Civil Law, Individual Rights, and Judicial Activism in Late Imperial Russia

In a polemical essay that appeared in the controversial collection Vekhi (Landmarks) in 1909, the noted legal theorist Bogdan Kistiakovskii criticized the Russian intelligentsia-and imperial Russian subjects in general-for their inability to appreciate the importance of law for the creation of a just society and a democratic polity. ¹ Influential at the time, Kistiakovskii’s essay has subsequently been cited frequently as evidence of the inhospitable social and cultural climate in late imperial Russia for the development of either a law-governed state or the rule of law. ² Among the chief deficiencies in imperial Russia lamented by Kistiakovskii were the lack of public interest in and discussion of the law, the general failure to comprehend the critical role played by law in securing individual freedom, and the inadequacies of the courts created by the 1864 judicial reform. An examination of the public debates over and judicial development of civil law in the post-Emancipation period suggests, however, that in his desire to prick the legal consciousness of the intelligentsia Kistiakovskii underestimated the extent oflegal change that had taken place during the last fifty years of the ancien regime. So too, consequently, have those scholars who have relied on his analysis.