Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia explores the evolution of criminal law and judicial practices in Russia from the late 15th to the early 18th centuries. Author Nancy Shields Kollmann analyzes how courts addressed serious crimes such as theft, robbery, and murder, highlighting the discrepancies between written law and actual judicial practices. The book examines the role of local communities in the judicial process and the state's use of punishment as a means of legitimizing authority. This work serves as a critical resource for historians studying early modern governance and legal systems, offering insights into the complexities of law enforcement in a centralizing empire.

Key Points

  • Analyzes criminal law practices in Russia from the late 15th to early 18th centuries.
  • Explores the relationship between written law and actual judicial practices in early modern Russia.
  • Discusses the role of local communities in the judicial process and their influence on court decisions.
  • Examines the state's use of punishment as a tool for legitimizing authority and maintaining order.
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Introduction
This book analyzes the criminal law in Russia in the context of early
modern state-building in Europe and Eurasia. It focuses primarily on the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (for which case law exists) but
begins in the “long” sixteenth century (starting from the late fifteenth)
when Russia’s laws and judicial institutions were founded. It analyzes how
courts handled serious crime (felony theft, robbery and murder; state
crime), pursuing various themes: how written law compared to practice,
how the courts were structured and staffed, how trials progressed, how
evidence was gathered, how judges reached verdicts, how communities
and individuals participated in the judicial system. Particular attention is
given to punishment – exile, corporal and capital sanctions – not only as
evidence of judicial practice but also as a reflection of the state’s legitim-
izing ideology. Such a study of legal practice is warranted in Russian
historiography because most previous work on Russian legal history has
focused on the letter of the law, not practice. More boldly, the study
provides historians of other early modern states a case study of law and
adjudication in a centralizing empire. Russia has often been regarded as a
peripheral outsider employing unique forms of governance and develop-
ment; this book shows that its state-building experience was part of a
broader early modern continuum of change.
Since about the 1970s, historians and philosophers have explored how
the early modern state came into being across Europe and in the Ottoman
Empire, analyzing strategies of governance, of centralization and empire,
and of the formation of sovereignty from roughly 1500 to 1800 . Those
strategies in turn are applicable to the Russian experience. One avenue of
research has chronicled the “sinews of power” – states’ creation of infra-
structure to support military reform and territorial expansion. “Sinews”
embodied new taxes and bureaucratic institutions to administer territory,
collect revenues and mobilize human and material resources; they took
the form of colonial administration for expanding multi-ethnic empires.
1
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“Sinews of power” were represented by new codifications of the law and
new centralized judicial systems, particularly criminal venues. Another
fruitful avenue of research explores how confessionalization in post-
Reformation Europe – movements in Catholicism and Protestant denom-
inations to define the faith and discipline members – complemented states’
efforts to consolidate society around state and church; to some extent,
toleration of religious diversity worked to that effect in the Ottoman and
Russian empires. Yet another approach examines the use of ideology and
visual symbolism based on dominant religious discourses to legitimize
power.
1
Russia paralleled its contemporaries in all these strategies.
At the same time scholars of early modern Europe caution against
exaggerating the power of the centralizing state, a point particularly useful
for Russian historians. Several tacks complicate the picture described
above, one analyzing local governance. R. W. Scribner, for example, in
a study of local policing in early modern Germany, cautioned against
concentrating “on the observable structures of the state and its prescriptive
legislation at the expense of close examination of the practical difficulties
the state encountered in the pursuit of its own goals.” He showed that “at
the grass-roots, where policing really mattered,” the early modern state
was “far more fragile.”
2
John Brewer and Eckhart Hellmuth echo such a
conclusion where it seems least expected, that is, in reassessing the early
modern English and Prussian states. They suggest that an overly Weber-
ian focus on what Michael Mann called the “despotic” (formal and legal)
power of early modern states has obscured the problems that such states
encountered in creating “infrastructural” power, that is, building adminis-
trative institutions and relationships with society to execute state
demands. Early modern states regularly relied on intermediary bodies
including nobles, bureaucrats, municipal guilds and town councils to
execute policy. Thus, like Scribner, Brewer and Hellmuth recommend
an approach that “looks neither from the top down, nor from the bottom
up, but at the points of contact ... Negotiation not coercion is the key
concept.” Similarly, Michael Breen declares that in early modern France
the law was neither “autonomous in the modern, Weberian sense” nor
“fac¸ade,” but was “one part of a much larger legal system of dispute
resolution that incorporated mediators, arbitrators and other parties who
1
Europe: Tilly and Ardant, Formation; Brewer, Sinews; Weisser, Crime and Punishment, ch. 6.
Ottoman Empire: Imber, Ottoman Empire.
2
Scribner, “Police and the Territorial State,” 103, 116. Jason Coy also contrasts official displays of
power in sixteenth-century German towns with officials’ “negotiation and compromise with their
communities”: Strangers and Misfits, 97–128.
2 Introduction
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brokered, negotiated, or otherwise helped to bring about informal settle-
ments.”
3
Early modern states became modern, in other words, by seam-
lessly integrating what in social theory have often been seen as opposing
categories: centralized/decentralized, personal/public, legal/customary.
Exposing the misguidedness of those theoretical binaries, early modern
legal cultures took their strength from a rich bricolage of social and
political interaction.
Looking at state organization complicates the implicit narrative that
early modern state-building leads to the nation state. It might have
eventually, but in these centuries, states were pluralistic. European states
ran a continuum from fairly unitary monarchies in which kings still had
to cooperate with parliamentary, noble and other social institutions
(England and France), to what Charles Tilly calls states with “fragmented
sovereignty” (Switzerland, northern Italy and some of the Holy Roman
Empire), where power was shared among loose confederations of city
states, principalities and the like. Many others were land-bound empires:
the Ottomans in an arc to the south, Poland–Lithuania, Russia from the
Baltic to Siberia, the Habsburgs from Spain to the Netherlands to
Hungary. As in their heartlands, rulers of multi-religious, multi-ethnic
empires were forced, according to Karen Barkey, to “share control with a
variety of intermediary organizations and with local elites, religious and
local governing bodies, and numerous other privileged institutions.” They
unified their empires primarily around a supranational religious ideology;
they controlled by strategies from toleration of difference, to co-optation
of elites, to measures to prevent regional elites from building local power,
to coercion. So implicated were imperial governments in negotiating with
local communities to accomplish extraction and control that scholars call
imperial sovereignty “layered,” “divided” or “delegated”: “Sovereignty is
often more myth than reality, more a story that polities tell about their
own power than a definite quality they possess.”
4
A further perspective on early modern state-building explores the
relationship of power to violence. Michel Foucault argued that early
modern European rulers governed by terror through “spectacles of
suffering” – mass public executions and punishments – until in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were able gradually to substi-
tute discourses of conformity internalized by individuals, inculcated with
3
Brewer and Hellmuth, “Introduction,” 11–12. Breen, “Patronage, Politics.”
4
Tilly, Coercion, Capital, 20–31; Barkey, Empire of Difference, 9–15, quote on 10; Benton, Search for
Sovereignty, 30–3, “myth” quote on 279. Burbank and Cooper on empire and nation: Empires, 1–3.
Introduction 3
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FAQs

What are the main themes of Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia?
The main themes include the evolution of criminal law, the relationship between written law and judicial practices, and the role of local communities in the legal system. Kollmann emphasizes how the state's authority was often challenged by local customs and practices, leading to a complex interplay between formal law and community expectations. The book also delves into the ideological underpinnings of punishment, illustrating how it served to reinforce the state's legitimacy.
How does Nancy Shields Kollmann approach the study of criminal law in Russia?
Kollmann adopts a historical approach, focusing on case studies and archival records to illustrate the practical application of law in early modern Russia. She contrasts the formal legal codes with actual court practices, revealing the flexibility and adaptability of the judicial system. This methodology allows her to highlight the discrepancies between the state's legal framework and the realities faced by individuals within the community.
What types of crimes are discussed in the book?
The book discusses serious crimes such as felony theft, robbery, and murder, as well as state crimes. Kollmann examines how these crimes were prosecuted and the various forms of punishment that were applied, including exile, corporal punishment, and capital punishment. The analysis provides insight into the social and political context of crime during this period, illustrating how economic pressures and social unrest influenced criminal behavior.
What is the significance of local communities in the judicial process?
Local communities played a crucial role in the judicial process, often influencing court decisions and the application of law. Kollmann highlights how community norms and expectations shaped judicial outcomes, reflecting a negotiation between formal legal authority and local customs. This dynamic illustrates the complexities of governance in early modern Russia, where the state's power was often mediated by local interests.
How does the book contribute to the understanding of early modern governance?
This book contributes to the understanding of early modern governance by providing a detailed case study of Russia's legal system within the broader context of state-building in Europe and Eurasia. Kollmann's analysis challenges the notion of a monolithic, despotic state by revealing the nuanced interactions between central authority and local governance. It offers a fresh perspective on the complexities of law, power, and community in a centralizing empire.

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