Leiden University Student Repository

Klaassen, Guiljaam (2025)

The Ustav Morskoj of Peter the Great: A detailed philological analysis of the first Russian naval statute (1720)

Master thesis | Russian and Eurasian Studies (MA)

In this thesis, the first Russian naval statute, the Ustav Morskoj from 1720 is analysed on a philological level and compared to other, foreign naval statutes. Peter the Great, who instigated the process of creating the Ustav Morskoj, ordered to translate foreign statutes and use those as a starting point for creating a Russian naval statute. The statutes used for establishing the Ustav Morskoj are gathered with help from the existing academic literature on this subject. Thereafter, the text of the first three parts of the Ustav Morskoj are analysed philologically as well as semantically or lexicographically, in order to determine the extent as to which Peter used the foreign sources. The last two parts of the Ustav Morskoj are shortly explained and directions for further research are given. In the conclusion, the Ustav Morskoj will be compared with its main sources with the help of the AI-tool NotebookLM.

historical linguistics, philology, Russian naval legislation

Author

Klaassen, Guiljaam

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Linguistics

Supervisors

Schaeken, J.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en