Volost Clerks in Judicial Bureaucracy: The Myths and Reality of Post-Reform Russia

Historiography has formed polar assessments of the activity carried out by members of the system of local (volost) self-government in the post-reform period of the Russian Empire. Working within the paradigm of historical anthropology, the author tries to analyse the activity of volost clerks in court through the study of analytical reports made by governors about the system of peasant self-government. The study focuses on previously unpublished confidential reports of governors to the ministers of Internal Affairs P. A. Valuev in 1863-1864 and D. A. Tolstoy in 1883-1884. Most of these documents are now kept in the funds of the local administration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (1291) and the office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (1282) of the Russian State Historical Archive. Governors had a rather negative idea of volost clerks, attributing most of the problems of local government to the low quality of clerk personnel, who were prone to theft, bribery, and deceit. In the early 1860s, the governors dealt with difficult issues of administrating rural areas and offered promising "recipes" of modernisation of the whole system of peasant self-government and attracting young well-educated clerks to the service. However, two decades later, questions about the reorganisation of volost clerks disappeared from the reports, and nonobjective criticism dominated the secret messages of the governors, who seemed to be eager to delegate all such problems of self-government to the lower-ranking officials who worked directly in volost councils. Despite critical assessments, regional officials realised the significance of well-educated clerks who recorded court proceedings, which allowed peasants to appeal against sentences in a court of cassation. Volost justice, which occupied a special place in the system of the Russian jurisdiction, gradually uncovered the multifaceted world of traditional law, because it was Russian volost clerks who gradually, year after year, created one of the most important mass sources, the decisions of volost courts reflecting the course of court hearings. This fact facilitated the gradual incorporation of usual law post-reform institutions into the system of local judicial bodies, which worked in post-reform Russia based on positive law.