Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and again during the Gorbachev and Yel’tsin eras, the issue of individual legal rights and freedoms occupied a central place in the reformist drive to modernize criminal justice. While in tsarist Russia the gains of legal scholars and activists in this regard were few, their example as liberal humanists remains important today in renewed efforts to promote juridical awareness and respect for law. A case in point is the role played by Vladimir Solov’ev. One of Russia’s most celebrated moral philosophers, his defence of the ‘right to a dignified existence’ and his brilliant critique of the death penalty not only contributed to the development of a legal consciousness during his lifetime, but also inspired appeals for a more humane system of justice in post-Soviet debate. This book addresses the issues involved and their origins in late Imperial legal thought. More specifically, it examines competing theories of crime and the criminal, together with various prescriptions for punishment respecting personal inviolability. Charting endeavours of the juridical community to promote legal culture through reforms and education, the book also throws light on aspects of Russian politics, society and mentality in two turbulent periods of Russian history.

Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and again during the 1990s, individual legal rights occupied a central place in the drive to modernize criminal justice. This book explores these debates, focusing particularly on the work of Vladimir Solov'ev, a leading philosopher of law writing in the 1890s.

An examination of Russia's philosophical heritage. It extends from the Slavophiles to the philosophers of the Silver Age, from emigre religious thinkers to Losev and Bakhtin and assesses the meaning for Russian culture as a whole.

Isaiah Berlins response to the Soviet Union was central to his identity, both personally and intellectually. Never before collected, Berlins writings about the USSR include his accounts of his famous meetings with Russian writers shortly after the Second World War; the celebrated 1945 Foreign Office memorandum on the state of the arts under Stalin; his account of Stalins manipulative artificial dialectic; portraits of Osip Mandelshtam and Boris Pasternak; his survey of Soviet Russian culture written after a visit in 1956; a postscript stimulated by the events of 1989; and more.

This book examines how traditional indigenous Russian legal values and the 74-year experience with communism and "socialist legality" are being combined with Western concepts of justice and due process to forge a new legal consciousness in Russia today.

"... 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. Wagner Russian 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.