The Letters and the Law: Legal and Literary Culture in Late Imperial Russia

237 Pages·2022·2.597 MB·English

by  Anna Schur

The Letters and the Law
Northwestern University Press
Studies in Russian Literature and Theory
Series Editors
Caryl Emerson
Gary Saul Morson
William Mills Todd III
Andrew Wachtel
Justin Weir
The Letters and the Law
Legal and Literary Culture
in Late Imperial Russia
Anna Schur
northwestern university press / evanston, illinois
Northwestern University Press
www .nupress.northwestern .edu
Copyright © 2022 by Northwestern University.
Published 2022 by Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Names: Schur, Anna, author.
Title: The letters and the law : legal and literary culture in late Imperial
Russia,1864– 1905 / Anna Schur.
Other titles: Studies in Russian literature and theory.
Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2022. | Series:
Northwestern University Press studies in Russian literature and theory | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021061117 | ISBN 9780810144934 (paperback) | ISBN
9780810144941 (cloth) | ISBN 9780810144958 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Russian literature— 19th century— History and criticism. | Law
in literature. | Lawyers in literature. | Lawyers— Russia— Social conditions—
19th century. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / European / Eastern (see also
Russian & Former Soviet Union) | LITERARY CRITICISM / Russian & Former
Soviet Union
Classification: LCC PG3015.5.L3 S38 2022 | DDC 891.7093554— dc23/
eng/20211215
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061117
To Ksenia, Leo, and Sofia

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
Chapter One The Poet with a Briefcase: The Russian
Lawyer’s Quest for the Professional Ideal 21
Chapter Two The Russian Writer against the Polish Lawyer:
Art, Authority, and Authenticity in the
Kronenberg Courtroom and Beyond 54
Chapter Three “The Vir Bonus” and “the Premier Amoureux”:
The Lawyer’s Eloquence under Attack 84
Chapter Four “The Novel of Circumstantial Evidence”:
Reinterpreting “A Judicial Error” 113
Conclusion 148
Notes 153
Selected Bibliography 199
Index 215

Acknowledgments
It is difficult to date precisely when the idea of this book took a definite
shape in my mind, but I began working on it in earnest in 2014, thanks to the
support of a Whiting Foundation fellowship. A sabbatical leave from Keene
State College in the fall of 2015 allowed me to make further inroads into
this project. Over the years, I presented portions of this book, in different
stages of development, at several conventions of the Association for Slavic,
East European, and Eurasian Studies. I would like to thank my fellow par-
ticipants, commentators, and attendees for their insightful comments on
those occasions. In the course of writing the book, I benefited from conver-
sations with colleagues and friends who have helped me with advice, read-
ing recommendations, and encouragement. I am especially grateful to Hilde
Hoogenboom, Ronald LeBlanc, Deborah Martinsen, Harriet Murav, Irina
Patkanian, Amy Ronner, Kirsti Sandy, Claire Whitehead, and Rita Yanson.
Many thanks to Gary Saul Morson and Trevor Perri at Northwestern Uni-
versity Press for supporting the project, to Maia Rigas and Anne Strother
for shepherding it through the publication process, and to the anonymous
referees for their suggestions. Special thanks to Sharon Brinkman and Jes-
sica Hinds-Bond for their superb and wonderfully meticulous work on the
manuscript and the index.
My work profited from the resources of several libraries. I am grate-
ful to the staffs of the National Library of Russia, the Institute of Russian
Literature, and the New York Public Library for their kind and patient as-
sistance. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Slavic Reference Service at
the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, especially to Jan Adamczyk
and Joe Lenkart, who tracked down and supplied me with numerous mate-
rials that were crucial to this study. Without their help, this book would have
taken much longer to be completed. Warm thanks are also due to the staff
of the Interlibrary Loan Department at Keene State College, especially to
Mylynda Gill and Dana Clark.
The bulk of this material has not been published before, but a shorter
version of chapter 1 appeared under the same title in the Russian Review 77
ix