Reforming Justice In Russia 1864 1994 Power Culture And The Limits Of Legal Order

Measuring Russian legal reform in relation to the rule-of-law ideal, this study also examines the legal institutions, culture and reform goals that have actually prevailed in Russia. Judgements about future prospects are measured, adding new dimensions to our understanding of the Soviet legacy.

Based on a set of papers prepared for a spring 1995 conference held at Massey College, University of Toronto, reflecting collaboration and discussion among specialists in law and justice in tsarist Russia and their counterparts working on the subject in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. Organized in sections on varieties of justice in imperial Russia, courts and Soviet power, and justice and the Russian transition, papers examine areas such as rural arson in European Russia in the late imperial era, sexual harassment claims of the 1920s, criminal justice under Stalin, and trials in modern Russia. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

First title of the new series Work in Global and Historical Perspective that introduces the conceptual approach towards the field of global labour history through a collection of essays chosen by the editors.

This book considers the process of legal modernization in Russia from the development of the mechanism of complaints addressed to the authorities from the pre-revolutionary period to today. It analyzes wide-ranging data and sources, collected over 17 years, such as legislation, in-depth interviews, archival materials, original texts, and examples of different methods of complaints in Soviet and contemporary Russia. Being marginal to the legal system and almost invisible for researchers of legal development, the complaint mechanism has functioned as an extremely important way of restoring justice, available to the majority of people in Russia for centuries. It has survived several historical gaps and, in a sense, acts as a thread that stitches together different eras, coexisting with the establishment and modernization of legal institutions, compensating, accompanying, and sometimes substituting for them. The research covers a period of over 100 years, and shows how and why at major historical crossroads, Russia chooses between full-fledged legal modernization and saving the authoritarian social contract between the state and society. This book will be especially useful to scholars researching Soviet society and Post-Soviet transformations, socio-legal studies, and liberal legal reforms, but will also appeal to those working in the broader fields of Russian politics, the history of Soviet society and justice issues more generally.

This book explores the issue of selective law enforcement, arguing that the manipulation of the legal system by powerful insiders is a distinctive feature of Putinism, reflecting both its hybrid authoritarianism and Russian legal culture. Based on extensive research including interviews with the victims of selective law enforcement, the book analyses how selective law enforcement works in Russia, discusses the link between law and power, and relates the Russian situation to examples from elsewhere and to general legal theories and ideas of political hybridity.

The abolition of slavery and similar institutions of servitude was an important global experience of the nineteenth century. Considering how tightly bonded into each local society and economy were these institutions, why and how did people decide to abolish them? This collection of essays examines the ways this globally shared experience appeared and developed. Chapters cover a variety of different settings, from West Africa to East Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, with close consideration of the British, French and Dutch colonial contexts, as well as internal developments in Russia and Japan. What part of the abolition decision was due to international pressure, and what part due to local factors? Furthermore, this collection does not solely focus on the moment of formal abolition, but looks hard at the aftermath of abolition, and also at the ways abolition was commemorated and remembered in later years. This book complicates the conventional story that global abilition was essentially a British moralizing effort, “among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations”. Using comparison and connection, this book tells a story of dynamic encounters between local and global contexts, of which the local efforts of British abolition campaigns were a part. Looking at abolitions as a globally shared experience provides an important perspective, not only to the field of slavery and abolition studies, but also the field of global or world history.

Perspectives on the strategies of imperial rule pursued by rulers, officials, scholars, and subjects of the Russian empire. This book explores the connections between Russia's expansion over vast territories occupied by people of many ethnicities, religions, and political experiences and the evolution of imperial administration and vision.