Reforming
Justice in
Russia,
1864-1996
This work is a study of the Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project of the University of Toronto, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
First published 1997 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reforming justice in Russia, 1864-1996: power, culture, and the limits of legal order / edited by Peter H. Solomon, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56324-862-X (c: alk. paper)
1. Justice, Administration ofRussia (Federation)History.
2. Law reform-Russia (Federation)History.
I. Solomon, Peter H.
KLB470.R44 1997
347.47dc21 97-11590
CIP
ISBN 13: 9781563248627 (hbk)
CONTENTS
Peter H. Solomon, Jr.
William G. Wagner
Sergei M. Kazantsev
Girish N. Bhat
Jane Burbank
Cathy A. Frierson
Lisa Granik
Golfo Alexopoulos
Oleg V. Khlevniuk
Gabor T. Rittersporn
Peter H. Solomon, Jr.
Yoram Gorlizki
Todd Foglesong
Eugene Huskey
Gordon B. Smith
Sarah J. Reynolds
This book is based upon a set of papers prepared for the conference Reforming Justice in Russia: An Historical Perspective, which was held at Massey College, University of Toronto, 31 March2 April 1995. The conference was special in that it provided the first occasion for intensive discussion and collaboration among specialists in law and justice in tsarist Russia and their counterparts working on this subject in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. Funding for the conference came from the Centre for Russian and East European Studies through its grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and from the Stalin-Era Research and Archives Project (SERAP) at the Centre funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In addition to the contributors to this volume, participants at the conference included: Susan Heuman, Robert Johnson, Joan Neuberger, Ronald Pruessen, Susan Solomon, Olga Solovieva, and Lynne Viola. As commentator for the conference as a whole, Robert Sharlet gave sage advice on the development of this volume.
In preparing this volume for publication, I benefited above all from collaboration with an extraordinarily talented editor, Dr. Edith Klein. As publications officer of SERAP, Edith performed copy-editing and prepared the camera-ready version of the manuscript, for which I am truly grateful. I am also pleased to acknowledge the assistance of Janet Hyer, Gary Wilson, and Brett Young in research, editorial assistance, and conference organization. AtM. E. Sharpe, Patricia Kolb and Elizabeth Granda provided firm and patient guidance to bring this volume to the public.
Golfo Alexopoulos is Assistant Professor of History at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She recently received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where she prepared a dissertation on the Soviet disenfranchised, entitled, Rights and Passage: Marking Outcasts and Making Citizens in Soviet Russia, 1926-1936. The focus of her current research is the practice of amnesty and clemency in Russia.
Girish N. Bhat is Assistant Professor of Russian and European history at the State University of New York, Cortland. He received his Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently at work on a study of the theory and practice of the rule of law in late imperial Russia.
Jane Burbank is Professor of History at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Intelligentsia and Revolution. Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917-1992 (Princeton University Press), and is preparing a monograph on Russian legal culture in the early twentieth century.
Todd Foglesong is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Kansas. He is conducting research on the implementation of judicial reforms in post-Soviet Russia, and completing a manuscript, Controlling Courts in Russia: The Politics of Judicial Independence and the Faces of Criminal Justice under the Old and New Regimes.
Cathy A. Frierson is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of New Hampshire. Her publications include Peasant Icons: Representations of Rural People in Late Nineteenth Century Russia and Aleksandr Nikolaevich Engelgardts Letters from the Country, 1872-1887 (both Oxford University Press). Her current project is a study of fire and arson in late imperial rural Russia.
Yoram Gorlizki is Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of Manchester. He is currently completing a book on the politics of the Soviet criminal justice system during 1948-1964.
Lisa Granik is a Graduate Fellow at Yale Law School, whose research explores new directions in legal hermeneutics. Her chapter in this book is part of a larger work examining the potentials and perils of using the legal process to promote social change, and the hermeneutical obstacles in that process.
Eugene Huskey is Professor of Political Science and Director of Russian Studies at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. Among his works is Russian Lawyers and the Soviet State (Princeton University Press, published in English and Russian editions) and numerous articles on Soviet and post-Soviet legal affairs. He has also written on the Russian presidency and on politics in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan.
Sergei M. Kazantsev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theory and History of State and Law, St. Petersburg State University. He is the editor-compiler of Sud priasiazhnykh v Rossii (Leningrad, 1991) and author of Istoriia tsarskoi prokuratury (St. Petersburg, 1993).