Status of dissertation and normative bases of opponency in Russian legislation of the 19th century

The article deals with the analysis of the university legislation, particularly the regulatory resolutions, such as the regulations on academic degrees. Their finalized versions (1819, 1837, 1844, 1864) were used as instructional annexes to university statutes (1804, 1835, 1863, 1884). Notwithstanding the interest of the specialists studying the history of Russian universities to this kind of legislation, the evolution of legislative regulation of the training of highly qualified researchers has not been analyzedpreviously.Such an analysis would help, in particular, to identify the changes of the legal status of dissertations and the regulations on their academic expert reviews. The article claims that, after the enactment of the Regulations of Awarding Academic Degrees in 1844, the system of the assessment of the applicants for degrees began to put legal emphasis on the importance of public thesis defense and the professional expert reviews as the main instruments of expert qualification practices. The trend was developed and established in the statutes of 1863-1884 and the Regulations on the Qualification for Students in Deed and the Award of Academic Degrees of 1864. The author traces the gradual increase of the importance of the dissertation, which became the basic tool for the assessment of academic achievements of an applicant for a degree in the 1860s -1880es, in legal documents. During that period, the functions of dissertation experts presented by the departments and opponents were clarified due to the implementation of the public dissertation defense principle. It is proved by the significant increase of the number of thesis defense procedures, found in the available database on history disser-tationists and their theses.