Marina A. Belousova

The article examines the process of legalization of separation of spouses without divorce among peasants in the last decades of the Russian Empire. Involving archival materials previously unexplored in science, the author demonstrates three contradictory lines of legal regulation of the separation of spouses: the legislative prohibition (with a small number of exceptions prescribed in the law) on the separation of husbands and wives; permission to issue separate residence permits to wives in the order of the monarch’s favour in the practice of the III Division of Her Majesty’s Own Chancellery, the Department of State Police, the Commission (Chancellery) of the Russian Empire. I. H. Chancellery, the State Police Department, the Commission (Chancellery) of Petitions to the Emperor; decrees of the Governing Senate, which in some cases allowed local authorities to issue separate residence permits to peasant women without the consent of their husbands. It is concluded that the formation of the institution of separate residence of spouses in the Russian Empire did not take place at once for all estates, but gradually. Specific legislation on peasants, which directly allowed the issuance of separate residence permits to members of the peasant yard without the consent of the householder, was the reason why the peasant class was the first to obtain the right to seek separation of spouses.