ABSTRACT
Arson in the Russian countryside in the second half of the nineteenth century served as eloquent testimony to the difficulties of bringing statutory law to the majority of the population of the European provinces of the Empire and of developing within that population a respect for and trust in the law. On at least three levels, it served as a reminder of the failure of formal law to reach into village culture and of the richness of alternative conceptualizations of justice that countered official definitions and regulations. First, arson’s prevalence throughout the provinces of European Russia made it one of the most obvious examples of pervasive criminality, according to official definitions of crime, in the countryside. Second, the many purposes of arson in the peasants’ practice bespoke a moral code of right and wrong that departed from official definitions of crime. Third, the universally acknowledged failure of the police and judicial systems to capture and convict peasant arsonists pointed to the logistical and cultural obstacles the imperial government faced when it tried to penetrate and control the rural population through statutory law and judicial procedure. Throughout the last half-century of imperial rule, arson symbolized the frustration of outsiders-be they police officials or would-be legal reformers-to bring “legal consciousness” to the Russian countryside.
