PATRIMONIAL LAW OF THE BASHKIRS
PATRIMONIAL LAW OF THE BASHKIRS, a set of legal norms regulating the possession, use and disposal of land by the Bashkir communal peasants. Goes back to the customary law. P.L.o.t.B. regulated land relationship within the Bashkir society, between the Bashkir holders of patrimonial estate and the State, Bashkirs, and other categories of immigrants (ref. Pripushchenniks). The collective owner of the land was the Bashkir peasant community. Formally, each communal peasant had equal rights to own and use communal (votchina, volost, aul) lands. In fact, in the conditions of nomadic economy land tenure and land use depended on the number of cattle and was regulated by representatives of the tribal nobility. Land ownership developed in the form of pasture routes management. The individual land use of arable, forest (primarily, land plots suitable for beekeeping), fishing, etc developed within the framework of com munal land tenure. P.L.o.t.B. implied both the yasak, payment of which the Bashkirs considered as the guarantee to their land rights, and military service (ref. Military Service of the Bashkirs). The Bashkirs paid yasak and served military service in favour of those state formations, which they belonged to between the 13th – the 1st half of the 16th centuries (Golden Horde, Nogay Horde, Kazan and Sib. Khanates). According to the legends, Shezhere and other historical sources, the Golden Horde granted the Bashkirs with the yarlyks, which guaranteed preservation of patrimonial lands by certain Bashkir tribes. After the Accession of Bashkortostan to Russia, the P.L.o.t.B. took the form of Zhalovannyye Gramoty. Land Survey of the Bashkir patrimonial lands was performed, taking into account the P.L.o.t.B. The need to preserve P.L.o.t.B. and return the patrimonial lands, which the Bashkirs had been deprived of by 1917, was one of the main provisions in the Bashkir National Movement ideology and was declared in the AllBashkir kurultays (congresses) resolutions. P.L.o.t.B. was liquidated by the Decree on Land dated October 27th, 1917.
