Bibliographic Essay

Building on the excellent critical editions and studies by Russian scholars are recent translations of the most important early modern Russian law codes: Daniel H. Kaiser (trans.

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Russian law is well served in English-language literature, and these articles are representative of the leading authors' work: Horace W. Dewey, ‘The 1550 Sudebnik as an Instrument of Reform', Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 10.2 (1962), 161-80; Ann M. Kleimola, Justice in Medieval Russia: Muscovite Judgment Charters (pravye gramoty) of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1975); Richard Hellie, ‘Early Modern Russian Law: The Ulozhenie of 1649', Russian History 15.2-4 (1988), 155-80; Daniel H. Kaiser, The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); George G. Weickhardt, ‘Due Process and Equal Justice in the Muscovite Codes', Russian Review 51.4 (1992), 463-80.

For the eighteenth century, Evgenii Anisimov accents state violence in, for example, Dyba i knut. Politicheskii sysk i russkoe obshchestvo v XVIII veke (Rack and Knout. Political Trials and Russian Society in the Eighteenth Century) (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999); and Abby Shrader explores the elimination of corporal punishment in Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002).

Studies based on case law through the seventeenth century include Nancy S. Kollmann on litigations over honour in By Honor Bound. State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999) and on the criminal law in Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Valerie A. Kivelson explores witchcraft prosecutions and the role of torture in Desperate Magic: The Moral Economy of Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013). Local government is explored in Brian L. Davies, State Power and Community in Early Modern Russia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and V. N. Glaz'ev, Vlast’ i obshchestvo na iuge Rossii v XVII veke: Protivodeistvie ugolovnoi prestupnosti (Power and Society in Southern Russia in the Seventeenth Century. Fighting Felony Crime) (Voronezh: Izd. Voronezhskogo gosud. universiteta, 2001).

For the eighteenth century, N. B. Golikova explores political trials in Politicheskie protsessy pri Petre I: po materialam Preobrazhenskogo prikaza (Political Trials under Peter I: Based on the Materials of the Preobrazhenskii Chancery) (Moscow: Izd. Moskovskogo universiteta, 1957). Prosecutions of witchcraft and other spiritual crimes are the focus of Elena Smilianskaia, Volshebniki. Bogokhul’niki. Eretiki (Magicians. Blasphemers. Heretics) (Moscow: Izd. Indrik, 2003) and A. S. Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiiia v Rossii. 1700-1740 gg. (Witchcraft and Religion in Russia 1700-1740) (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2000). Christoph Schmidt explores crime in Moscow in Sozialkontrolle in Moskau: Justiz, Kriminalität und Leibeigenschaft, 1649-1785 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1996), while Andrew A. Gentes examines the exile system in Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Steven L. Hoch shows how peasant communes practised a tyranny of the old men over women and young men in Serfdom and Social Control in Russia. Petrovskoe, A Village in Tambov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

The bureaucracy, so crucial to the functioning of the judicial system, is the focus of important studies. Representative of Peter B. Brown's many articles is ‘Neither Fish nor Fowl: Administrative Legality in Mid- and Late-Seventeenth-Century Russia', Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 50 (2002), 1-21, while Borivoj Plavsic describes training and career paths in ‘Seventeenth-Century Chanceries and Their Staffs', in Walter M. Pintner and Don Karl Rowney (eds.), Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 19-45. S. M. Troitskii pioneered the collective prosopography of bureaucrats in Russkii absoliutizm i dvorianstvo v XVIII v. Formirovanie biurokratii (Russian Absolutism and Nobility in the Eighteenth Century. The Formation of the Bureaucracy) (Moscow: Nauka, 1974); N. F. Demidova applied this approach to the earlier period in Sluzhilaia biurokratiia v Rossii XVII v. i ee rol ’ vformirovanii absoliutizma (The Serving Bureaucracy in Russia in the Seventeenth Century and its Role in the Formation of Absolutism) (Moscow: Nauka, 1987). L. F. Pisar'kova, Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie Rossii s kontsa XVII do kontsa XVIII veka. Evoliutsiia biurokraticheskoi sistemy (State Administration in Russia from the End of the Seventeenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century. The Evolution of the Bureaucratic System) (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2007) expands their findings.

Some American scholars have construed Russia as a despotism or emphasised the brutality of public life: see Georg Michels, ‘The Violent Old Belief:An Examination of Religious Dissent on the Karelian Frontier', Russian History 19.1-4 (1992), 203-30; Marshall Poe, ‘A People Bom to Slavery’: Russia in Early Modern European Ethnography, 1476-1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). Others argue that court politics was based on ‘consensus' between ruler and the great dans and that overall governance followed a ‘politics of difference': see Edward L.

On eighteenth-century moral philosophy and political views, see Elise Kimmerling Wirtschafter, Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013) and Cynthia H. Whittaker, Russian Monarchy: Eighteenth-Century Rulers and Writers in Political Dialogue (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003). John Le Donne's in-depth studies of Catherine II's administrative and judicial reforms include Absolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political Order, 1700-1825 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).