The article investigates the evolution of the petitioning document genre in the context of the development of linguistic forms of expressing acts of petition in the history of Russian official communication. In the system of old Russian documentary genres, the petition takes a special place: this type of document fully reflects a family metaphor of the pre-Petrine state. Therefore, the prevailing speech formulas serving the figure of an applicant are formulas of resentment and almost family-like censure of the supreme authorities, who are responsible for the fact that applicants live poorly, that “they became poor, have torn clothes”, and so on. With the change of the type of state during Peter the Great’s reign, petitions become less emotional, the formulas of resentment and censure are replaced with the formulas of “sovereign humiliation” of the applicant figure, a large number of terms appear for indicating the addressee’s rank, status, and official regalia. Petition is preserved as a genre, but it loses its intimate character of appeal: all letters to the sovereign are now examined by his office, therefore, a more strict structure of this document is introduced, and the first official petition forms are approved. Further regulation of petition structure leads to a change in the name of this genre itself: first the petition (XIX century), and then the appeal and the application (XX century). A clear document structure, a limited set of speech formulas, almost complete elimination of elements of live spoken language - all these and other linguistic features of a petitioning document suggest the estrangement of the state from its citizens: the state does not present itself as a family, but as a machine where every person is only a screw in a complex mechanism.