The general survey plan is the establishment of the exact boundaries of land plots, peasant communities, cities and villages. Officially, surveying began in the middle of the 18th century and continued until the middle of the 19th. However, as early as the 13th century, there were documents describing land boundaries.
Historical essays
Since the 15th century, scribes have been involved in describing property. They compiled scribe books in which they painted territories (fortresses, churches, villages, etc.), land quality and population.
The reason for the general survey was the lack of a unified system for accounting for the land fund and the legal disorder of land documents. In 1765, when the decree of Catherine the Great was issued, the territory of the Russian Empire stretched from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait, and there were no clear boundaries even for Moscow and Kyiv, let alone the Krasnodar Territory.
Description of land allotments for a long time was done by clerks, not land surveyors, entering information into chronicles. Therefore, in practice, land ownership was determined by its population of master serfs. Borderspossessions - the boundaries of economic areas. And since, in addition to cultivated fields, there were also forests, rivers and lakes, such a system led to constant land disputes, the seizure of "empty" territories by masters and the complication of the right to "entry" into someone else's territory.
In terms of general land surveying, the upper strata of society were interested, striving once and for all to mark the boundaries of their territory.
Start
The first land surveying instructions refer to the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna (1754), but there were no dramatic changes. Only under Catherine II did these documents find their application.
On October 16, 1762, Catherine the Great ordered that the Main Land Survey Office be transferred from St. Petersburg to Moscow and transferred to Ingermanland (part of the Empire on the border with Sweden) to the St. Petersburg Estate Office. Now the office was located on the territory of the Kremlin and remained there for almost a hundred and fifty years, until the beginning of the 20th century.
On December 20, 1965, Catherine ordered the preparation of new instructions based on their predecessors of 1754. Land surveying was started by the Manifesto of September 19, 1765 (according to the new style), on the same day the "General Rules" were published, according to which the commission carried out the land surveying procedure. The Empress ordered all the approximate borders of the lands on September 19 to be considered correct and legally approved. Surveying continued until 1861.
Principles of the Land Survey Commission
Surveyor surveying the times of Catherine II is nota judge who fights against reform opponents, as was the case in Elizabeth's time, but a mediator of disputes over landed property.
The principle of "amicable allotment" of land by their owners was proposed. It consisted in the fact that the owners independently delineated the boundaries of adjacent territories and indicated outlying villages, mills, rivers, etc. Then they brought the results to the office. In order for the principle to work, the Ministry deprived the disputers for exemplary lands of benefits. In addition, the disputers could receive no more than 10 quarters of land out of 100, and the rest went to the treasury.
Starting from the reign of Catherine the Great, land surveying was considered sacred, because everyone gradually realized that land we alth was the future of the country.
Procedure for division of land
At the first level, plans were drawn up for general land surveying dachas. The task of land surveyors is to measure and set boundaries between adjacent properties (dachas) by amicable divorce or mutual consent of the masters. After such a separation, it was possible to proceed to the second level of surveying.
In order to divide large lands, lands of disputed ownership, communal or "no man's", they were first designated according to their belonging: church, state, landowners, etc. Then they were divided by population: villages, villages, wastelands, forests, etc. e. Note that these lands were not divided according to the names of the owners, namely, according to the population. Mezhniks or clearings, pits, pillars at turns served as physical boundaries of territories.
Measurement of the earth was carried out with an astrolabe or a chain, a planthe general survey was made along the magnetic meridian, indicating the deviations of the magnetic needle.
How did cartographers work?
In a year, more than 6,000 copies were sent from the capital to county surveyors and land surveyors. Moreover, at first these had to go through many instances and receive the approval of the empress. Naturally, not a single month or even a year passed from drawing to approval.
First, a general map of the province or dacha was drawn up, then, on separate canvases, each house, mill, church, field, etc. was outlined. Notes were added to each map, and an empty table was left nearby for surveyors.
As a result, it turned out that one medium-sized dacha took more than one month of work by several people and more than one canvas.
The dachas and territories adjacent to the capital, which could not be divided in court, were the first to be surveyed, and only after the cities and counties.
Surveying order
Landmark plans and maps were compiled not on the initiative of metropolitan cartographers, but on the basis of land information from trusted persons in each city or from dacha owners. The order of the general survey was as follows:
- Collection of "retractable tales" from local governments of cities and owners of adjacent territories.
- Notification of the start of measurement work.
- Field work - bypassing areas with measuring instruments, placing boundary marks.
- Compilation of records of field work, description of actions, measurements.
- Composingboundary books and plans, sending them to the owners of the territories for certification.
- Amendment and economic notes to master survey plans.
P. S. Economic notes - this is a transcript of the numbers on the cards. For convenience, most small buildings or empty areas were marked with numbers so as not to load the map.
First results
During the first year, the commission described 2,710 summer cottages with a total area of 1,020,153 acres (about 1,122,168 hectares).
By the end of the 70s of the 18th century, the general survey plan gained such wide popularity that it was supervised by almost all instances in the Empire: the Government Senate, the Survey Office, the Survey Department. At the provincial level, land issues were resolved in boundary and intermediary offices that draw up drawings for regional surveying.
Society trends
Despite the fact that the nobility, in general, was quite reform, the minds of the common people greatly excited the plan of the general survey. For this reason, the main period of the "census" of land lasted almost a hundred years (1765-1850). In 1850, a personal decree was issued, significantly speeding up the lawsuits over the rights to the plots and, as a result, the land surveying procedure.
Province survey plans
At the end of the 18th century, 35 general survey plans (PGM) were drawn up and partially implemented. The first ones date back to 1778; before that, privateterritory.
- Moscow;
- Kharkovskaya;
- Voronezh;
- Novgorod;
- Ryazan;
- Smolenskaya;
- Yaroslavskaya;
- Vladimirskaya;
- Kaluga;
- Mogilevskaya;
- Tverskaya;
- Orlovskaya;
- Kostroma;
- Olonets;
- St. Petersburg;
- Tambovskaya;
- Penza;
- Vologda;
- Vitebsk;
- Tula;
- Kazan;
- Simbirskaya;
- Orenburg;
- Nizhny Novgorod;
- Saratovskaya;
- Samarskaya;
- Kherson;
- Perm;
- Vyatka;
- Ekaterinoslavskaya;
- Arkhangelsk;
- Taurian;
- Astrakhan;
- Pskovskaya;
- Kursk.
Surveying according to the new instructions of 1765 was started from the Moscow province, so to speak, for the test. Seeing the clear success of the reform, the Empress ordered the Sloboda province and the Vladimir province to be surveyed. Each planned map consisted of several parts, so as not to miss small details: farms, mills, churches, etc. Each part described one or two versts of the area. One verst is 420 meters. Therefore, they were completely drawn only by the 80s.
For an example, it is worth considering the work of the capital - the plans for the general survey of the Moscow province.
Examples of boundary plans
Tula and Moscow were the first provinces to be surveyed. They were adjacent to each otherand ideally suited to "test" the reform in large parts of Russia.
The first plan of the Moscow province was completed in 1779. It was assembled from 26 county plans. The overall map looked like this.
From this map, plans were drawn for the general survey of the Tula province, Kaluga, Oryol and other border lands. Beyond the border provinces came the distant provinces, then the outlying ones.
Special Survey
In land disputes, agreement between the owners was achieved with great difficulty, despite the possibility of amicable challenges and invitations of land surveyors again. In addition, inviting a surveyor at his own expense was considered bad faith, so the nobles were in no hurry to resolve disputes. The second problem of general land surveying was the attribution of part of cities and fortresses to dachas by land surveyors.
To resolve this issue, the government independently began surveying the boundary properties. A decree on special land surveying was issued in 1828, along with new instructions for land surveyors. Special land surveying was calculated on the initiative of the owners, however, it was not so easy to force the conservative nobles to come to an agreement with their neighbors. In addition, there were legal obstacles.
The plans for the dachas of the general and special land surveys were sometimes strikingly different from each other.
