The fate of Karelian prisoner Yuri Kondratyev (on the basis of the posolsky prikaz materials of 1675 and 1676)

Using a set of judicial and legal sources and accompanying materials of the second half of the XVII century, the author traced the struggle for personal freedom of Yuri Kondratyev, who was captured by the Russian troops in the Kexholm County of Sweden and became a servant (a “household man”) of a nobleman Ivan the Fifth. However, the court of the Posolsky Prikaz (Ambassadorial Prikaz) granted him the status of a free man, and his family also got their freedom. The main goal and tasks of the research are to “inscribe” the fate of Yuri Kondratyev into the country's general historical context and the evolution of state institutions, especially the evolution of the prikaz system and legislation. The novelty of the study is that it examines the personal aspect of the general transformation of traditional society in the light of an individual's legal capacity expansion. The chronological framework of the work is the initial period of absolutism formation within the estate-representative monarchy. The analysis is based on a microhistorical approach, and partly on the methodology of everyday life history.