The decree allegedly issued by the first Russian emperor is popular on the Internet, condemning natural resources and calling for the introduction of rigid rules. We checked the authenticity of such publications.

Typically, the wording of the decree distributed by Internet users sounds like this: “Earth’s subsoil trade is the venerable thieves' case, and therefore the salary to put them scanty. Yes, one one per year to hang, so that it would be disgusting to others. ” Pictures with a portrait of Peter I and a similar text can easily be found in enough large publics on VKontakte, as well as in publications on Facebook, Twitter, Pikabu, Pinterest, "Aidaprikol" and other resources. The legislative act in different years also attracted attention to the authors of the radical several artistic and popular science publications.

Judging by the search results of Google, the decree of Peter about “Earth’s subsoil trading” is known not so long ago. In social networks, he became popular, probably in 2017, when a picture with the text of the decree appeared On Pikabu. A year later, a certain Lilya Meshcheryakova Published This text, which later became the basis for many pictures popular on the Internet, on the Stihi.ru website. This is a portal Provides The opportunity for any authors to freely publish their works, but often there are texts that have nothing to do with fiction. Also in 2018 a decree He mentioned In an interview with the four -time Olympic champion in Biathlon, Alexander Tikhonov. Then steel appear And the first attempts to figure out whether such a document actually existed.

The viral text usually precedes the words “Decree 1669”. Some Internet users (for example, the public "USSR-Remember everything" in VKontakte) They think This number is the year of the Decree. In this case, it is not entirely clear what Peter I can have to do with it, born Only in 1672. If this refers to the number of the decree, then in the "Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire" under No. 1669 It is listed Decree of January 12, 1699 "On delayed to serving people, on the occasion of the campaign, in all sorts of judicial affairs." It does not say anything about the trade in natural fossils. Moreover, there are no similar formulations at all in the decrees of Peter's times either in the “complete meeting” or in the collection "Legislative acts of Peter I"prepared at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, nor in Collections Decrees of Peter I on the website of the Presidential Library. Yeltsin.

It also raises questions that in various sources on the Internet, different “classes” in this, allegedly published by Peter I, is called “the Journey of Torovskiy”. IN social networks And even some non -academic Editions are versions with the mention of fish, sugar, iron, metal, gold or any trade in general. We also note that we were not able to find any of such quotes in academic research or performances of authoritative historians specializing in the Peter's era.

We are probably dealing with relatively fresh stylization, similar to another popular on the Internet decree Peter I about the form is dramatically and a foolish, which the subordinate must have in the face of the authorities. In support of this version, some vocabulary used in the text. For example, "National Corps of the Russian Language" Fixes The use of the word “miserable” only from the 1830s-it is extremely unlikely that it was used at the beginning of the 18th century, and then forgot for a hundred years.

For the first time, as far as we can judge, such a phrase appeared In 1991, in one of the numbers of the magazine Dialog, the official publication of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which replaced the Magazine "Agitator". At that time, the “dialogue” periodically published the fictional “conversations of our correspondent ... about the time of perestroika” with various historical figures. In one of the numbers, a similar interview with Peter I appeared behind the authorship of Sergey Kondakov. One of the emperor’s answers was this: “The commercial of the original thieves' business, therefore, to establish the most meager salary for them, as well as to hang one in a year, so that it was not inconsistent.”

Thus, the legislative act, which is often mentioned by users of social networks, apparently never existed - at least the relevant documents were not preserved. Authoritative researchers do not mention such a decree, and for the first time such a wording can be found in the invented interview of Peter I, published in 1991. Subsequently, the wording has changed a bit, the “trade” began to replace the trade “earthly” and not only, but for greater authority, the fragment, in fact, began to represent a literary work in the form of a real decree of the first Russian emperor.