January 29 in Russian history

1649: Zemsky sobor (Russian parliament) issues the new law code, Sobornoe ulozhenie. By this time Russian legal system includes a lot of outdated and even controversial laws and the new dynasty of Romanovs begins to review the laws. The tsar Alexei I summoned the Zemsky sobor, which elected a commission to prepare and review the laws. The drafts were approved by tsar and the Boyar Duma (an advisory council). By the end of 1648 the draft code was prepared and sent for approval. In 1649, the code was sent to all legal departments as the official law code of the Russian empire.

1710: Peter I introduces the new alphabet, which is to replace the Old Slavonic alphabet. This new alphabet is still used in Russia, with some changes. The new "civil" alphabet looked more like Latin letters.The Old Slavonic alphabet included a number of letters, inherited from Greek language. Some of these letters denoted the sounds absent in Russian language and took slightly different meaning in Russian. As a result, there were pairs of letters with the same meaning. For example, sound [f] was denoted by Greek Θ and Slavic Ф. Sound [o] also had two representations: Slavic О and Greek Ω. Nasal vowels, not used in Russian language, were also excluded from the alphabet.

1860: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, one of the best Russian writers, was born. A brilliant playwrite and the author of short stories, for all his life he dreamed of writing a novel. It never happened. So what, he is still my favourite writer in the whole Russian literature!