Table Of ContentCrime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914
Preferred Citation: Frank, Stephen P. Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-
1914. Berkeley, Calif London: University of California Press, c1999 1999. http://ark.cdlib.org/
ark:/13030/ft1m3nb0xc/
Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914
Stephen P. Frank
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1999 The Regents of the University of California
This book is dedicated
to my mother
and to the memory of
Eric Charles
Preferred Citation: Frank, Stephen P. Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-
1914. Berkeley, Calif London: University of California Press, c1999 1999. http://ark.cdlib.org/
ark:/13030/ft1m3nb0xc/
This book is dedicated
to my mother
and to the memory of
Eric Charles
GLOSSARY
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Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914
circuit court okruzhnyi sud
clerk (village or township) pisar'
communal court mirskii sud
criminal court (pre-emancipation) ugolovnyi sud
district uezd
district assembly uezdnyi s"ezd
district board for peasant affairs uezdnoe po krest'ianskim delam prisutstvie
district court (pre-emancipation) uezdnyi sud
hamlet, village derevnia
hundreder (village policeman) sotskii
judicial chamber sudebnaia palata
judicial investigator sudebnyi sledovatel'
justice of the peace court mirovoi sud
land captain zemskii nachal'nik
lord barin
municipal court gorodskoi sud
peace mediator mirovoi posrednik
police captain stanovoi pristav
police commandant ispravnik
police guard strazhnik
precinct uchastok
precinct constable uriadnik
province guberniia
provincial board for peasant gubernskoe po krest'ianskim delam prisutstvie
affairs
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tenner (village policeman) desiatskii
township volost'
township assembly volostnoi skhod
township court volostnoi sud
township elder starshina
― xvi ―
village or hamlet derevnia
village (with a church) selo
village assembly sel'skii skhod
village court (pre-emancipation) sel'skaia rasprava
village elder starosta
Note: Russian provinces were subdivided into administrative units called districts (uezdy ), which contained
subdivisions known as townships (volosti, sometimes translated as "canton"). The latter were the lowest level of
state administration in the countryside.
― xvii ―
ABBREVIATIONS AND FOOTNOTING
Standard abbreviations are used in footnoting archival sources: f. = fond [collection], st. = stol [desk]; ot. =
otdelenie [section or division]; op. = opis' [list]; sv. = sviazka [bundle]; d. = delo [file] (plural: dd.); l. = list [sheet or
page] (plural: ll.); ob. = oborotnaia storona [verso ].
Frequently cited archives, journals, newspapers, and other works have been abbreviated as follows:
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AHR American Historical Review
EtnogO Etnograficheskoe obozrenie
GARF Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii
GARO Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Riazanskoi Oblasti
IaGV Iaroslavskie gubernskie vedomosti
IAOiRS Izvestiia Arkhangel'skogo Obshchestva izucheniia Russkogo Severa
ISSSR Istoriia SSSR
IuV Iuridicheskii vestnik
IuZh Iuridicheskii zhurnal
IV Istoricheskii vestnik
JGO Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
JIH Journal of Interdisciplinary History
JMH Journal of Modern History
JSH Journal of Social History
LSR Law and Society Review
KD Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie
MosVed Moskovskie vedomosti
― xviii ―
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MVD Ministerstvo Vnutrennykh Del (Ministry of Internal Affairs)
NizhL Nizhegorodskii listok
Otchety Otchet Ministerstva Iustitsii
OrlV Orlovskii vestnik
PSZ Polnoe sobranie zakonov
PV Povolzhskii vestnik
RB Russkoe bogatstvo
RGIA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv
RIAMZ Riazanskii Istoriko-Arkhitekturnyi Muzei-Zapovednik
RiazEV Riazanskie eparkhial'nye vedomosti
RiazGV Riazanskie gubernskie vedomosti
RiazV Riazanskii vestnik
RiazZh Riazanskaia zhizn'
RR The Russian Review
RSP Rukovodstvo dlia sel'skikh pastyrei
RusM Russkaia mysl'
RusRech' Russkaia rech'
RusVed Russkie vedomosti
SAA Soviet Anthropology and Archeology
SarGV Saratovskie gubernskie vedomosti
SbNIuO Sbornik narodnykh iuridicheskikh obychaev
SbSiBKNR Sbornik svedenii dlia izucheniia byta krest'ianskogo naseleniia Rossii
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SbSSMIu Sbornik statisticheskikh svedenii Ministerstva Iustitsii
SbSSMPPS Sbornik sochinenii po sudebnoi meditsine, sudebnoi psikhiatrii,
meditsinskoi politsii, obshchestvennoi gigiene, epidemiologii,
meditsinskoi geografii i meditsinskoi statistike
SE Sovetskaia etnografiia
SEER Slavonic and East European Review
SevK Severnyi krai
SevV Severnyi vestnik
SimbGV Simbirskie gubernskie vedomosti
SPb St. Petersburg
SPbVed Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti
SR Slavic Review
SudG Sudebnaia gazeta
SudO Sudebnoe obozrenie
SudZh Sudebnyi zhurnal
― xix ―
SV Sel'skii vestnik
Svody Svod Statisticheskikh svedenii po delam ugolovnym
SZU Svod zakonov ugolovnykh
TambGV Tambovskie gubernskie vedomosti
TiurV Tiuremnyi vestnik
TsGIAgM Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv goroda Moskvy
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Trudy Trudy komissii po preobrazovaniiu volostnykh sudov
TrudyIVEO Trudy Imperatorskogo vol'nogo ekonomicheskogo obshchestva
Trudy MKNSP Trudy mestnykh komitetov o nuzhdakh sel'skokhoziaistvennoi
promyshlennosti
VE Vestnik Evropy
VestP Vestnik prava
VOGSP Vestnik obshchestvennoi gigieny, sudebnoi i prakticheskoi meditsiny
VolzhV Volzhskii vestnik
ZhGUP Zhurnal grazhdanskogo i ugolovnogo prava
ZhivRus Zhivopisnaia Rossiia
ZhivSt Zhivaia starina
ZhMIu Zhurnal Ministerstva Iustitsii
ZhUPP Zhurnal ugolovnogo prava i protsessa
― xxi ―
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was made possible with the generous support of numerous agencies and institutions. For financial assistance
that funded the initial research from which this work eventually emerged, I thank the State University of New York
at Plattsburg and Brown University. Grants from the following sources made possible several additional research trips
to Russia, which in turn allowed for the transformation of a doctoral dissertation into the present book: the
International Research and Exchanges Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science
Research Council, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and the Academic Senates of the University
of California at Riverside and Los Angeles.
Equally invaluable has been the assistance of the many staff members at libraries and archives in the United States,
the Soviet Union, and Russia, without whose kindness and expertise this study certainly could never have been completed.
I am therefore very pleased, at last, to offer my warmest thanks to the staffs of the Rockefeller Library of Brown
University, Harvard University's Widener Library, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the former State
Lenin Library in Moscow, the Library of the Academy of Sciences (BAN) and the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library
in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, and to the interlibrary loan offices at Boston University's Mugar Library and Rivera Library at
the University of California, Riverside. Although perpetually puzzled if amused at how we Americans could possibly
be interested in such peculiar topics ("Are you a jurist?" I was repeatedly asked), assistants at the Central State
Historical Archive (now the Russian State Historical Archive) in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, the Central State Historical
Archive of the city of Moscow, the State Archive of the Russian Federation (formerly TsGAOR) in Moscow, and above all
the State Archive of Riazan' Oblast' and the Riazan' Historico-Architectural
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Museum, nevertheless proved cheerful and energetic as they lugged endless piles of musty documents from
sometimes crumbling, unlighted, or flooded holding facilities. I am especially grateful to Andrei Nikolaevich Mel'nik,
deputy director of the Riazan' oblast' archive, for his assistance and cooperation and for generously sharing his knowledge
of this province's history.
Many friends and colleagues have provided equally crucial assistance and support during the years of research and writing.
In addition to directing the dissertation from which this study began and patiently encouraging its lengthy
transformation, Abbott Gleason has remained an unflagging friend and supporter as well as a meticulous reader of its
many drafts. At various times throughout its preparation, Victoria Bonnell, John Bushnell, Robert Edelman, Ben Eklof,
Daniel Field, Victor Frank, Gregory Freeze, Carlo Ginzburg, Leopold Haimson, Patricia Herlihy, Daniel Kaiser, Gail
Lenhoff, Timothy Mixter, David Sabean, Mark Steinberg, Lynne Viola, Allan Wildman, and Christine Worobec read all or
parts of the manuscript and offered invaluable criticisms and suggestions. I would like to single out Hans Rogger,
in particular, for his generosity and friendship, and for his painstaking reading at a late stage, which forced me to clarify
prose and sharpen my arguments while preventing numerous errors.
A portion of chapter 7 appeared in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45, no. 3 (1997), and an earlier version of chapter
8 previously appeared in The Russian Review 46, no. 3 (1987). I thank both publishers for permission to reprint these
now much revised works.
Russian terms used in this study have been transliterated following the Library of Congress system, with the exception of
the names of monarchs and such commonly accepted spellings as Witte (rather than Vitte). Adjectival endings have
been dropped from province, district, and township names. Pre-1917 spelling has been updated to conform to
modern Russian. All dates are given according to the Julian calendar then in use.
― 1 ―
INTRODUCTION
To say that law's violence is legitimate is, in the modern age, to juxtapose the alleged rationality of legal coercion and the irrationality of a violence
that knows no law. It is to claim that law's violence is controlled through the legal articulation of values, norms, procedures, and purposes external
to violence itself. It is to claim that the force of law serves common purposes and advances common aims in contrast to the anomic or sectarian
savagery beyond law's boundaries.
AUSTIN SARAT AND THOMAS KEARNS, LAW'S VIOLENCE, 1992
At the end of July 1901 the governor of Riazan' province received a petition from two agricultural laborers requesting
his "gracious" assistance in their search for justice. The women had been recruited that winter in Kaluga province for work
on a Riazan' district estate, and a legal contract was drawn up specifying the duration, nature, and conditions of
their employment. Once at the estate, the plaintiffs explained, they and other workers were ill-used by the owner, who
fed them meager meals of bread and water and rarely gave them hot food. "He worked us very hard in the field, driving
us out to start [chores] at three in the morning and finishing at nine-thirty in the evening without rest." Although
their contract expressly stated that no work would be done on holidays, the owner nevertheless forced them to labor on
these occasions and also demanded that the women guard his horses at night despite their exhaustion. When one
petitioner's husband came to the estate and saw the conditions under which his wife was toiling, he declared that they
were going home and that she should settle up with the owner. But the latter refused to pay her the ten rubles she was
owed or to return her passport, saying that she could not break the hiring contract. Hoping to resolve this matter
through appeal to the law, her husband trekked to the precinct land captain and requested his aid, and when this
official failed to take action, he journeyed on to Riazan' itself and petitioned the district police commandant, who
grudgingly issued a command that the passports be returned. Although the order was obeyed, no wages were paid. When
at last the woman and her husband set out to leave the estate without her earnings, she continued, the steward "rushed
after me and tore from my hands [a purse containing] three rubles and my coat and pushed me so hard that I fell to
the ground." Two other women who attempted to leave at the same time found themselves chased down by the owner and
a constable
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― 2 ―
and forced to return to the estate. In light of these "criminal" events, the petitioners humbly begged His Excellency,
the governor, to investigate the owner's actions, which were "illegal in all respects," to force him to pay their wages
and return the stolen purse and coat, and stated that "we will await the legal satisfaction of our petition."[1]
Several aspects of this far from untypical complaint bear comment, for they lead directly to the subject of this book.
Clearly knowledgeable about rural Russia's often confusing mixture of judicial and administrative instances, these women
had correctly brought their grievance before the land captain, an official with jurisdiction over hiring contracts and
other disputes between peasants and their employers. When denied justice through his failure to hear the case, they
moved on to the police commandant and, finally, the provincial governor, who was the tsar's direct representative in
the countryside—a step not unlike that practiced by peasants for centuries when asking for the monarch's intervention
to correct injustices.[2] Their task was made no easier by the fact that, being illiterate, they had to pay someone to
compose the petitions. Yet one is struck by the conviction with which they stressed the illegality of the estate owner's
denial of wages and the steward's violence and by their determination to press charges despite the odds being so
obviously stacked against them. Equally evident is the owner's belief that these women had broken a legal contract
obliging them to work for a stipulated period of time. From his perspective, he had done no wrong. Given his friendly
relations with the district police (its captain had served as his hiring agent that winter), he also knew that his position
and connections with the authorities protected him should questions arise about his actions. Both law and
administration appeared to be on his side, as did the knowledge that, having to find work elsewhere, the plaintiffs would
likely fade quickly from sight and not be heard from again. In fact, with the conclusion of this case in a five-page report
and its relegation to the governor's archive among hundreds of others, the laborers and estate owner alike vanish from
their fleeting appearance in the historical record. For that brief moment, however, far more than an everyday labor
dispute was visible in this seemingly petty altercation. Both the petitioners' pained, angry words and the owner's
self-righteous, even cruel treatment lay bare alternative definitions
[1] GARO, f. 5, st. 1, op. 2, d. 2336, ll. 1–2. This case concluded without result. The governor did request his land captain
to try the case, and the latter dutifully, if perhaps deviously, sent letters to the women telling them that their original
petition had been improperly written and filed and would therefore have to be resubmitted. Having no current address,
he forwarded his comments to the women's native village and reported back to the governor in November that they could
not be located. Ibid., ll. 3–50b.
[2] Among many studies see, e.g., P. K. Alefirenko, Krest'ianskoe dvizhenie i krest'ianskii vopros v Rossii v 30–50-kh
godakh XVIII veka (Moscow, 1958), 270 ff.
― 3 ―
of legality, justice, and the very constitution of a criminal act—distinctly conflicting opinions by no means limited to a
singular incident but diffused throughout imperial Russian society.
This study of rural crime and justice in the postemancipation countryside takes as its primary focus these critical
social junctures and cultural intersections at which law brought together competing definitions of criminality and claims
of justice. Such points of contact were numerous and varied—far more so than previously recognized in the
historical literature. Yet a fuller understanding of the linkages between different sociocultural fields and the
fundamental conflicts and contradictions they reveal requires a deliberately shifting perspective from realities
to representations and back again. We must move within and between village life and the administrative agencies
that claimed to govern it, for instance, examining the intricate webs that bound them together as well as the way
these connecting strands influenced each individual sphere and its relation to the other. We must negotiate the cultural
maze within which crime was understood, experienced, perpetrated, and fought by peasants, without losing sight of
rural crime's culturally embedded representations among members of educated society or its official definition in state
law. The variance between the reality of criminal activity and how it was explained by nonpeasants provides a
particularly useful framework for situating and analyzing broader cultural conflicts, for these important differences—
which might better be termed arguments—serve as a constant reminder that "crime" in imperial Russia, like appeals
to "justice" or "the law," stood as a contested metaphor about social order. We need to examine not only the uses
that peasants made of courts and law but how they appropriated and reworked elite representations of themselves and
their culture, interpreted and reinterpreted the law to their own advantage, or openly rejected basic principles of
tsarist legislation.[3] At the root of these complex processes, of course, lay more fundamental issues of power and
resistance. But as Edward Thompson has pointed out, we must not overlook the fact that even as villagers constructed
their own culturally grounded vision of justice, their illegal actions repeatedly echoed official and elite discourses of the law
by persistent references to justice and injustice.[4] Far greater consideration also has to be given to the shortcomings
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[3] For examples of this approach, see Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a
South African People (Chicago, 1985); Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in
Tanzania (Madison, Wisc., 1990).
[4] E. P. Thompson, "The Crime of Anonymity," in Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson, and
Cal Winslow, Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth- Century England (New York, 1975), 255–308. See
also Antonio Gramsci, "Notes on Italian History," in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. by Quintin Hoare and G.
N. Smith (New York, 1971), 44–120; Florencia E. Mallon, "The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives
from Latin American History," AHR 5, no. 99 (1994), 1491–1515.
― 4 ―
of official institutions and law enforcement agencies, and especially to the ways in which villagers adapted to
these deficiencies by seeking out or creating alternative methods of control within the community setting.
This shifting of focus complicates our task, but it is the only means by which we may begin to draw a more complete
picture of rural crime and justice. In particular, such an approach seems by far the most fruitful method for examining
a range of long-standing questions about peasant society and the nature of law, justice, and crime within an
agrarian, autocratic state. This book thus contains several related themes that cannot be adequately treated independently
of one another. They reflect at once the methodological approach mentioned above and the necessity of addressing in
depth the virtual nonexistence of scholarship on crime and justice in a historical literature nevertheless rich with
discussions of conflict, lawlessness, and the legal position of Russian citizens under the old regime.[5] My basic
aim, therefore, is to provide a broad view of crime and justice in late imperial Russia that does not simply stress the
scope and nature of criminal activity and its treatment both within and outside the judicial system but reveals the extent
to which crime was an intrapeasant phenomenon. Here I part ways in important respects with earlier literature, which
has focused predominantly on noble-peasant hostilities, not to contradict an outstanding body of scholarly work but to
begin the process of enlarging a very partial picture of rural social conflict. Peasants were not only perpetrators of
offenses like poaching, theft of wood, land seizures, and assaults on noble estates; they were, at the same time, the
primary victims of petty and serious crimes alike—including theft, arson, assault, and murder. My treatment of rural
justice likewise seeks to correct a number of contemporary myths that have survived in the historiography, coloring the
way that Russian peasant soci-
[5] The only monograph that attempts to deal with crime rather than its representations is S. S. Ostroumov, Prestupnost' i
ee prichiny v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 1960, 1980). This work, however, relies entirely on secondary summations
of criminal statistics and employs the constricting analytic framework within which Soviet scholars were compelled to
write. See also B. G. Litvak, "Zabytyi istochnik po istorii krest'ianskogo dvizheniia v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XIX–nachala
XX veka (Svod statisticheskikh svedenii o delakh ugolovnykh, 1872–1914 gg.)," Ezhegodnik po agrarnoi istorii
vostochnoi Evropy 1970 g. (Riga, 1977). Among the still small number of Western studies, see Stephen P.
Frank, "PopularJustice, Community and Culture among the Russian Peasantry, 1870–1900," RR 46, no. 3 (1987), 239–
65; Frank, "Narratives within Numbers: Women and Crime in the Russian Judicial Statistics, 1834–1913," RR 55, no.
4 (1996), 546–51; Timothy Mixter, Revolution in the Bear's Corner: Villagers and Authority in Saratov Province, 1890–
1908 (forthcoming); Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900–1914
(Berkeley, 1993); Neil B. Weissman, "Rural Crime in Tsarist Russia: The Question of Hooliganism, 1905–1914," SR 37, no.
2 (1978), 228–40; Christine D. Worobec, "Horsethieves and Peasant Justice in Post-Emancipation Russia," JSH 21, no.
2 (1987), 281–93.
― 5 ―
ety is presented and understood. Within this broader framework, I explore the gap between peasant and elite attitudes
about crime, justice, and law, which entails analysis of the representations produced by educated society and
officialdom. Comparison of popular thinking with these government and middle- or upper-class understandings of
peasant thought and action is used as a key for revealing both the nature and depth of cultural conflict within the
social formation that was late imperial Russia. It also uncovers an array of alternative and competing beliefs about law
and justice so widespread in rural society that they raise questions about our use of terms like "dominant" and
"subordinate" in the cultural realm. Social and cultural conflict are also woven into my discussions of the
institutional structures through which the autocracy sought to rule the postemancipation countryside, and in my analysis
of the deficiencies of these structures. The state's insistence on exercising tutelage from above and on relying upon
its administrative apparatus rather than ajudicial system that it did not trust, as well as its approach to governing
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