Legal History

The Lawful Empire - introductory remarks on a new contribution to Russian legal history

I am delighted to be the LHB?s guest blogger in October! And I would like to use my first entry to acquaint readers with my recent book, ?The Lawful Empire. Legal Change and Cultural Diversity in Late Tsarist Russia? (Cambridge UP, 2019). I will highlight key points and motivations about and behind the book, which should give readers an overview of what ?The Lawful Empire? is about, how it was designed, and how it relates to existing literature.

Over the next four weeks I will then provide you with background stories, explaining some of the choices I made, for example about archives, cases, and languages, among other things. I will also engage with open questions, criticisms voiced, and broader issues concerning research on Russian legal history. And last but not least, I will include some telling (and perhaps quirky) experiences in the field. But for now, let?s return to the design and argument of the book.

?The Lawful Empire? is a provocative title, so I?ve been told on several occasions. The Russian Empire has rarely been associated with the rule of law, and so the title itself, but also numerous talks I have given about the book, have been met with a fair share of surprise. That said, it was not designed as a surprise story and, frankly, I only chose the title at the very end, after completing a second draft of the conclusion. I had not assumed the empire?s courts to be ?lawful? in any shape or form a priori, but once the individual chapters had been written, a striking concern for equality and legality among both big-city and small-town jurists of the Russian Empire emerged as one of the key findings. I completely agree that there are many caveats about this argument, and I do try to engage with them in the book. But I also believe that the bottom-line ? that the Russian judiciary after 1864 was far more ?lawful? than generally assumed, not least in its engagement with large parts of the non-Russian population ? ultimately holds true.

The book combines an analysis of law and legal practice with a discussion of autocratic rule over a multicultural empire. It is as much about new legal institutions as it is about equality and cultural diversity. It examines the introduction and local use of the court system created by the Judicial Reform of 1864, its gradual expansion across the Eurasian landmass over the following three decades, and its importance for Russian imperial rule. Focusing on two regions that stood out for their ethnic and religious diversity, it follows the spread of the new courts into the open steppe of southern Russia, especially Crimea, and into the fields and forests of the Middle Volga region around the ancient Tatar capital of Kazan. As these former frontier zones were home to large Tatar populations, the book is also about the integration of Muslims.

?The Lawful Empire? addresses a number of interrelated questions. First, it is concerned with changing imperial imagination. How did formerly alien territories change over time in the minds of regional and central elites? How did the images of the people inhabiting these lands evolve? Second, by looking at the courts, the book addresses the role and perception of state institutions in culturally diverse regions. How did Muslim Tatars and other minorities participate in the state judiciary? Third, it explores channels of communication between individuals, rural communities, and local, regional, and central authorities. How did people communicate approval or resentment? Finally, the descriptions of everyday life in Tatar communities that emerge from court files and other archival materials help to paint detailed portraits of the towns and villages along the Volga River and the Black Sea coast. The same sources also reveal much about inter-religious life at the local level, offering new perspectives on Christian-Muslim relations.

A Bottom-up, Regional Approach

Focusing on the voices of small-town jurists and ordinary town and village dwellers (Russian, Tatar, or other), the book offers a bottom-up approach to the study of law and empire. As a trained anthropologist, I have never been a fan of top-down histories. Sure, in most imperial contexts, decrees and reforms were passed at the center, usually by powerful old, white men. This was no different in Russia. The trouble starts when you realize that those laws were not enforced but ignored or re-interpreted. So rather than base the analysis in my book on laws and the memoirs of elites in St. Petersburg and Moscow, I concern myself with the way in which justice was implemented and perceived at the local level. How did people make sense of the state legal system in Crimea and Kazan, two regions that constitute what we might call ?intermediate terrains?, that is, former frontier zones that, by the mid-nineteenth century, were largely treated as part of the imperial core? With this regional focus, the book makes a contribution to both studies of law in imperial Russia and studies of the empire?s evolving frontier.

The Case for Accommodation