority of the population was following customary law. We described the influence of foreign legal models on Russian ones. Thus, it was known that the ideas of the German civilian Rudolf Von Yering formed the basis for popular Russian works in this theme. The examples of authors such works are Gambarov Y.S., Muromtsev S.A., Pakhman S.V. Moreover we noticed that the French legal doctrine determined the formation of Russian Civil Code. During reforming Russian civil legislation, new legal models were developed and they were connected with requirements of the present day. Many proposals which were developed at that time in the institution of the contract and in certain types of contracts, find the corresponding understanding in contemporary Russian legislation.