Reformy Aleksandra II, and: Moskovskaia Gorodskaia Duma, 1863–1917 gg, and: Gosudarstvennaia Duma Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1906–1917 (review)

This article reviews three recent Russian contributions to late imperial political history: a documentary collection on the Great Reforms, edited by Oleg Ivanovich Chistiakov and T. E. Novitskaia, and two substantial monographic works, Liubov' Fedorovna Pisar'kova's study of the Moscow city Duma and Anatolii Filippovich Smirnov's consideration of the State Duma after 1906. It also considers the possibility that these works together represent a return in Russian historiography to themes that dominated the so-called State School of the late 19th century.

Chistiakov and Novitskaia provide an edition of the prominent legal acts of the Great Reforms. They begin with a 31-page overview of Russia in the age of Alexander II. Scholars of Russian history will find little surprising or new in this introduction, yet some striking changes in outlook are evident. Compared to the Soviet edition of legal acts on the peasant reform, which Chistiakov also compiled,¹ the introduction certainly provides a more positive outlook on the Russian government. Rossiiskoe zakonodatel'stvo stressed that Alexander II's aim in the Great Reforms was to conserve as many of the nobility's privileges as possible, not to bring about real social change.² Now the editors praise the state for a realistic and pragmatic approach to legislation. What Russia required (as, the editors tell us, Alexander II knew) was not shock therapy but organic and healthy development, reforming what needed to be reformed, but not turning things upside down (8).

All in all, the new edition contains 18 documents. It is divided into nine parts, each of which deals with a specific reform: (1) peasant emancipation, (2) finances, (3) local self-government in the countryside, i.e., the zemstvo, (4) self-government in towns and cities, (5) the police, (6) the court system, (7) the military, (8) education, and (9) censorship. The documents are republished either from the imperial Complete Collection of Laws (Polnoe sobranie zakonov)³ or the Soviet edition of imperial Russian legislation (Rossiiskoe zakonodatel'stvo).⁴ Given that its contents are available from one or the other of these larger (and better) collections, the work under review here will be of little value for most researchers. Nevertheless, Chistiakov and Novitskaia's edition could be very useful for teaching because it presents a greater thematic variety than the existing Soviet-era documentary publications. The series Rossiiskoe zakonodatel'stvo, for example, is not in any way complete; the volume on the period of the Great Reforms merely offers documents on legislation affecting peasants. Another Soviet legal edition on the second half of the 19th century – from the series Sbornik dokumentov po istorii SSSR – deals with three issues only: peasants, commerce, and the revolutionary movement.⁵

Let us now turn to Pisar'kova's work on the Moscow Gorodskaia Duma. In 1912, the author tells us, the Moscow Duma decided to compile a book on its own history for the institution's 50th anniversary. The book was to provide detailed information on nearly all aspects of the Duma's history. This project, however, was never completed. Nor, Pisar'kova tells us, has a satisfactory comprehensive history of the Duma been written since. Her aim, then, is to fill this gap. Indeed, she has succeeded in many respects. Pisar'kova not only provides a mass of statistical data on the Duma's social and financial history, but she also sets her findings in relation to broader aspects of Russian history.

The author divides the book into six chapters. The first three treat the institutional history of the Duma in strict chronological order: chapter 1 covers the period from 1785 – Catherine II's charter to the Russian towns – to the...