Encounter between Man and State: Crimes Caused by Emotions in 18th-Century Russia. Review of: Kamensky, A. B. (2022). Liubov’, strast’ i otchaianie — russkie prestupleniia XVIII veka [Love, Passion, and Despair — Russian Crimes of the 18th Century]. St Petersburg: Aletheia. 406 p.

Abstract

This review analyses A. B. Kamensky’s book Love, Passion and Despair — Russian Crimes in the 18th Century. The author devotes his work to the struggle between the state and the church in early modern Russia, showing this through the changing legal norms that were used primarily to regulate the sphere of marriage and family relations. Each chapter analyses the process of criminalisation of such socially reprehensible deviations as extramarital sexual relations, rape, incest, violation of marriage regulations, suicide and others. One of the merits of the publication is the wealth of empirical material that perfectly illustrates the main trends in the development of Russian law. At the same time, the abundance of data seems to be one of the shortcomings of the study, as it sometimes tends to conceal from the reader the original intention of the book.