Donosheniye as a petitionary document type in Russian legislative acts and regional business writing of the 18th century

The purpose of the article is to describe some genre and stylistic features of the 18th-century regional report, or donosheniye . The research is also focused on the semantic history of the term donosheniye reflected in the legislative acts of the 18th century that regulated the language style of regional clerical work and determined the main trends in its systematization. It is pointed that the term donosheniye was used in the legislative documents of Peter the Great period as a synonym for doklad , raport ( report ) and chelobitnaya ( humble petition ). The research results show that the term donosheniye had lack of genre “purity” and was functionally polysemantic in regional business writing, which explains the original conceptual syncretism of the term. The author characterizes the petitioning type of donosheniye that emerged in the 18th century simultaneously with establishment of the chelobitnaya . The analysis of the documents circulating in the Russian regions discovered that donosheniye , being integrated into the petitioning documents system, functioned as a petitioning statement in the cases which did not require judicial consideration. Conversely, chelobitnaya was a kind of lawsuit claim. It was proved that the petitioning type of donosheniye slightly changed the form, which was characteristic of this type of petitions; its genre features move closer to the reporting type of donosheniye .