Kistiakovsky, Oleksander

Kistiakovsky, Oleksander [Кістяковський, Олександер; Kistjakovs’kyj], b 26 March 1833 in Horodyshche, Sosnytsia county, Chernihiv gubernia, d 25 January 1885 in Kyiv. Noted jurist and historian of law; the father of Bohdan Kistiakovsky, Ihor Kistiakovsky, and Volodymyr Kistiakovsky. He graduated from Kyiv University and taught there from 1864. In 1869 he was appointed professor of criminal law and criminal procedure. He cofounded and for a time presided over the Kyiv Juridical Society. He was an assistant editor of the journal Osnova (Saint Petersburg) and active in the Hromada of Kyiv. In his research he focused on the history of law and the court system of the Hetman state, on Magdeburg law, and on common law. The Code of Laws of 1743 was published by him with a scholarly commentary in 1879. His other legal works include Issledovanie o smertnoi kazni (Research on the Death Penalty, 1867), Elementarnyi uchebnik obshchogo ugolovnogo prava (Elementary Textbook of Common Criminal Law, 1875), and over 70 articles in such journals as Kievskaia starina and Kievskie universitetskie izvestiia. Kistiakovsky’s diaries from 1874 to 1885 appeared in two volumes in Kyiv in 1994–5.

[This article was updated in 2001.]