ABSTRACT
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire underwent a radical transformation, with the abolition of serfdom in 1861 shaking up the whole social order of the ancien régime and prompting rapid and profound changes in local government, the administration of justice and military conscription. However, it was the renovation of the judicial system that stood out the most. The judicial reform of 1864 introduced the nation to public adversarial trials, the jury and the Bar, and therefore became an almost universal symbol of common liberal aspirations and was widely regarded as a blueprint for the future peaceful evolution from an autocracy to a liberal rule-of-law state. But, despite the newly acquired veneer of the modern judicial institutions, the autocratic government continued to exercise virtually unlimited administrative power, while any attempt at political liberalization became stied by the volatile nature of the regime.2
