THE MECHANISM OF GENERAL SERVICE RESPONSIBILITY IN THE CRIMINAL LAWS OF THE TANG DYNASTY*

In the criminal law of the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618-907), the principle of collective responsibility was widely and variously applied. During the Western Han period (206-8 BC), attempts were made to discredit this idea [Krol, 1980, p. 154], but after a certain modification, it fully fit into Confucian doctrines with their increased attention to the family and the legal promotion of family and family-like unities. In any case, the usefulness of collective responsibility as an effective means of stimulating mutual control within various social units (families, communities, institutions), as well as, most importantly, strengthening the responsibility of older people for younger people, was properly evaluated.

Keywords: traditional societies, state and law, efficiency of bureaucracy, Confucianism, criminal laws, ideology, Tang Dynasty.

Depending on the kinship or functional nature of the unity, collective responsibility was divided into family-wide (yuangtso )and combined (liangtso ), which most often acted as a general service. In this latter case, it consisted in bringing to court virtually innocent colleagues of the official who made a mistake or committed a crime.

Confucius also taught: ...Be friendly with your brothers and extend this attitude to public administration. For [family] It is also a department [Martynov..., 2001, vol. 2, p. 221].

But the mutual responsibility of several nearby families was also extremely effective management. In the generally binding regulations (lin ) of Tang time, it was established: Four families-neighbors (lin ). Five Families- [pyatidvorka mutual] Responsibility Management (bao ) [Niida Noboru, 1964, p. 214].

In the Tang criminal Code "Tang lui shu yi", there are several special laws that establish the liability of members of the neighborhood five-yard group for failure to report. For example: If a crime has occurred in [one of] the families that are part of the pyatidvorka of mutual responsibility, those [from the pyatidvorka] who knew about it and did not expose [the criminal], in cases of crimes punishable by death, are punished with 1 year of hard labor, in cases of crimes punishable by exile - 100 in cases of crimes punishable by penal servitude-70 blows with heavy sticks. ...Five-fold mutual responsibility - meaning that ...five families are mutually responsible for each other [Tang Lui..., Article 361; Criminal regulations..., 2005, p.301].

It was a time of close bonding between blood-related groups and those that were built and felt like similar ones. Therefore, the desire of the right to somehow link

* The research was carried out with the financial support of the RGNF within the framework of the RGNF research project "Criminal Laws of the Chinese Tang Dynasty and optimization of the bureaucracy", project No. 12-01-00017a.

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the mutual responsibility of members of all officially recognized local units was quite justified and effective.

The idea of mutual responsibility and mutual responsibility was very close and probably sympathetic to the Tang legislators, because it best focused the principles of a collectivist society's concern for itself. The concept of denunciation was not yet compromised as it is now. On the contrary, denunciation was one of the most worthy manifestations of civic virtue. Something similar to mutual responsibility was also introduced in state institutions, so that their internal life as much as possible corresponds to the principles that the whole country lives by.

However, in the case of fellow officials, if one of them committed not a crime in the modern sense of the word, but an official oversight, negligence, mistake, etc., in addition to denouncing, there was a more effective and painless way: to correct this error in the course of conducting routine official procedures themselves. This was also quite Confucian. The teacher has repeatedly stressed that the determination to correct one's mistakes is the most important virtue.1 But Confucius himself noted: It's all over! I have never yet met a person who, seeing his mistakes, would condemn himself for them! [Martynov..., 2001, vol. 2, p. 241].

However, it wasn't over yet. That's what criminal law is all about, helping people behave properly when they don't have the skill or determination to do it themselves. And if we make criminal liability for official mistakes collective, then the negligence or indecision of the official who made the mistake can be compensated by the vigilant conscientiousness of his colleagues-neighbors in this kind of hardware"five-yard".

If self-correction of current mistakes becomes one of the everyday components of the official process, then no one has to be punished, and the corporate spirit grows stronger, and the matter is corrected by itself, without interference in the activities of the institution by outsiders and punitive bodies. It was in this completely innocent way, which did not undermine, but, on the contrary, strengthened the unity of colleagues, that they could be encouraged to keep a vigilant and professional eye on each other's official activities and qualifications.

Of course, the idea of collective responsibility in our time is considered hopelessly archaic and is in blatant contradiction with the modern concept of personal guilt. It's hard to disagree with the simple and straightforward idea that no one can be punished for something they didn't do. However, the Tang legislators also had their own logic. Anyone who has not done anything wrong himself (and wrong at that time was equal to illegal), but nevertheless did not serve as a barrier to the spread of wrong committed by someone else (despite the fact that he had the opportunity and obligation to do so), undoubtedly bears a bit of blame for such distribution.

If there is a local irregularity in the comprehensively correct course of events, meticulously regulated by state laws and regulations, due to someone's oversight, then, of course, the most guilty person should be considered the one who committed or at least provoked this incorrectness by their actions. But until the wrongness is corrected, all those who move it around the world and who do not notice it - and they should have noticed it-are also guilty to some extent, although they themselves did not commit anything illegal. As long as the distortion of the world's rightness is not eliminated, as long as a tiny pocket of chaos invisibly travels through the ordered universe, it stains anyone who passes it on and on.

At the first glance at the rules of law that defined the mechanics of general service responsibility of co-workers, it is striking that they are all built on one cornerstone

1 For example: "Don't be ashamed to correct your mistakes." See: [Martynov, 2001, vol. 2, p. 214]; "If you make a mistake, don't be afraid to correct it." See: [Martynov, vol. 2, p.268]. Well, the most famous: "A mistake is something that, being a mistake, has not been corrected". See: [Martynov, 2001, vol. 2, p. 323].

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the postulate that for each of the cases circulating in institutions, there is a single correct, absolute solution. The texts of the laws demonstrate an impenetrable certainty that this solution will eventually be found; any deviation from it is at best a mistake, which will inevitably eventually be noticed, corrected, and a sharp, precise stab of legitimate truth will inevitably triumph over the boundless and amorphous variety of lies.

It is on these two axioms: first, the axiom of guilt of anyone who served as an unwitting intermediary between a misdemeanor or a crime committed not by himself, and the surrounding world, and, secondly, the axiom of the existence of the only correct decisions and the inevitability of their final adoption, the norms of the Tang criminal law on general service responsibility are built.

The relevant texts of the Tang Penal Code, Tang lu shu yi (653), are replete with fleeting but impressive observations on how the routine work of the then Chinese institutions actually went. The picture of the endless measured rotation of countless and well-fitted gears of the most complex mechanism, which serves as a background for failures in need of punitive sanctions, is literally fascinating.

In order to show maximum justice in relation to negligent employees, the staff of any institution was divided into four levels of official complicity. Where the staff was small due to the smallness of the institution — for example, in the departments of markets, at internal customs, 2 — according to the uniform and understandable rules formulated in the article, it was necessary to allocate cash levels, three or two, and calculate the severity of the penalty accordingly.

The Zhangguans were in charge of the overall management of the institution, the affairs of the institution as a whole. Tongpangwans were direct subordinates of their superiors and helped them, replacing them if necessary. The Panguans were the heads of divisions, departments of the institution (if any); they were responsible for making decisions on current specific cases of their division (or the institution as a whole, if it was small). Zhudians should be understood primarily as those who were responsible for the initial preparation, maintenance and storage of documentation and carried out the current orders of the Panguan. In my translation of the Code, I have adopted "superiors" for the Zhangguans, "senior administrators" for the Tongpanguans, "administrators" for the Panguans, and "senior clerks" for the Zhudians.3
Suppose that the Order of Great Justice (dalisa ), determining the verdict in the case, committed a violation, then the administrator (qing , or taiqing ) is the chief, junior administrators (shaoqing ) and police officers (zheng ) are senior administrators, assistants (cheng ) are administrators, caretakers and scribes (fuli ) - these are senior clerks [Tang Lui..., Article 40. Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 228].

The staff of the Order of Great Justice, in particular, included: the manager (Qing ); 2 junior managers (Shaoqing );

2 police officers (zheng ); 6 assistants (cheng ); 2 registrars (zhubu ); 2 secretaries (pushi )4.

2 On the staff of these small institutions, see: [Rybakov, 2009, pp. 472-474].

3 For Tang law, the division of illegal acts into so-called public (gong zui , gong zuo ) and private (si zui, si zuo ) crimes was extremely important. This division, however, was relevant only for officials. A commoner could not commit gong zuo in principle, because he did not function in the sphere of gong-public administration, conducting public affairs. Public crimes included disinterested official blunders and omissions of officials, negligence, decisions made incorrectly, but without any ulterior motive and malicious intent. Private crimes were defined by Civil law as intentionally self-serving acts committed-both in the sphere of personal life and in the conduct of public affairs.

4 For more information, see: [Rybakov, 2009, pp. 319-321]. Those who could be classified as scribes (fuli) are not among the employees of the main staff (leungei ), i.e. officials with ranks. It seems that the lower level of complicity also extended to the auxiliary staff (liuvai ). Among the employees of the Order who did not have the ranks of the main staff, the "New History of Tan" mentions, in particular, 28 hra-

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The level to which the official who first made the mistake belonged, and was considered the first level - the level at which the violation occurred: According to each given case, the one who caused [this crime] to occur (so yu ) is considered as the leader (shaw ) [Tang lui..., Article 40; Criminal instructions..., 1999, p. 227].

Consequently, only the ringleader received the penalty due for this crime under the relevant article of the law. The primary rule of the level-by-level application of general service responsibility was that with each removal from the initial level, the penalty was reduced by 1 degree.

The Code defines "co-workers" as follows:: Co-workers (tongzhi ) - meaning officials who sign together one by one (lian shu ) [the same documents] [Tang Lui..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 228].

Continuing with the same example, i.e. with the staff of the Order of Great Justice, the Code explains: If the senior clerk made a mistake when checking the application (jian qing), then the senior clerk is considered as the leader. Assistants are considered accomplices of the 2nd degree, junior managers and two police officers are considered accomplices of the 3rd degree, and the manager is considered an accomplice of the 4th degree. Registrars and secretaries are also accomplices of the 4th degree [Tang lui..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 228].

In other words, with each departure from the level where the crime was committed, the penalty for general service responsibility should have been reduced by one degree. In this example, it eventually turned out to be reduced by three degrees at the level of superiors, i.e., say, one year of hard labor for the leader (an official who personally made a mistake or oversight) turned into 80 blows with heavy sticks at the 4th level of general service responsibility.

However, the Tang laws were by no means inclined to absolutize the eternal guilt of the "switchmen". A mistake, from their point of view, was possible at any level, and according to who exactly was guilty, it was necessary to distribute the blame to those who failed to correct or correct the culprit of the violation in time.

If the assistant, i.e. panguan, made a mistake in deciding the verdict in the case, he was considered the leader. Junior managers and police officers (tongpangguani) qualified as level 2 accomplices. Steward (zhangguan) - as an accomplice of the 3rd level. The clerk (dian), whose primary signature was on the document he compiled (the passage of which was so spoiled by his incorrect intervention by one of the assistants), was considered as an accomplice of the 4th level, i.e. received the minimum possible punishment for this situation.

However, he still received it - although, from our point of view, it would seem that he could not be to blame for the mistake of his immediate supervisor. Whether this was done simply "for the company", for completeness of coverage, or as an urgent desire to continue to make documents simpler and more accurate in order to reduce the likelihood of mistakes by superiors, it is difficult to say.

In any case, the level mechanics were not as simple as it might seem after considering the first example. The procedure was not at all limited to an automatic reduction of the penalty by one degree with each removal by one level from the original one. This rule only applied when the error moved up. If a mistake was made at the 2nd level from below (the level of administrators), at the lowest level closest to this initial level (the level of clerks), the employee whose signature was on this document was given a penalty reduced not by one degree, but by all three. That is, this grassroots level actually turned out to be more distant from the initial one than even the level of superiors.

Most likely, there are archivists and storekeepers, 56 scribes (shi ), 6 scribes in prisons ( yushi ), etc. See: [Xin Tang shu, 1975,), p. 1256].

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And if the violation occurred even higher, that is, if a decision was made at the level of the Tongpang Yuan that was different from the one proposed by the Panguan, and it turned out to be incorrect, the levels located below the one at which the error was made were not subject to general service liability at all. If [at the level of] chief administrators or higher [a decision was made] that is different [from the previous one], and there was an error in it, only officials who made a different [from the previous] decision and above are liable [Tang lu..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 228].

Legislators seemed to take it for granted that the ability of clerks and even assistants to limit the freedom of decision-making to those who were fundamentally higher and more powerful than them was, to put it mildly, negligible. But in this case, both simple logic and high justice demanded that we recognize that we should not share responsibility for mistakes with the higher Zhudian and panguan. To the credit of the Codex creators, they followed the path of logic and justice. Even if from the very bottom and almost to the end of passing the case through the instances of the institution, all decisions were made incorrectly, or from level to level there was complete discord (both shi and fei - ). However, if the mistake did not go beyond the limits of the institution, if its head somehow managed to make a final decision in a natural and only correct way before sending the case to other instances, then all his subordinates who had a hand in the confusion of the proposed solutions were completely released from responsibility.

The application of service-wide responsibility was not limited to a single institution. If the case went through several instances, all of them were involved in the same step-by-step process of draining responsibility from maximum to minimum. This made it possible to glue together relations of mutual control and inextricably linked mutual assistance not just employees of each body separately, but, which was much preferable for the country as a whole, all the innumerable chains of paper circulation, and in fact - the entire body of bureaucracy. Everyone could let everyone down, and everyone could save everyone. The immaculate service of all depended on the vigilance and professional integrity of everyone.

In principle, a document processed by an institution could only have three paths: sideways, up, and down. First, to a neighboring institution that is not related to the first subordinate relationship, for example, from one order (si ) to another, from one county (zhou ) or county (xian ) to another county or county; or, alternatively, to a neighboring department of the same institution. Secondly, to a higher authority, for example, from the administration (Jian ) to the Terrace of state Observers (Yushitai ) or from the district to the Government Supervision (shanshusheng ). Third , to a lower instance, for example, from a government supervisor to a district. For all these three possibilities, identical rules were provided in principle, slightly modified only depending on the ratio of the possibilities of the upper and lower ones to answer for each other and correct each other: If other officials or officials [more] high [authorities], analyzing the case, did not find [violations]... the penalty is consistently reduced by one degree. For officials of [lower] levels who do not detect [violations], the penalty is consistently reduced by one more degree. ...The leader is considered to be the one who caused [this crime] to occur (with yu ). Decreases - it means that the leader is reduced [relative to] the leader, and the accomplices are reduced [relative to] the accomplices [Tang Lui..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 232].

If an incorrectly or inaccurately drawn up or solved case penetrated the institution from the side or from below, the one who served as the source of "infection" of the native organization turned out to be the leader already relative to it. So, he should have been punished one degree easier than the leader of the organization that was the source of the infection. Then the employees of the infected instance were divided into the same four (or how many of them

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it was possible to highlight) Then the process of distributing responsibility went according to the general rules: employees of the 2nd level who did not detect violations received a penalty reduced by one degree compared to the punishment of employees of the 2nd level of the original instance, employees of the 3rd level-one degree less than employees of the 3rd level of the original instance, etc.

If a document arrived from top to bottom (for example, from supervision to the district), in which something incongruous was not revealed, the district employee who did not notice this did not send the document back with a request to investigate, but accepted it for further passage, the one through whom the error penetrated to the district administration turned out to be already a district employee. the ringleader. But the responsibility of the central office, of course, was considered higher than the responsibility of the district. And the qualification requirements for the central office were stricter. Therefore, failure to detect inconsistencies in the document received from above was punished a little more easily. The district leader was subject to a sentence that was already two degrees lighter than the leader in supervision. District employees were also divided into four levels of complicity, and each received a sentence reduced by two degrees relative to the corresponding level in the original metropolitan institution.

A separate point of the article was awarded to the employees of the Gatehouse Supervision (menxiasheng )5, since it was through them and only through them that the bulk of the documentation intended for the eyes of the emperor actually fell into his eyes. As a rule, such cases were submitted to the Gatehouse Supervision from the Government Supervision. Each such document was carefully prepared: first, it was checked by the secretary (lushi ), then it was read by the middle file-giver (jishizhong ), the case was analyzed by the well-done servant (shilan ), and finally, the head of supervision, the middle servant (shizhong ), made its final check, the last before the document reached the zenith of significance Questioner: appeared before the Son of Heaven.

If an error or inaccuracy leaked through all these filters, the chain of negligent courtiers from beginning to end, from lushi to shizhong, was subject to the penalty of duty-wide responsibility. And - without division into levels of complicity. They were all still entitled to a penalty reduced by one degree compared to the punishment of Level 4 accomplices who sent the institution's defective paper to Menxiasheng.

It is very characteristic of the extremely honest and at the same time childishly simple explanation that the creators of the Code considered it necessary to give to the fact that, unlike all previous situations, gatekeepers were not divided into levels: Since the criminal regulations say that the punishment is reduced relative to the lowest level, the punishment that is obtained [as a result of it turns out to be very easy. If it is also consistently reduced, some will find themselves [and completely] without punishment [Tang Lui..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 234].

Whether because of the special position of Gatekeeper Supervision as the sole and supreme intermediary between the paper routine and the person of the emperor, or because in supervision officials did not deal with real life specifics and therefore, in principle, could not touch and weigh, in fact verify what was discussed in the documents they received, it was probably impossible to assign responsibility to them on a general basis.

In no case could the Gatekeeper's employees receive a more severe punishment than anyone in the original, initially guilty organization. And that might very well be the case if they were broken down into levels; a level 2 accomplice in Gatehouse Surveillance (not to mention who was the source of the infection there) might very well be at risk of a heavier penalty than an accomplice

5 For information about this institution and its staff, see: [Rybakov, 2009, pp. 239-242].

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Level 4 of the original organization - and that would be a blatant injustice to the lord's closest employees. Therefore, for Gatekeeping, punitive measures should be counted not from the heaviest, but from the lightest punishment that employees of the instance that was the source of infection could be subjected to.

Employees of the Gatekeeper's supervision level below the secretary (lushi), i.e. clerks, even if they had to deal with a defective document that had entered menxiasheng, did not have the prerogative to edit, proofread, analyze, etc. — and therefore were not subject to liability at all.

Responsibility was removed from everyone except employees of the original organization, and in cases where inconsistencies in the document were not identified for objective reasons, due to the quality of the document itself. Whether the defective paper was passed sideways, up or down from the body where it was first drawn up, employees of subsequent institutions, even if they did not identify the inconsistency, were not liable: If the expressions [of the document and the circumstances set out in it] are unclear and obscured, so that they cannot be understood during verification, penalties are not defined. The expressions of [the document] are unclear, and [the circumstances set forth in it] are obscured - meaning that there are omitted or incorrectly written hieroglyphs, or the circumstances of the case are exaggerated or understated. If the [document]expressions are they are unclear, and [the circumstances set out in it] are hidden, and it is difficult to detect [deviations from due course and errors] during the re-examination of the case... [Tang lui..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p. 234].

All these complex calculation algorithms only worked this way if the original crime was public (gong zuo ).

However, it is no secret to anyone, and fifteen hundred years ago it was also no secret that a civil servant can make an incorrect and illegal decision, as well as simply confuse something in the documents, not only because of a disinterested oversight, an accidental mistake, inattention or lack of qualifications. The most serious negative attribute of a responsible and competent public service is that it is full of temptations to use the public opportunities it provides for private purposes - vulgarly self-serving or those that are dictated by hypertrophied ambition or, for example, a pathological desire for self-affirmation at the expense of colleagues.

Unfortunately, the attribute of temptations is inherent, because along with it, the powers themselves would have to be taken away, for the sake of which, in fact, the civil service exists. All the cultures of the world, each in its own way, have been struggling to solve this squaring circle with varying success since the very moment when they created states.

Any blunder in the service can have two reasons: either an oversight, or a conscious desire to do just that, and not otherwise. Any wrong decision can be caused by either an obvious miscalculation or a secret calculation. At the same time, which is very important, the appearance of an illegal action committed by mistake will not differ in any way from the same action committed intentionally. Finding out the true motivations is always the task of a special investigation.

The difference in punishments here should have been no less than, say, the difference in punishments for accidental murder and premeditated murder.6
6 " Anyone who accidentally kills a person or accidentally injures a person... based on the circumstances of the incident", it was allowed to pay off the penalty due in this case with money. See: [Tang Lui..., Article 339; Criminal regulations..., 2005, p. 246]. "Anyone who, having inflicted a beating in a fight, kills a person, is punished by strangulation. If he used a stabbing or cutting [weapon] or killed a person intentionally, he is punished with beheading. " See: [Tang liui..., Article 306; Criminal regulations..., 2005, p. 158].

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One of the most essential principles of general service responsibility was this: if someone committed an illegal act in the service intentionally and for personal reasons, he was punished as a subject who consciously and intentionally committed a crime. Those of his co-workers who did not identify the resulting oversight simply through negligence received punishment according to the levels of official complicity, as if the original criminal, the leader (in reality, for example, who made an illegal decision for a bribe), had made his mistake through negligence: ...It means that among the officials who made decisions one after another [in the same case], as well as clerks, [someone] had private motives (si ) and deliberately violated the correct pattern (zhengli ). The remaining officials, who one after another jointly made a decision [on the same case] (lianpan ) and did not know about the circumstances of hidden private motives (xie si qing ), are punished as a mistake [Tang liu..., Article 40; Criminal regulations..., 1999, p.230].

If deliberate criminal actions took place at two or more levels of complicity, the person who initiated them passed as the ringleader, and those who at subsequent levels deliberately did not reveal the wrongness - as his accomplices. The rest, who did not have personal motives, but simply did not notice the violation, received punishments in accordance with the levels of official complicity, as if the original crime was public, i.e. carried out by mistake, unintentionally.

For example, if a certain clerk, having a private motive, deliberately distorted, exaggerated or downplayed the circumstances during the initial drafting of the case (zeng jian ), and the administrator, also for his own personal reasons, did not reveal fraud, then the clerk was the leader, and the administrator was an accomplice. If, for example, the result of a misrepresentation committed by the clerk was that a person who committed a crime punishable by exile could, according to the circumstances set out in the case file, quite naturally be fully acquitted, the clerk-leader, in turn, should have been punished with the same exile.7 His accomplice, who acted consciously and intentionally, received, as in principle was supposed to be an accomplice of the crime, a punishment reduced by one degree compared to the punishment of the leader 8, t.e. three years of hard labor. Co-workers who did not participate in collusion and deliberate distortion of the law received punishment according to the levels of complicity, but the calculation for them was not carried out from exile. For colleagues who mistakenly failed to detect deliberate misrepresentation, the starting point was the penalty imposed for erroneous, unintentional removal from punishment by reference, i.e., reduced relative to the reference by five degrees - that is, one year of hard labor. Reducing this penalty by two degrees at the 3rd level of complicity, i.e. at the level of senior administrators, gave 90 blows with heavy sticks, and at the level of superiors, i.e. at the 4th level, - 80 blows with heavy sticks.

One of the most significant provisions aimed at responsible consolidation of the bureaucracy, at strengthening relations of mutual supervision and mutual rescue among colleagues, was that the law provided for full forgiveness

7 " To any responsible official who brings a person under punishment (zhu zui ), if the summing up was complete, the punishment is determined according to the full summing up. ...When removed from punishment (chu zui ) according to each given case [act] in the same way. ...It means that, for example, intentionally exaggerated or downplayed the circumstances sufficiently to change the case [degree]... If, on the other hand, an error in summing up was committed during the sentencing process, according to each given case, [the guilty person] receives a sentence reduced by three degrees [relative to what would have been due for this deliberate summing up]. If a mistake was made in the direction of deduction, according to each given case, [the guilty person] receives a sentence reduced by five degrees. " See: [Tang Lui..., Article 487; Criminal regulations..., 2008, pp. 200-201, 204-205].

8 " Whenever a crime is committed jointly, the person who gave the thought is considered the ringleader. The punishment for accomplices who followed him is reduced by one degree. " See: [Tang Lui..., Article 42; Criminal regulations..., 1999, pp. 237-238].

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for the entire chain of officials who dealt with any incongruous case or document, if at least one of them noticed the inaccuracy and reported it.

The preferred option was, of course, when it was the person who made the mistake and made a statement about it, but this option was not the only saving one: Anyone who made a mistake or inaccuracy in public affairs, but discovered it himself (jue ) and declared it (ju ), his crime is forgiven (yuan ). ...If one person subject to general service responsibility himself discovered [an error or inaccuracy] and declared [it], the rest [of the crime] is also forgiven [Tang lu..., Article 41; Criminal regulations..., 1999, pp. 234-235].

In other words, any of the officials who signed this paper, from senior clerks to superiors, had the opportunity to save everyone else from an indefinite future penalty if they noticed an error and made it public. The identification of the error and the statement about it, apparently, clearly implied the possibility of its immediate correction.

However, there were still two completely justified restrictions. First, the crime was not forgiven to those who had a vested interest (although it was forgiven to all disinterested colleagues of this chain, who were guilty of only an oversight). Secondly, it was not forgiven if self-disclosure followed after the error was noticed from the outside. In addition, the implementation of this rule was reduced or completely blocked if the error had irreparable consequences.

It is interesting, of course, how long was the period during which the identification of an error and its disclosure could serve as a reason for freeing the entire chain of colleagues from the hypothetical future triumph of justice. Nothing is said about this. However, since the types of such conflicts mention, for example, terms of hard labor of one year or more, it can be concluded that while there were no irreparable consequences (and cases not related, for example, to criminal penalties or some other irreversible actions, could lie in the archives for many years), there is no specific time frame self-disclosure, apparently, was not set.

If an error or inaccuracy was made in determining the sentence of caning or the death penalty and the sentence was already carried out, no disclosure of the error by any of the colleagues could save any of the colleagues who reviewed the error from punishment. The ringleader, i.e., the original culprit of the error, received the penalty due for erroneous summing up to the wrong verdict. For the rest, it was reduced by levels according to the general rules. Exactly the same thing happened if the sentence included a reference and the wrongly convicted person had already reached the place assigned to him for the settlement. When the sentence included hard labor, the approach was somewhat modified: if self-disclosure occurred after the wrongfully convicted person had already served the entire term, no relief was given to colleagues. If the sentence was only partially completed by the time of self-disclosure,the convict was released from the rest of the sentence that still threatened him, and the group of colleagues who made a mistake received punishment for mistakenly summing up the hard labor period that their victim had already been forced to serve for nothing.

The type of irreversible consequences, although of an incomparably lighter nature, included the delay in working on cases relative to the standard time limits allocated for a document of this type and volume.9 If someone from the chain

9 For example: "Whenever a government oversight needs to put in place (shixing ) A decree (zhi ) or Supreme Order (chi ), when the text of a document is completed, it is always given the time allotted for copying it (gei chao cheng ). [When working with] official documents, a total calculation (tongji ) is made, and [with a volume of] 200 sheets or less, two days are given, and if [the volume of] 200 sheets is exceeded, one additional day is allocated for each of the next 200 sheets. Even if there are many [similar] increases in the number of sheets, in general, the allotted period may not exceed five days. The time allotted for documents on the annulment of sentences, even if there were a lot of sheets, can not exceed three days. Documents on urgent military matters should all be completed on the same day" [Niida Noboru, 1964, p. 598]. "Time is set aside for copying... after completing-

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co-workers noticed that the passage of the document through the instances of the institution was delayed relative to the regulatory deadlines and reported it himself, officials of all levels received forgiveness, except for senior clerks.

The special attitude towards them was probably due to the fact that it was them, the speed with which they filled out documents, that primarily affected the pace of work with cases. Therefore, leaving clerks completely unpunished was apparently considered non-pedagogical and, in any case, unfair. Even if the delay was discovered and reported by the clerk himself, the penalty was only reduced by two degrees compared to what would have been required for a given delay. Officials of higher levels, since they were not the ones who noticed the violation, also did not receive full forgiveness in this case, but were divided, as usual, into levels of official complicity, and their punishment was reduced according to the levels, despite the fact that the initial one was the punishment of the clerk, already reduced by two degrees for revealing the delay and announcing it her.

The Code does not say anything about identifying mistakes that have already been made in other institutions. Following, however, the logic and spirit of the monument, we can assume that in the absence of irreversible consequences (including uncompensated delays), the discovery of inconsistencies at any stage of the document's passage, no matter how many instances it passed by that time, exempted all employees who had to do with it from punishment.

An analysis of the norms that legislated general service responsibility makes it clear that it is difficult to imagine a more effective and at the same time more naturally functioning legal mechanism that would simultaneously increase mutual control and a sense of elbow in the bureaucracy. And the most significant thing, as I think, was that both of these motivations were strengthened simultaneously. With other approaches, the opposite is more often the case: if corporate identity is strengthened, discipline weakens; if discipline is strengthened, mutual suspicion and disunity increase. The mechanism found by Chinese legislators seems to have been perfect in this respect, as far as criminal law can be a means of ensuring social harmony in general.

list of literature

Krol Yu. L. Pravovye vozreniya hanskikh konfutsiantsev [Legal views of the Han Confucians]. XI nauchnaya konferentsiya "Obshchestvo i gosudarstvo v Kitae", Moscow, 1980.
Martynov A. S. Confucianism. "Lun yu", Vol. 1-2, St. Petersburg, 2001.

Niida Noboru. To ryu xiu yi (Collection of preserved mandatory regulations of the Tang). Tokyo, 1964.

Rybakov V. M. Tanskaya burokratiya [Tang bureaucracy]. Part 1. Genezis i struktura [Genesis and structure]. St. Petersburg, 2009.

Xin Tang shu (New History of Tang), vol. 1-20. Beijing, 1975.

Tang lui shu yi (Criminal regulations of Tang with explanations) / / Congshu jicheng (Library-series). T. 775-780. Shanghai, 1936-1939.

Criminal regulations of Tan with explanations (Tan lui shu yi) / Introduction, transl. from kit. and commentary by V. M. Rybakov. Tszyuani 1-8. SPb., 1999.

Criminal regulations of Tan with explanations (Tan lui shu yi) / Introduction, transl. from kit. and commentary by V. M. Rybakov. Tszyuani 9-16. SPb., 2001.

Criminal regulations of Tan with explanations (Tan lui shu yi) / Introduction, transl. from kit. and commentary by V. M. Rybakov. Tszyuani 17-25. SPb., 2005.

Criminal regulations of Tan with explanations (Tan lui shu yi) / Introduction, transl. from kit. and commentary by V. M. Rybakov. Juani 26-30. St. Petersburg, 2008.

working on the document. In accordance with the generally binding regulations, no separate time is given to complete [work] on the documents of Decrees or Supreme Orders, so it must be completed on the same day" [Tang Lui..., Article 41; Criminal Regulations..., 1999, pp. 236-237]. "Anyone who delayed [the passage] According to the Decree, 50 blows with light sticks are punished for 1 day. For [each subsequent] day, the penalty increases by 1 degree. For 10 days - one year of hard labor" [Tang lui..., Article 111; Criminal regulations..., 2001, p. 44].

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