Could we see Russian society through the law? Not only the repressive apparatus of the state, its penitentiary mechanisms, and not only the ideology embodied in the rules of law, but also the real life that laws had to regulate? The power is in the minds, and does not lie in wait with a truncheon in the street, claimed Michel Foucault.Footnote 1 Knowledge determines the perception of reality and the scenarios of action. In her new book, Elena Marasinova undertakes a study of the basic political concepts of Russian culture—the concepts of “law,” “citizen,” and “subjects”—in order to understand the political subjectivity of the people of the eighteenth century. It is primarily about the elites, but also about the peasants, as far as sources permit the study of these non-written groups.
Marasinova shows several important shifts in official state ideology, deeply connected with the transformations of knowledge, culture, and regime makeup that occurred in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century. Not only did the ideology change, but it invaded the very tissue of Culture; it shaped and influenced the consciousness of “subjects,” which was also determined by the states of mind and social attitudes. Marasinova comes to this conclusion by analyzing judicial practice: the state in the eighteenth century did not yet have such a strong repressive apparatus to ensure obedience to the law, and the fact that the laws were effective and fulfilled shows that the ideological apparatus successfully coped with the function of social control.
The eighteenth century in Russia was a time of high social mobility; the social reality changed rapidly. Russian autocracy actively broke with tradition, reformed the social structure, broke down the hierarchy, and attributed new statuses, rights, and duties to social actors, as well as setting a new vision for relations in society. The development was so stormy, and the interests of social groups were so contradictory, that the question of the content of the new penal code was postponed for decades until the 1830s, a completely new era.
Conceptual analysis exposes a crisis of independent legal thinking and a weak organizational culture among the people: there was a dominant belief in Russian society that the will of the autocrat was law, both the elites and the lower classes sought protection at the foot of the throne. The noble elites acted on the premise that rights were based on grace, and not on guarantees; they sought help and patronage from the Empress's favorites. The noble elites expressed discontent and revolted, but much more often they were seeking to partner with the state in solidary political action. By way of contrast, the lower classes, hoping for legal normalcy, often falsely interpreted the laws because they had low legal literacy. The traditional hope for God's will was replaced in the ordinary people's mind by new ideas about legality. Ordinary people appealed to the past, however, asking the Empress to protect them from changes in circumstances that in reality were the results of the state reforms but seemed unjust and illegal to the people (in Russia we could observe social protests reminiscent of those described by E.P. Thompson in England at the end of the eighteenth century). The government lacked knowledge about the needs and aspirations of the people; only in the reign of Catherine II did it become important to share responsibility for decisions made with others, to gather opinions, to discuss the bills, and to listen to deputies from the estates. At that time, a bureaucratic system for accepting complaints and petitions was created in Russia. Marasinova regards this system as a highly-positioned power source distant from the people; even a “blockade” that condemned imperial reforms to failure. Russian law partly was based on precedent, and the analysis of legal practice shows that many decisions were often forced by reaction to events and accidents in society.
The study is based on rich material: Marasinova analyzes laws and bills, pamphlets and journalism, odes and theatrical librettos, fiction in Russian and translated from European languages, correspondence and memoirs, and materials in criminal cases. The book contains many provocative conclusions, born not only by observations of the material, but also by reflections on the work of colleagues and modern social theories.
Marasinova notes the important changes that took place in Russian culture in the second half of the eighteenth century. She relates these changes to the reforming activity of the new empress, Catherine II. There was a serious secularization of legal consciousness. In the Synodal period, the empire invaded the church's sphere of legal control, as E. Smilyanskaya argues. Priests were forced to be investigators: the penitentiary system at the end of the eighteenth century shifted from torture of the body to torture of the soul, trying the feelings of a prisoner, promising visits or threatening to kill his relatives. Monasteries were transformed into prisons where not only torture of bodies, labor, and repentance should serve the salvation of the soul in heaven, but were called upon to serve to correct the current life of the prisoner. There was a new belief that the environment and education, and not sins and dark forces, led to crime. The authorities were developing new instructions, prescribing to take into account the great services of prisoners to the authorities, whom they judged not as “slaves of God,” but as “sons of the fatherland.” Marasinova states that at this time the understanding of sin and repentance changed, as did the understanding of crime and punishment, about which Michel Foucault wrote. Elizabeth I imposed a moratorium on the death penalty, driven, as Marasinova suggests, by a promise to God. In her verdicts and confirmations, Catherine II addressed not God but the public; faith became an ideology and references to sacred writings were pragmatically used by the authorities.
In autocratic Russia, people were educated by the will of the sovereign, not by philosophical treatises. Catherine II thought of herself as belonging to the state, and not to God. Political journalism during the reign of Catherine II greatly contributed to the actualization of the concept of the citizen, the idea of equality before the law, and the common good. Catherine was concerned about Russia's prestige in Europe; she also shared the enlightenment project of educating a new estate of people and sharing the collective responsibility for the common good. Uncontrolled power was burdensome even for the absolute monarch. Many educated people interpreted everything emanating from the throne as an imperative and believed in the reality of Catherine's ideology. Paradoxically, the inertia of absolutist thinking has worked, launching the process of forming a civil society. According to Marasinova, the personal factor under conditions of absolutism was determinant. If there was another person on the throne, the development of Russian civil consciousness would be different. Autocracy for decades prevented the formation of legal thinking among the people, but in the first years of Catherine II's reign its development was stimulated. However, “an insignificant minority of literate and fairly wealthy residents of St. Petersburg and Moscow” (394) were ready to partake in the ideals of the Enlightenment. The majority continued to think themselves as loyal to the throne, shared paternalistic beliefs, and “were not going to die for the republic, the constitution and the right to be called citizens together with their peasants” (394). The nobility sought freedom in their estates. With the weakness of the state apparatus, Russia remains divided into many micro-monarchies, with the sovereign in every estate. The state was forced to rely on landowners to collect taxes and recruits. In 1741, upon the accession to the throne of Elizabeth I, the peasants ceased to swear allegiance to the sovereign, a landowner was placed above them. Not only the government, but also public intellectuals like Nikolai Novikov or G. Kozitsky saw in this measure “the duty of the upper class before the throne” (375). During the reign of Catherine II, intellectual elites shared the Greek ideal of republicanism, described by John Greville Agard Pocock: enlightened citizens, caring for numerous households and slaves, shared the common good.
Sabotage, complaints, and petitions, as well as the local traditions and customs at the edges of the empire limited the power of the Russian Emperor. The dialog of Marasinova with Leonid Milov through elements of neo-Marxist theory constructs an additional model: the will of the monarch was limited by the objective development of the state and by the low level of the aggregate surplus product, or the mode of production.Footnote 2 The poverty of a northern country gave rise not only to an undeveloped state apparatus (hence serfdom appears as inevitable as “a condition for the development of the Russian state and the most important survival mechanism of society” [137]), but also to a low level of education and culture (hence cruelty of morals in all social straits). Serfdom had a “destructive effect on the people's consciousness” (137).
This book by Elena Marasinova establishes a new direction in the study of Russian social control. Further analysis of this practice not only in criminal but also civil cases, as well as the analysis of petitions and complaints, will make the realities of everyday life and the problems of people clearer, enabling us to see changes in the regimes of truth about which Foucault wrote, together with the influence of official ideology, the validity of law, and the complication of social life.
