Publications

This paper analyzes the cultural constraints imposed in the Russian legal system by the prevailing social philosophy, which is characterized by a significant degree of religious conservatism and communitarianism. This conservatism is predictably opposed to sexual minorities and to those who want to defend or justify them. The author concludes that this philosophy strongly affects decision-making in Russian courts, and can sometimes overrule the provisions of the Russian Constitution and the laws that formally grant protection to sexual minorities. In turn, this conservative social philosophy and communitarian morality are based on religious patterns that are still shaping the mindsets and attitudes of Russians. These attitudes cannot be ignored by judges and other actors in the Russian legal system, who to some extent are subject to the general perception of what is just, acceptable, and reasonable in society, and are factually bound by this perception.

Lawyers work with statements about verisimilitude of factual statements, while trustworthiness of these statements is evaluated against the backdrop of coherence of factual descriptions. A correct conclusion in law means a consistent reconstruction of normative meanings in the way that fits best the normative system and that allows to cogently subsume factual states of affairs under the established normative meanings.

The book, for the first time in the Russian scholarly tradition, attempts to analyze the information provided by Russian and Western travelers about statehood and law of the Central Asia countries, regions and nations in 18th to early 20th century. Diplomats, explorers, spies, merchants, sometimes tourists and even captives had opportunities to observe the functioning of power structures and legal regulation in the Central Asia states, not so rarely being participants of this kind of relations. In the book the memoirs and accounts of over 200 travelers summarizing and reflecting their experience in Central Asia have been analyzed. The systematization of this information has allowed to shape a rather detailed picture of the state mechanisms and legal regulation in the Central Asia states and domains observed through the prism of European legal systems thus making political and legal reality of Central Asia understandable for the representatives of Russian and Western cultures.
This book is designed for specialists in history of state and law, comparative law studies, legal anthropology, Russian history, Eastern studies, historiography and source studies, political science and ethnic studies, as well as for students majoring in the aforementioned specialties.

The history of Mongolia in the 17th – early 20th centuries is covered mostly in the notes of Russian travelers and scholars, whereas their Western colleagues did not visit the country often. That is why their information on different aspects of the life of Mongols including its political and legal culture is of great value. The author analyzes the notes of Western travelers who visited Mongolia during different periods of its history and for different purposes – missionaries (T. Pereira, J.-F. Gerbillon, R.E. Huc and J. Gabet, F.A. Larson, etc.), diplomats (L. Lang, J. Bell, G.J. Unverzagt, C.F. de Bourboulon, W.W. Rockhill, C.W. Campbell, etc.), scientists and technicians (R. de Batz, S. Hedin, etc.), travelers (A. Michie, V. Megnan, etc.). The author deals with the information on important stages of Mongolian history: from its submission to the Qing Empire until the pre-revolutionary situation resulted in the foundation of an independent state. There are materials on political structure and legal relations of Mongols more or less included in all analyzed notes. Depending on purposes of visit to Mongolia and personal characteristics (such as position, level of education, etc.), each traveler paid more attention to specific features of political or legal life of Mongols. The question of Western (Europocentriс) view on the Mongol state and law is also considered in the article.

The article is a study of specific interaction between regional administrations of the Russian Empire which participated in the accession of Caspian Sea regions of Central Asia to Russia — Caucasian namestnichestvo (region ruled by governor general), Orenburg Governor-Generalship, Turkestan Governor-Generalship. The author finds that the effectiveness of Russian imperial policy in Central Asia depended in many respects on the personal relations of regional rulers, their ambitions and pretensions on the key role in the realization of this policy. Orenburg governor general N. A. Kryzhanovskiy understood that the role of his region in the accession of Central Asia to Russia was quickly diminishing, while Caucasian governor general Grand Prince Mikhail Nikolaevich and Turkestan governor general K. P. von Kaufman, on the contrary, competed for leadership in the accession of the Eastern Caspian region to Russia and didn’t want to concede; their conflicts resulted in actions contradictory to the position of the neighboring region and, finally, in weakening of the position of Russia among Turkmen. At the same time state authorities didn’t stimulate the confrontation of the regions (as some researchers suppose), but attempted to coordinate their actions to change them into partners.

The article is devoted to analysis of status of the Kazakh Khanate as it was reflected in the Russian diplomatic documents of the end of 16th — beginning of 18th centuries. Russian authorities tended towards consider the Khanate as vassal state and fixed it in entitling of Kazakh rulers, classification of their domains, imagination of their rights and obligations towards suzerain. Meanwhile the indepth study of diplomatic documents convinces us that in actual fact the Kazakh Khanate was not a vassal of Moscow and its rulers intended to develop equitable relations with Russian monarchs. Only forming of the Russian imperial ideology at the beginning of the 18th century resulted in substantial changes of the format of Russian-Kazakh relations.

The article is devoted to problems of describing the role of church and ecclesiastical law in teaching of history of state and law of Russia according to modern manuals and textbooks. The author supposes that this information is quite short and lapidary for understanding by students some specific features of development of the Russian state and law during different historical periods. The author compares modern manuals with the ones of the second half of 19th — first half of 20th century and concludes that situation was differ earlier and previous authors of manuals considered church and ecclesiastical law as an integral part of the system of Russian state and law. The author suggests improving of the situation by including into educational course some aspects of interaction of church and state and influence of ecclesiastical law on the “secular” one. To perform that it makes sense to use not only previous manuals and textbooks but also modern research works.

The present essay is a review of the 2018 book by Professor Cosmin Cercel Towards a Jurisprudence of State Communism. Law and the Failure of Revolution. In reviewer’s opinion, this book is a good contrast to the books and articles written in the first post-Soviet years in the Central European countries, when the intellectuals glorified the Western ideals and condemned the socialist past of their countries and the ideological legacy of the communist regimes. The focal point of the book under review is to rethink the history of authoritarianism in Romania through analyzing the formalist legal ideology that was utilized by communist regimes for their purposes. In author’s opinion, the ideas of Soviet jurisprudence do not significantly differ from the bourgeois discourse about law that characterizes the modernity. In the perspective of this discourse, the formal and procedural autonomy of legal rules (the regime of legality) is opposed to the substantial exceptions from these rules which are justified with references to higher values. These latter underpin the legitimacy of the laws. There were different versions of postulation of such values in the Western and in the communist legal theories, but all these versions are equally based on the same dualist paradigm of legal thinking.

The author contextualizes this analysis of the legal philosophy of the interwar period within a broader perspective of psychoanalysis. In his opinion, all the theoretical attempts to understand law through its connection with the state represented a kind of psychological defense of the classical jurisprudence against the revolutionary changes of the first decades of the XX century. These attempts are considered by the author as a function of psychoanalytical replacement and ousting of the historical facts from legal mentality, as far as these facts undermined the legal rationality and demonstrated the triumph of political violence over legal order. This semantic background was important for legal and political changes in the postwar Romania after 1945 — the wide discretional powers of the regime were justified with reference to the principle of exception which allows avoidance of rules in the name of people, country or state. This theoretical construction was largely utilized by the authoritarian regime which did not invent anything new but just followed the theoretical paths protracted in the interwar legal philosophy and theory.

The article analyzes the relations of the Russian Empire and Kazakhs in the early 1730s, i.e. at the initial stage of joining of the Kazakh Little Horde to Russia. This period is characterized by uncertainty in the relations of Russia and Kazakh vassals and the absence of purposeful Russia’s policy in the Steppe. One of consequences of such approach was an assault of Kazakhs at the beginning of 1732 on the diplomatic mission of Russian Colonel J. G. Gaerber on the way to Khiva and Bukhara. At first, the Kazakh rulers assigned the blame for the assault to their unruly subjects, but then made themselves responsible for it. The author supposes that this episode was one of the reasons for the intensifi cation of the imperial policy in Kazakhstan and resulted in the establishment of Orenburg Expedition that received broad powers to interact with the Kazakhs. Gradual integration of Kazakhs into the political and legal area of the Russian Empire was realized within the process of frontier modernization, which led to substantial changes in political and social system of Kazakh society.

In 1877, Konstantin von Kaufmann, Governor-General of Turkestan, established municipal government in Tashkent, which implemented Alexander II’s reform of local government in the territories recently joined to the Russian Empire. The principles of the formation and activity of the Tashkent City Duma provoked contradictory opinions among contemporaries and later researcher. The author aims to analyse the terms of the development of local government in Tashkent, its correspondence with imperial principles and specific local features (based on centuries-old traditions of local government in Central Asia), and the evaluations of the adherents and opponents of Kaufmann’s project. In order to achieve this goal, the author studies the position of the Turkestan governorgeneral, the legal institutions of local government in the Russian Empire in general and in Turkestan in particular, and opinions of contemporaries, i. e. Russian imperial officials, representatives of the Turkestan administration, and members of the Tashkent City Duma. Additionally, the author refers to works by Soviet, Russian, and foreign scholars in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The most criticised aspects of the reform are the disproportional representation in the City Duma of “Russian” and “indigenous” parts of the Tashkent population, the active intervention of the governor-general in the activity of the Duma, and his freedom in spending municipal funds on projects outside the competence of the local government. The author establishes that von Kaufmann’s reform was a declarative imitation in Tashkent of reforms implemented in European Russia. At the same time, he considered the City Duma an additional instrument for the realisation of his own projects in Tashkent and the Turkestan region in general, which was reflected in his Regulations, an “adaptation” of the City Code of 1870 to Central Asian realities. As a result, it is not surprising that the organisation and activity of the Tashkent City Duma during Kaufmann’s rule in Turkestan was criticised not only by central officials (who reacted negatively to Kaufmann’s activity from the very beginning), but also by the representatives of the Turkestan  administration who had deep respect for Kaufmann.

The article aims to trace the evolution of the evaluation of the personality and activities of K. P. von Kaufman, the first Governor-General of the Turkestan Region, in the Russian pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern historiography. Using the methods of political anthropology in the historical research allows a clear understanding of why the first authors who wrote about Kaufman tried to idealize him and then transformed him into a “sketchy” figure among the other heads of Turkestan administration who personified the successes of the Russian Empire in the region. Analysis of specific features of the political situation and personal attitudes of some authors towards the contemporary Turkestan authorities allows to clarify the reasons of the establishment of Kaufman’s negative image in the beginning of the twentieth century as well as in the historical works of the first decades of the Soviet period, the later “neutral” relation to him by historians and, at last, the attempts to “rehabilitate” this statesman in the post-Soviet Russian historiographical tradition. The author finds that, despite the interest Kaufman was paid since 1880s and up to the present day, his personality was rather contradictory and his activities too large-scaled to create his general and unambiguous historical biography, especially keeping in mind the changing attitudes towards Russian imperial policy in general and, particularly, its Central Asian direction.

The present paper is a review of Everyday Law in Russia by Professor Hendley. The review underscores that Professor Hendley pays attention not only to the texts of positive law: she also examines how the law works in these countries, how it is utilized by legal actors and how it matters to them. Professor Hendley’s analysis includes a detailed empirical perspective of Russian law, which is always informed by relevant sociological data. Among these data are those collected by Professor Hendley herself during her numerous research visits to Russia. In this regard, her work is clearly distinguishable from the works of those Western scholars who propose educated guesses about Russian law without hardly ever visiting Russian courts and other places where Russian law is ultimately shaped and delivered to its recipients.

This paper deals with the actual problems of protection of religious freedoms in Russia. The author analyses the evolution of the legislative regulation and case law against the background of varying political and ideological agendas.

This paper considers the ways in which Leon Petrażycki and Eugen Ehrlich employed the psychological notion of emotions in defining the law. Both scholars defined the law by referring to special kinds of emotions: bilateral emotions in Petrażycki’s conception and repulsive emotions of experiencing the wrong behavior of other people, according to Ehrlich’s legal sociology. On the basis of a comparison between the theories of Petrażycki and Ehrlich, the author asserts that both theories hinge on similar methodologies and philosophies. This approach has evident affinities with the conception of law developed by Axel Hägerström and other Scandinavian realists. This analysis suggests a parallel in the development of the realist, sociological and psychological approaches to the law in the first decades of the twentieth century, uncovering certain trends in legal scholarship that underpinned this development.

Research objectives: Analyzing characteristics of the legal status of Prince Godan, son of Ögedei Khan, who was often mentioned in different imperial, Tibetan, and late medieval Mongolian sources; clarifying the reasons why he was given the title of khan in some sources, though he never possessed this title. The author attempts to define the status, level of power, and real position of Godan among the Chinggisids and in the political structure of the Mongol Empire. Research materials: The basis for research comprises three groups of historical sources – Mongolian imperial historiography (works of Juwayni and Rashid al-Din, “Yuan shih”, etc.), Tibetan historical works (“The Blue Annals”, “Pagsam-jonsan”, “Debterchjamtso”), and late medieval Mongolian chronicles created under the influence of Tibetan Buddhist historiography (“Golden Tale”, “Crystal Mirror”, “Yellow History”, “White History”, “Jewel beads”, etc.). The author also used the works of specialists on Mongolian and Tibetan historiography (such as Sh. Bira, R.E. Pubaev, Yu.N. Rerikh, A.D. Tsendina) as well as the works of researchers of political and religious history of the Mongol Empire (such as V.L. Uspenskiy, H. Franke, C.P. Atwood, etc.). The novelty of the study: It offers a systematization of historical sources of different origins to clarify some aspects of the political biography of Prince Godan, identifying his legal status as a Chinggisid and the ruler of an ulus. At the same time, the author tries to not refute sources with contradicting statements but to clarify the reasons behind such contradictions and to find information which could clarify and complement the data of other sources. Research results: The author tries to systematize different sources on the status of Prince Godan as one of the key political figures in the history of the Mongol Empire from the 1240s to the beginning of the 1250s and the ruler of a large ulus with substantial level of power, which could be compared with that of rulers of the Golden Horde, the Chaghadaid Ulus, etc. Also, the reasons behind the brief existence of Godan’s ulus and loss of his status already by the time of his direct descendants are analyzed.

Soviet law is often viewed as based on legal positivism, while its ideological background and the practices of political interference are considered in an extralegal (political) dimension. This logic prompts conclusions about the dual character of Soviet law where prerogative and normative dimensions constituted two parallel systems. Similar opinions are sometimes expressed about Russian law, which is a continuator of Soviet law both normatively and factually. The present paper analyzes this approach and suggests that the alleged dualism can be considered in the light of the basic presuppositions and methods of the Soviet (Russian) theory of law and state. This jurisprudence was and still is based on a combination of formalism and anti-formalism (realism) which provided a certain degree of unity and coherence of legal knowledge. After the end of Soviet rule, legal theory in Russia still orients itself to this symbiosis of positivism and realism which underlies legal education and legal scholarship. The paper addresses the philosophical and methodological origins of this Russian (Soviet) legal realism, and argues that the particular character of Russian (Soviet) law can be explained against the backdrop of this theoretical combination that combines conservative social philosophy, a Schmittean conception of exception, methods of legal positivism and the spirit of legal nihilism. These particularities and their methodological background are, in the author’s opinion, among the distinguishing features of Russian law and legal culture.

This paper is devoted to the characteristics of the city of New Bukhara, the “capital” of the Russian settlements in the Bukharan Emirate. It was originally established as a station on the Trans-Caspian railway but soon transformed into the Russian business and cultural center in the Emirate. It had specific status being a Russian enclave in the Bukharan Emirate which was de jure an independent state. However, the information on this city is contradictory. Some visitors stated in their notes and memoirs that it was a large city with well-developed infrastructure, others characterized it as a little settlement, “a poky hole” without any common features with towns of Russia and Europe. According to other materials New Bukhara was the real administrative center of Russian settlements in the Bukharan Emirate, while others state that it was only the residence of the Russian diplomatic representative in the Emirate. The author analyzes legal documents, other official information, notes from travelers and another contemporaries to establish a view on the real New Bukhara, to answer the question on status of New Bukhara in the Bukharan Emirate and in the Russian Empire.