Provincial Legal Culture of the Northern Peasantry in the Context of the Implementation of Bourgeois Reforms of the Second Half of the XIX Century in Russia

Abstract

The subject of the study is the legal culture of the northern peasantry of post-reform Russia in the period from 1861 to 1917. The implementation of the bourgeois reforms of the second half of the XIX century was due to the absence of private feudal dependence of the majority of the northern peasantry and bright regional aspects of the peasant community. Under the influence of the history of settlement, occupation, climatic and socio-economic conditions of existence, as well as state regulation of the peasant community in the European North, the provincial legal culture of the northern peasantry was formed. Through the prism of bourgeois reforms carried out in the second half of the XIX century, the article analyzes its qualitative state and external manifestation. The study uses a formal legal method, as well as a multidimensional statistical analysis by identifying, interpreting the content and interrelationships of semantic units of protocols of parish courts, regulatory legal acts, norms of customary law. Based on the understanding of archival material and information from pre-revolutionary periodicals introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, conclusions are substantiated about a sufficiently high level of legal culture of the peasantry and the readiness of the population to be included in the legal culture of Russian society common to all estates. The study of the main results of peasant, judicial and zemstvo reforms in the northern provinces leads to the conclusion about the inconsistency and inefficiency of the policy of the government of the Russian Empire in the field of the peasant question, the unresolved nature of which led to problems not only economic, but also political. The contradictory nature of the reforms and their uneven implementation have slowed down democratic processes and violated the principle of equality of all before the law.