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  • Medicine, Law and the State in Imperial Russia
  • Sharon A. Kowalsky (bio)
Elisa M. Becker , Medicine, Law and the State in Imperial Russia (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2011). x+399 pp., ills. Index. ISBN: 978-963-9776-81-4.

Elisa Becker's monograph, based on her University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation, examines the role and position of forensic medicine in the Imperial Russian legal system as it transitioned from the inquisitorial system of the prereform period to the postreform adversarial court of the late nineteenth century. It traces the development of forensic medicine in Russia from the early eighteenth century, highlighting the relationship between forensic medical specialists (doctors) and the state (law) as the medical experts sought to establish spheres of authority, identity, and autonomy within the legal and court system. In doing so, Becker contributes to a growing body of scholarship on civil society and professionalization in Imperial Russia, arguing that rather than distancing themselves from the autocratic system, specialists engaged with, participated in, and supported the state's reform efforts.

In recent years, scholars of Imperial Russia have investigated the relationship between educated society and the autocratic state. They have taken the notion of civil society and its role in the formation of democratic systems that developed in Western European historiography (stimulated by the work of Jürgen Habermas) and attempted to apply its concepts to the Russian case, identifying voluntary associations, professional organizations, and charitable institutions that operated independently from but in connection with the state, and exploring the ways that such groups contributed to the formation of a civil society in late Imperial Russia that could eventually provide an alternative to the autocracy and a challenge to its authority. 1 Becker contributes to this growing body of literature on civil society and the professions in Russia by highlighting the early formation of a professional identity among physicians and their efforts to carve out an autonomous space in which to practice their profession and assert their authority. In contrast to much of the literature on civil society and [End Page 449] the intelligentsia in Imperial Russia that has focused on spaces of independence apart from the autocracy, Becker emphasizes the importance of the professionals' relationship with the state. Indeed, she argues that medical-legal professionals supported the state and its reform efforts, seeing their relationship with the state as essential for the development of their professional identity.

Becker begins by tracing the role of forensic medicine in the prereform legal system. Peter the Great incorporated forensic medicine into the Russian inquisitorial court system in the early eighteenth century, drawing on Western European, and particularly German, practices. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, medical specialists enjoyed a privileged status that derived from their authority as scientific experts. Their testimonies in court, presented as objective facts, were rarely challenged. This situation changed after the legal reforms of Tsar Alexander II in the mid-nineteenth century introduced an adversarial court system to replace the inquisitorial one. Instead of evidence being presented to a judge who made a final deliberation, cases were now tried by lawyers in an open court with verdicts decided by a jury. In the new system, defense attorneys frequently questioned the validity and accuracy of forensic medical evidence, and doctors often found their conclusions and their authority under attack in court. Likewise, they protested against their treatment as general witnesses rather than scientific experts. In response, physicians attempted to redefine the role of forensic medicine in the court system by presenting themselves as "the new overseers of social order and visionaries of reform" (P. 266). Seeking greater discretion, autonomy, and authority in court procedure, physicians linked their embrace of science with the new rationality of the legal reforms, emphasizing that their public role and authority were derived from within state institutions. At the same time, however, because of their expert medical knowledge, forensic physicians potentially "constituted a competing source of authority to the autocracy… as a safeguard of due process and individual rights" (P. 218).

Becker suggests that the debates over the forensic expert's role in the reformed legal system provided the seeds for the later professionalization of Russian...

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