| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Jane Burbank. Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905–1917. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2004. Pp. xxi, 374. $49.95.

This impressive work by Jane Burbank examines the operation of Russian township (volost') courts during the final years of the ancien regime. The courts themselves constituted the lowest instance in the judicial system erected in 1864; operated by the peasants, they were to resolve petty civil matters and misdemeanors among peasants themselves (and, occasionally, petty townspeople and, rarely, individuals from the more privileged social estates). This study focuses on ten township courts, seven in Moscow province, two in St. Petersburg province, and one in Novgorod province; it combines a close reading of individual cases with a statistical data set based on 907 files. The overarching purpose is to challenge the view (widely held by liberal jurists and educated Russian society) that the Russian peasantry lacked a rudimentary understanding of formal law and that the courts themselves only attest to this lawlessness and barbarity in the countryside.

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