Russian Law Historical And Political Perspectives

Monograph on the historical sources and development of law in Russia to present-day constitutional law of the USSR - covers legal theory, institutional frameworks, social reforms, the administration of justice and development of jurisprudence, and includes political aspects, sociological aspects, inheritance and land ownership, collective farming, etc.

This volume examines the elements of formalism and decisionism in Russian legal thinking and, also, the impact of conservatism on the interplay of these elements. This combination leads to internal contradictions in theorizing about law and rights in Russian legal culture.

Medushevsky examines constitutionalism in Russia from Tsarist times to the present. He traces the different attitudes to constitutionalism in political thought, and in practice, at different periods, showing how the balance between authoritarianism and liberalism has shifted. In addition, he discusses the importance of constitutional developments for societies in transition, and concludes that post-communist constitutional development in Russia is still far from complete. As an empirical resource, Russian Constitutionalism takes a longer historical view than other books on this topic, and it also goes further than this in its interpretive approach, providing a greater understanding of Russian constitutionalism.

How do immigration and refugee laws work 'in action' in Russia? This book offers a complex, empirical and nuanced understanding.

A major contribution to our understanding of present-day historical consciousness through a study of memory laws across Europe.

Chechnya, a 6,000-square-mile corner of the northern Caucasus, has struggled under Russian domination for centuries. The region declared its independence in 1991, leading to a brutal war, Russian withdrawal, and subsequent "governance" by bandits and warlords. A series of apartment building attacks in Moscow in 1999, allegedly orchestrated by a rebel faction, reignited the war, which continues to rage today. Russia has gone to great lengths to keep journalists from reporting on the conflict; consequently, few people outside the region understand its scale and the atrocities—described by eyewitnesses as comparable to those discovered in Bosnia—committed there. Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent for the liberal Moscow newspaper Novaya gazeta, was the only journalist to have constant access to the region. Her international stature and reputation for honesty among the Chechens allowed her to continue to report to the world the brutal tactics of Russia's leaders used to quell the uprisings. A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya is her second book on this bloody and prolonged war. More than a collection of articles and columns, A Small Corner of Hell offers a rare insider's view of life in Chechnya over the past years. Centered on stories of those caught-literally-in the crossfire of the conflict, her book recounts the horrors of living in the midst of the war, examines how the war has affected Russian society, and takes a hard look at how people on both sides are profiting from it, from the guards who accept bribes from Chechens out after curfew to the United Nations. Politkovskaya's unflinching honesty and her courage in speaking truth to power combine here to produce a powerful account of what is acknowledged as one of the most dangerous and least understood conflicts on the planet. Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated in Moscow on October 7, 2006. "The murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya leaves a terrible silence in Russia and an information void about a dark realm that we need to know more about. No one else reported as she did on the Russian north Caucasus and the abuse of human rights there. Her reports made for difficult reading—and Politkovskaya only got where she did by being one of life's difficult people."—Thomas de Waal, Guardian

An authoritative history of Russia from early Rus' to the reign of Peter the Great.

This new collection of original essays by leading academics explores major issues in Russia's relations with the wider world since the seventeenth century. The emphasis is not on Russian foreign policy per se, but on the different levels of interaction between Russia, its immediate neighbours, and the wider global community, including cultural, political and economic relations. The book has been produced in honour of the distinguished historian, Professor Paul Dukes.