The Russian Empire and its legal institutions have often been associated with arbitrariness, corruption, and the lack of a 'rule of law'. Stefan B. Kirmse challenges these assumptions in this important new study of empire-building, minority rights, and legal practice in late Tsarist Russia, revealing how legal reform transformed ordinary people's interaction with state institutions from the 1860s to the 1890s. By focusing on two regions that stood out for their ethnic and religious diversity, the book follows the spread of the new legal institutions into the open steppe of Southern Russia, especially Crimea, and into the fields and forests of the Middle Volga region around the ancient Tatar capital of Kazan. It explores the degree to which the courts served as instruments of integration: the integration of former borderlands with the imperial centre and the integration of the empire's internal 'others' with the rest of society.

‘… the book is an excellent introduction both to the most successful of the great reforms and to how ordinary people, and in particular ethnic and religious minorities, resorted to the new courts in the first decades of their functioning.’

Jonathan Daly Source: The Slavonic and East European Review

‘… Kirmse’s careful reading of the secondary and comparative literature on law in imperial contexts and his close examination of specific cases in these two fascinating areas make his book essential reading for historians of law and Muslim communities in the Russian Empire.’

Charles Steinwedel Source: Central Asian Survey

‘This is a book filled with wonderful insights on popular legal practice and the concept of culture diversity in the Russian Empire.’

Katil Fred Hansen Source: English Historical Review

‘The book contains everything needed to acquaint the reader with its content, including maps, detailed lists of primary sources and secondary literature, and a remarkably well-crafted and useful index. Moreover, it provides new insight amidst the ever-growing literature on the regional history of both Crimea and Kazan Province, and on their Muslim communities in particular.'

Michel Tissier Source: H-Soz-Kult-Zentralredaktion

‘… excellent and important…’

Robert Geraci Source: Journal of Modern History

‘Stefan Kirmse’s superb study of legal reform in late imperial Russia was provocative and convincing when it was first published in 2019. Fortunately we now have a paperback edition that will make this book’s insights and propositions available at a time of heightened scholarly controversy over Russia’s kind of empire … This compelling book should become central to the ongoing debates over Russian empire.’

Jane Burbank Source: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas