Imperial Judicial Policy in the Central Asian Suburbs in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries: Main Forms, Directions, and Results

Abstract

One of the important directions of modernization of the Central Asian outskirts of the Russian Empire was the formation of the region’s judicial system. During the second half of the 19th century, a complex configuration of regional justice was created, which was supposed to act not only as a way of coordinating social interaction but also as a means to express the political interests of the state. The purpose of the work is to identify and analyze the main forms and directions of the judicial policy of the Russian Empire in the Central Asian outskirts in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century. The judicial reform carried out in the Russian Empire in 1864 led to the implementation in the Steppe Region and Turkestan of a set of measures aimed at the re-organization of the judicial and legal system. This process reflected the orientation of the social policy towards modernization. During the reforms of the 1868, 1886, 1898, imperial judicial institutions and legal norms were imported into the region. However, the traditional court also retained significant positions. The justice system of the Central Asian outskirts did not meet the needs of society. The preservation of the People’s Court did not allow the local population of the region to be fully incorporated into the all-Russian legal space. Those processes demonstrated the incompleteness of the judicial and legal system reforms and the need for systemic modernization.
 The article is intended for specialists interested in the national policy of the Russian Empire, and the history of the Central Asian region.