Customary Law and Russian Rural Society in the Post-Reform Era

Abstract

The answers to vexing questions concerning juridical practices of Russian peasants-even questions of a narrowly juridical characterare to be sought first of all in social institutions and fabric of everyday life. To be sure, juridical systems have a momentum of their own, but it remains sluggish and diffuse until judiciary, jurists and legal theories acquire a widely-recognized autonomy. The Russian peasantry did not reach this stage before Revolution or for some time thereafter. Peasants in Russia, like their counterparts at comparable historical stages elsewhere, did have customs that could qualify as juridical, but they did not reason abstractly or produce treatises about them and were never allowed to work out a full-fledged system and live according to its precepts. So it is in practices of daily life, in byt, that we must seek an understanding of customary law (obychnoe pravo) or law of common people (narodnoe pravo). For period between abolition of serfdom and collectivization of agriculture, we can apply to Russia Redfield's conception of the community and the community.1 Paradoxically, immense majority of lived in little community, while big embraced powerful minority-the ruling classes,the cities and state. Redfield's distinction reminds us that rural society is isolated, with its own attributes, setting it apart from religion, economy, art, and mentality characteristic of national state and metropolitan culture. Moral codes and institutions and customs used for resolving conflicts in village were also distinctive. Hence we are justified in viewing rural society as a system, as a nation class.