Part of a collection acquired by the Library of Congress primarily in 1931 that includes also individual decrees of Peter III, Catherine II, and Paul I. Search under title: Eighteenth-century Russian imperial decrees. Decrees of Elizabeth I have LC accession no. 408409 31.
All printed in Russian.
Paul M. Fekula Collection, catalogue, item 2030
One hundred forty individual decrees issued by the Empress Elizabeth and published by the Russian Senate. (Six decrees appear in two copies, bringing the total to 146 pieces.) Topics include many specific aspects of domestic and foreign trade, agricultural policy, taxes and tariffs, navigation, military recruitment and supply, amnesty for deserters, cavalry, weights and measures, currency and finance, property, activities of government officials, the nobility, peasants, land surveying, and cattle plague.
Most decrees were published in Saint Petersburg with imprint: Pechatan v Sanktpeterburgi͡e︡ pri Senati͡e︡. Dates of publication range from March 30, 1748 through Dec. 21, 1761. Decrees for 1753 and Jan. through May 1754 were published in Moscow with imprint: Pechatan v Moskvi͡e︡ pri Senati͡e︡. Some decrees give only the Senate, without a city, as the place of publication.
Decree of Dec. 29, 1752 published by the Senate in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Decree of June 23, 1754 published for the Senate in St. Petersburg by the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
Some decrees are printed in columns; some sheets are printed on both sides, some with numbered pages. Many leaves have watermarks.
A number of Elizabeth's decrees have pencilled references to entries in Polnoe sobranīe zakonov Rossĭīskoĭ Imperīi (Complete collected laws of the Russian Empire), but not all are included there. The Paul M. Fekula Collection, a catalogue (NY, 1988), gives brief descriptions of 89 decrees and manifestos from Elizabeth's reign, with bibliographic references (Bitovt, Polnoe sobranie zakonov). Several items there correspond to items in LC's collection.
For more references to decrees from this period, see I͡U︡.I͡U︡. Bitovt, Ri͡e︡dkīi͡a︡ russkīi͡a︡ knigi i letuchīi͡a︡ izdanīi͡a︡ vosemnadt͡s︡atago vi͡e︡ka, 1905, repr. 1971; N.P. Likhachev, Katalog letuchikh izdaniĭ i ikh perepechatok: manifesty, ukazy ..., 1895; and Svodnyĭ katalog russkoĭ knigi grazhdanskoĭ pechati vosemnadtsatogo veka, 1962-1967, items 7446 ff.
Arranged chronologically and housed in conservation box nos. 1 and 2 under the general call number (given in this record) for the collection of eighteenth-century imperial Russian decrees.
Decrees are listed and numbered, with a brief description of the content of each, in a finding aid prepared by Andrei I. Pliguzov and available in the reading room of the Law Library of Congress: Eighteenth-Century Russian Imperial Decrees in the Law Library of Congress. Elizabeth's decrees are numbers 1-140 in the list.
The six decrees that appear in two copies are: July 23, 1752 (no. 7 in the finding aid), May 25, 1753 (#9), October ... 1758 (#110), July 9, 1759 (#121), Sept. 18, 1759 (#125), and Sept. ... 1760 (#131).