"... will challenge (and should transform) existing interpretations                  of late Imperial Russian governance, peasant studies, and Russian legal                  history." -- Cathy A. Frierson"... a major contribution                  to our understanding both of the dynamic of change within the peasantry and of legal                  development in late Imperial Russia." -- William G.                  WagnerRussian Peasants Go to Court brings into focus the legal                  practice of Russian peasants in the township courts of the Russian empire from 1905                  through 1917. Contrary to prevailing conceptions of peasants as backward, drunken,                  and ignorant, and as mistrustful of the state, Jane Burbank's study of court records                  reveals engaged rural citizens who valued order in their communities and made use of                  state courts to seek justice and to enforce and protect order. Through narrative                  studies of individual cases and statistical analysis of a large body of court                  records, Burbank demonstrates that Russian peasants made effective use of legal                  opportunities to settle disputes over economic resources, to assert personal                  dignity, and to address the bane of small crimes in their communities. The text is                  enhanced by contemporary photographs and lively accounts of individual court                  cases.

Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905-1917 PDF

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