Kirmse on law and cultural diversity in the Russian empire

Earlier in 2020, Stefan B. Kirmse (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin) published The Lawful Empire: Legal Change and Cultural Diversity in Late Tsarist Russia with Cambridge University Press. From the publisher:             

The Russian Empire and its legal institutions have often been associated with arbitrariness, corruption, and the lack of a 'rule of law'. Stefan B. Kirmse challenges these assumptions in this important new study of empire-building, minority rights, and legal practice in late Tsarist Russia, revealing how legal reform transformed ordinary people's interaction with state institutions from the 1860s to the 1890s. By focusing on two regions that stood out for their ethnic and religious diversity, the book follows the spread of the new legal institutions 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. It explores the degree to which the courts served as instruments of integration: the integration of former borderlands with the imperial centre and the integration of the empire's internal 'others' with the rest of society. 

Table of Contents after the jump:

Smiley on the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law

Will Smiley, Reed College published From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law with Oxford University Press in 2018. From the publisher: 

The Ottoman-Russian wars of the eighteenth century reshaped the map of Eurasia and the Middle East, but they also birthed a novel concept--the prisoner of war. For centuries, hundreds of thousands of captives, civilians and soldiers alike, crossed the legal and social boundaries of these empires, destined for either ransom or enslavement. But in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state and its Russian rival, through conflict and diplomacy, worked out a new system of regional international law. Ransom was abolished; soldiers became prisoners of war; and some slaves gained new paths to release, while others were left entirely unprotected. These rules delineated sovereignty, redefined individuals' relationships to states, and prioritized political identity over economic value. In the process, the Ottomans marked out a parallel, non-Western path toward elements of modern international law. Yet this was not a story of European imposition or imitation-the Ottomans acted for their own reasons, maintaining their commitment to Islamic law. For a time even European empires played by these rules, until they were subsumed into the codified global law of war in the late nineteenth century. This story offers new perspectives on the histories of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, of slavery, and of international law.

 Praise for the book: 

"This is an extensively detailed history of Ottoman Turkish relations primarily but not entirely with...the Russian Empire, the Hapsburgs, and the West, dealing with the numerous wars in which it was involved between 1700 and 1876...Recommended" -- CHOICE

Further information is available here.

--Mitra Sharafi

The Limits of Law: Cases

We asked the 2018-19 Davis Fellows the following question: how has your time at the Davis Center led to new insights about the reach and limits of law and legalities? Here is one set of answers that relate to each scholar's area of study (our other posts in this series are here and here):

Two articles on Jewish law in French history

Back in 2017, Géraldine Gudefin (American University) published two articles on Jewish law in French history. We missed these earlier. Here are some details:

(1) "Creating Legal Difference: The Impossible Divorce of Russian Jews in Early Twentieth-Century France," Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 31 (2017), 11-36

Abstract: Much of the scholarship on Jewish divorce assumes that civil marital laws are beneficial to Jews. This article complicates that assumption by focusing on a rarely acknowledged aspect of Jewish immigration in France. As France moved towards a stricter understanding of the separation of church and state, civil courts rejected the possibility of applying religious divorce laws to foreigners. Combined with the French practice of applying foreign law in cases involving immigrants, this shift resulted in Russian Jews being denied the right to civil divorce from 1905 to the 1920s. The confessional nature of Russian divorce thus continued to shape the lives of Russian Jews even after their immigration to France. The case of Russian Jewish divorce casts light on the shifting and contradictory understand-ings of the separation of church and state in France during the early years of the twentieth century.

(2) "Reforming Jewish Divorce: French Rabbis and Civil Divorce at the Turn of the Twentieth century (1884-1907" in Martine Gross, Sophie Nizard, and Yann Scioldo-Zurcher, eds., Gender, Families and Transmission in the Contemporary Jewish Context (2017)

Excerpt from introduction: "In the months and years following the passage of the law of 1884 [restoring civil divorce in France], rabbis in France became increasingly aware of the plight of Jewish women who were denied a religious divorce. Over the next two decades, French rabbis designed myriad proposals in an effort to reform Jewish marital laws and  prevent the problem of
agunot; these rabbinical proposals became widely  publicized in the French Jewish press. This article examines the manifold suggestions for reforming Jewish divorce between 1884 and 1907, focusing particularly on the conflicting pressures faced by French rabbis. On the one hand, Jewish communal leaders were extremely influenced by French debates about civil divorce, sharing similar ideas with reformers of civil divorce about the adaptive nature of the law and the need for more  balanced gender relations. On the other hand, owing to the transnational nature of Jewish law and life, the discussion about religious divorce transcended France's national borders, thus complicating attempts at reform."

Further information is available here.

Hasegawa on Crime & Punishment in the Russian Revolution

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, UC Santa Barbara, has published Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution: Mob Justice and Police in Petrograd with Harvard University Press. From the publisher: 

Russians from all walks of life poured into the streets of the imperial capital after the February Revolution of 1917, joyously celebrating the end of Tsar Nicholas II’s monarchy. One year later, with Lenin’s Bolsheviks now in power, Petrograd’s deserted streets presented a very different scene. No celebrations marked the Revolution’s anniversary. Amid widespread civil strife and lawlessness, a fearful citizenry stayed out of sight.

In Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa offers a new perspective on Russia’s revolutionary year through the lens of violent crime and its devastating effect on ordinary people. When the Provisional Government assumed power after Nicholas II’s abdication, it set about instituting liberal reforms, including eliminating the tsar’s regular police. But dissolving this much-hated yet efficient police force and replacing it with a new municipal police led rapidly to the breakdown of order and services. Amid the chaos, crime flourished. Gangs of criminals, deserters, and hooligans brazenly roamed the streets. Mass prison escapes became common. And vigilantism spread widely as ordinary citizens felt compelled to take the law into their own hands, often meting out mob justice on suspected wrongdoers.

The Bolsheviks swept into power in the October Revolution but had no practical plans to reestablish order. As crime continued to escalate and violent alcohol riots almost drowned the revolutionary regime, they redefined it as “counterrevolutionary activity,” to be dealt with by the secret police, whose harshly repressive, extralegal means of enforcement helped pave the way for a Communist dictatorship.

Praise for the book:

“Hasegawa is one of our leading historians of the February Revolution… [He] makes a strong case that the catastrophic social breakdown, most especially the violent crime that pervaded life in Petrograd after the collapse of the monarchy, ‘served as a stepping-stone toward the creation of the pervasive instrument of terror that became an integral part of the Communist dictatorship.’” -Joshua Rubenstein

“This book makes a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the Russian Revolution by revealing the violent, chaotic lived experience of the revolution in the capital city. In a narrative full of colorful characters and stories, Hasegawa gives us a street-level view of the collapse of state authority that cleared the way for the Bolshevik seizure of power.” -Eric Lohr

“Hasegawa addresses the very important, largely ignored thus far, role of crime and the breakdown of social order and public safety. In doing so he changes the way we think and write about the Russian Revolution, making this one of the more original things I have seen in a very long time.” -Rex Wade

Further information is available here.  

Macalister-Smith and Schwietzke on Russia and the Great War

Peter Macalister-Smith, Assistant General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Public International Law, and Joachim Schwietzke, Library Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg) have published Russia and the Great War 1914 to 1924: A Brief Calendar of State with Talbot Publishing. From the press:

Russia and the Great War 1914 to 1924: A Brief Calendar of State Practice is a chronicle of events in diplomacy and international relations combined with references to sources and documentary extracts. A key to several kinds of distinctive information, it: - locates 200 official acts in time and place, - names the party or parties to each act, - supplies a title in English for each instrument, - cites versions in authentic languages and translations, - refers to reliable source materials systematically, - offers notes and explanations for further guidance, - includes references to related acts and instruments, within and beyond the core reporting period, and - reproduces 75 documentary extracts of central passages from the instruments cited in English language versions. The book is a baseline chronology documenting events from global history intended for study, research and ready reference. Russia, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are represented in Russia and the Great War as a party to over 85 transactions and as the location of some 45 forty-five acts concluded from 1914 to 1924. Russia and the Great War: A Brief Calendar of State Practice 1914 to 1924 is an interactive repertory of practice within and beyond the reporting period from 1914 to 1924.

Further information is available here. 

Antonov on Debt in Imperial Russia

Sergei Antonov, Queens College CUNY/Columbia has published Bankrupts and Usurers in Imperial Russia:Debt, Property, and the Law in the Age of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy with Harvard University Press. From the publisher:

As readers of classic Russian literature know, the nineteenth century was a time of pervasive financial anxiety. With incomes erratic and banks inadequate, Russians of all social castes were deeply enmeshed in networks of credit and debt. The necessity of borrowing and lending shaped perceptions of material and moral worth, as well as notions of social respectability and personal responsibility. Credit and debt were defining features of imperial Russia’s culture of property ownership. Sergei Antonov recreates this vanished world of borrowers, bankrupts, lenders, and loan sharks in imperial Russia from the reign of Nicholas I to the period of great social and political reforms of the 1860s. 

Poring over a trove of previously unexamined records, Antonov gleans insights into the experiences of ordinary Russians, rich and poor, and shows how Russia’s informal but sprawling credit system helped cement connections among property owners across socioeconomic lines. Individuals of varying rank and wealth commonly borrowed from one another. Without a firm legal basis for formalizing debt relationships, obtaining a loan often hinged on subjective perceptions of trustworthiness and reputation. Even after joint-stock banks appeared in Russia in the 1860s, credit continued to operate through vast networks linked by word of mouth, as well as ties of kinship and community. Disputes over debt were common, and Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia offers close readings of legal cases to argue that Russian courts—usually thought to be underdeveloped in this era—provided an effective forum for defining and protecting private property interests.

Praise for the book:

“Sergei Antonov introduces us to an imperial Russia in which aristocratic sons borrowed from usurers for their military uniforms and gambling debts and landowners borrowed money from serfs they owned and had mortgaged as collateral for other loans. With imagination and rich detail, he shows how informal personal credit pervaded every aspect of culture, society, and government, undergirding the social order and an entire regime of private property ownership. Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia is a masterly addition to the new cultural and social history of debt.” -Bruce H. Mann

“Antonov is a pioneer in the use of sources about private moneylending as a lens onto the tsarist social order. He is a keen analyst of large-scale processes, but the book is also highly readable and brings everyday imperial Russia to life. Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia is an important scholarly intervention, one built on archival sleuthing, expertise in social and legal history, a skillful integration of Russian developments into a global context, and a solid familiarity with the Western, imperial Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russian literature.” -Alexander M. Marti

“From humble peasants to wealthy aristocrats, Russian pre-revolutionary society was permeated by the bonds of debt. Antonov’s meticulously researched and beautifully written book uncovers the circuits of unofficial credit relations that existed outside of the state banking system. It tells the stories of tragic bankruptcies and prodigious fortunes, family strife, legal battles, and reconciliations between debtors and usurers. This is an important study that fundamentally recasts our understanding of the legal regimes, economy, and sociability of credit in imperial Russia.”-Ekaterina Pravilova

More information is available here.

Heinzen on Corruption in the USSR

Out recently with Yale University Press is The Art of the Bribe: Corruption under Stalin, 1943-1953 by James Heinzen, Rowan University. The publisher describes the book as the first "archive-based study of official corruption under Stalin and a compelling new look at the textures of everyday Soviet life after World War II": 

In the Soviet Union, bribery was a skill with its own practices and culture. 
James Heinzen’s innovative and compelling study examines corruption under Stalin’s dictatorship in the wake of World War II, focusing on bribery as an enduring and important presence in many areas of Soviet life. Based on extensive research in recently declassified Soviet archives, The Art of the Bribe offers revealing insights into the Soviet state, its system of law and repression, and everyday life during the years of postwar Stalinism.

Praise for the book:

“Corruption could be the most important of all the understudied topics in Soviet history, but James Heinzen has found a way to illuminate this dark terrain with brilliant research. His cogent analysis built upon startling archival finds enlarges the pioneering work of the great Gregory Grossman, and provokes a rethinking of Soviet legal machinery, the state, and the society.”-Stephen Kotkin

“A magnificently researched, archivally based study of bribery and corruption under high Stalinism in the Soviet Union. The analysis is carefully drawn, fully persuasive, and makes an important contribution to the historiography of the Soviet Union and the comparative study of corruption and bribery.”-Norman M. Naimark

“Stunning …. Bribery was not peripheral or alien to the Stalinist command economy but an essential consequence…. Heinzen's study is bigger than its ostensible subject, for it gives a deeply textured view into how Soviet society actually worked.” -Ronald Grigor Suny

“In Stalin’s Russia, where the party ruled every aspect of life, to give or take a bribe was to be human. Heinzen’s fascinating study shows how and why it was done.” -Mark Harrison

"This deeply researched and thoughtful book sheds new light on corruption in the late Stalin years, newly illuminating the limits to Stalin’s power and the Soviet legal system." -Deborah Kaple  

More information is available here.