Études rurales Insult and Punishment in Rural Courts The Elaboration of Civilit

Études rurales Insult and Punishment in Rural Courts The Elaboration of Civility in Late Imperial Russia Jane Burbank Citer ce document / Cite this document : Burbank Jane. Insult and Punishment in Rural Courts. In: Études rurales, n°149-150, 1999. Justice et sociétés rurales. pp. 147- 171; doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/rural.1999.4710 https://www.persee.fr/doc/rural_0014-2182_1999_num_149_1_4710 Fichier pdf généré le 07/01/2019 Abstract Insult and punishment in rural courts: the elaboration of civility in late imperial Russia - The article examines litigation over insults in rural courts of late imperial Russia. Peasants, thought to be outside the realm of the law in Russia, used local courts extensively to resolve controversies over civil conduct. Peasant litigants employed statute law and the formalized procedures of the local courts to defend themselves against verbal and physical insults and to elaborate ideals of public behavior. The participatory practices of the volost' courts linked rural people to national authority, and offered a meaningful forum for the defense of personal dignity, for public review of discordant opinions, and for the official evaluation of disruptive acts. Résumé Insulte et châtiment devant les tribunaux locaux : la construction de la civilité en Russie impériale tardive - Le présent article examine les litiges pour insultes portés devant les tribunaux locaux en Russie impériale tardive. Les paysans, considérés comme extérieurs au domaine du droit, eurent de fait largement recours aux tribunaux locaux pour résoudre les controverses issues de comportements publics insultants. Les paysans firent appel au droit écrit (statute law, par opposition au droit cou- tumier) et à la procédure des tribunaux locaux pour se défendre contre les abus verbaux et physiques et pour élaborer des normes de civilité. La participation de paysans aux débats devant les tribunaux de volost' établit un lien entre la population rurale et les autorités nationales, constituant un forum utile à la défense de la dignité individuelle, à la confrontation publique d'opinions contradictoires et à l'évaluation officielle d'actes perturbateurs. INSULT AND RUNISHA/tENT IN RURAL COURTS: THE ELABORATION OF CIVILITY IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA, ~ JANE BURBANK A REPRESENTATION OF PEASANTS as OUt- siders to the legal system was hegemonic in elite discussions of the law in late imperial Russia. Peasants were thought by most observers to be too primitive to understand "real" law, too uneducated to administer "real" justice. The autocracy was held to be at least in part at fault for the peasants' lack of legal consciousness. By maintaining a system of rural peasant courts external to the circuit courts established in 1864, the tsarist administration had condemned the empire's peasants to wallow in their backwardness, or, in the romanticizing variant of otherness, to linger in the authentic justice of their "customary law." l These constructions of peasants as backward, their law as customary, and their courts as substandard persisted throughout the imperial period, and have dominated historical study of this era ever since. 2 One goal of this article is to display the legal practices of the volost' courts of rural Russia without submitting to the categories and judgments imposed upon peasants and their rural courts by Russian intellectuals and by scholars generally. If we take as our point of departure the practice of the law by rural people, rather than beginning with assumptions about their kind of life and thought, we can approach an understanding of how the law functioned in the volost' courts of late imperial Russia. 3 Small crimes litigation - the subject of this article - displays rural people seeking to defend their ideas of dignity and public behavior through the law. I argue that the procedures of the volost' courts were not as distant from those of other courts in the empire as intellectuals have imagined, and that the law was not too alien, formal, or abstract to be accessible to rural people. On the contrary, as the extensive use by rural people of the volost' courts to settle insult cases indicates, a legal forum outside the village with formal rules was an attractive means to address controversies over civil conduct. Finally, I consider the intersection of village and legal publics, and the elaboration of civil and legal awareness through the volost' courts. Rural justice after serfdom The volost' courts of rural Russia were established as a consequence of the emancipation of 1861. The framers of the emancipation were obliged to provide some kind of legal instance to ex-serfs after their liberation from the authority of their former owners. The result was the *The author thanks Cathy Frierson, Claudio Ingerflom, Valerie Kivelson, Gareth Popkins and Elise Wirtschafter for their comments on issues raised in this article. Research and writing for this essay were sponsored by the International Research and Exchanges Board and the National Endowment for the Humanities. 1. The notes are on page 167. Études rurales, janvier-juin 1999, 149-150 : 147-171 JANE BURBANK 148 creation of a very localized court system, which relied, as did so much Russian governance, upon the principles of self-administration and central oversight. After the 1861 reform, peasants - an official estate status, preserved by the emancipation regulations - were bound by imperial regulations to two collective bodies. First, all peasants were members of a "rural society (seVskoe obshchestvo)," which possessed and regulated use of common economic resources. 4 For the most part, these "rural societies" of post- emancipation Russia were descendants of the peasant collectives, also known as communes, that had controlled the cultivation of land in common either on a serf-owner's estate or on state-controlled domains. 5 Second, above the rural society with its economic responsibilities, the General Regulation on Peasants established the volost' as the local authority over peasants' administrative and judicial affairs. Modeled on the church parish, a volost' combined several rural societies with their contiguous territories and settlements. In theory, each volost' was to have authority over no fewer than three hundred and no more than two thousand male "souls", a taxation unit that counted all males in an area, thus roughly six hundred to four thousand people. In practice, volost 's varied in size; by the early twentieth century, over half of all volost 's were larger than the upper limit prescribed by law. The volost' administration was to be located within twelve versts (12.7 kilometers) from the most distant settlement of peasants subject to it. 6 In the General Regulation on Peasants the volost' court was assigned the task of adjudicating "quarrels and suits about property" and "misdemeanors" for the rural population. In its original incarnation, the volost' court was to decide cases involving peasants exclusively, but after 1889, the court's jurisdiction was expanded to include most residents in the countryside. 7 In the beginning of the twentieth century - the period examined in this article - the overwhelming majority of the people using these courts were ascribed to the peasantry. The procedures for choosing judges reflected the estate-based origins of the volost' court. The judges were peasant men, over thirty-five years old, unconvicted of major crimes and "enjoying the respect of their co-villagers." Each rural society elected a single candidate judge; these elected representatives formed the roster from which judges and their substitutes were chosen for terms of three years at the court.8 After 1889, the volost' courts were linked to a hierarchy of appeals instances through a regional official, the zemskii nachal'nik. This official (usually translated as Land Commandant) was also responsible for supervision of volost' court activity and for forwarding reports and records on up the imperial legal ladder. 9 The volost' court provided accessible, rapid, and formal justice to its users. Normally cases were heard and decided by three or four judges, sitting in the presence of a scribe who recorded the proceedings. There was no jury. Usually no lawyer or other advocate would be present at the court, for litigants presented their own cases. Testimony was oral, but documents and witnesses were summoned when appropriate to a suit or charge. l0 The volost' judges were instructed to decide cases "according to conscience, on the basis of the evidence contained in the case." In civil cases, particularly INSULT AND PUNISHMENT IN RURAL COURTS 149 those involving peasant inheritance, the court was to be "guided by local customs," a clause that gave rise to a long-sustained representation of the volost' court as a site of customary law. » Intellectuals debated the merits and, from their perspectives, mostly demerits of the volost' court system right up until the revolution against the autocracy in 1917. l2 While this extended controversy raged, the courts went about their business of deciding minor civil and criminal suits for hundreds of thousands of people. From the 1870s, the volost' courts attracted increasing numbers of litigants in provinces throughout the empire, according to both government statistics and reports of commissions on the courts. 13 By the early twentieth century, the volost' courts in Moscow province, for example, processed 47,761 cases in a single year. An average volost' court in Moscow province decided 484 cases in 1905. 14 A recent study of the volost' courts suggests that Moscow uploads/S4/ insult-and-punishment-in-rural-courts 1 .pdf

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  • Publié le Fev 07, 2022
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