Russian Corpus of Official Texts

This article discusses the Russian Corpus of Official Texts, which was created between 2018 and 2020. The Corpus contains 294 documents (2,183,493 words) embracing the entire history of Russia, from agreements between Rus’ and the Byzantine Empire (912) to the present. This is the first collection of legal documents in Russian of its kind. The authors also provide brief descriptions of the most important documents that aided in the early development of the Russian legal system. A table with data on a specific lexeme (svoboda (freedom)) by year derived from a search result exemplifies the Corpus’ capabilities. This Corpus will facilitate a whole range of tasks related to the enhancement of Russian officialese, the optimization of legal language, the study of legal writing and its genres, and the expansion of information available on the history of legal thought in Russia.