The Emergence of the Duel in Russia: Corporal Punishment and the Honor Code

Reyfman, Irina

doi:10.2307/130773

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(It also gave rise to, or at least great encouragement to, the noble duelling culture of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which provided a rare escape-route for nobles who sought to preserve their sense of dignity and self-worth against the tyranny of hierarchical social relations.) 65 A.I. Koshelev was correct in the 1850s in denouncing serfdom as a system which corrupted not only the peasants but also the masters.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Serfdom and State Power in Imperial Russia

Bartlett¹

2003

European History Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The institution of serfdom has been a central and much debated feature of early modern Russian history: it has sometimes been described as Russia's 'peculiar institution', as central to the Russian experience as black slavery has been to the American. 1 It is striking, however, that the rise and dominance of serfdom within Muscovite/Russian society coincided closely in historical terms with the rise to European eminence and power of the Muscovite state and Russian Empire. The subjection of the peasantry to its landlord masters was finally institutionalized in 1649, at a time when for most of the rest of Europe Muscovy was a little-known and peripheral state, in John Milton's words, 'the most northern Region of Europe reputed civil'. 2 When Peter I proclaimed Russia an empire, in 1721, it had displaced Sweden to become the leading state of Northern Europe; one hundred years later Russia was the premier European land power. Its loss of international status after the Crimean War in 1856 helped to precipitate the abolition of serfdom (1861); but the 'Great Reforms' of the 1860s did not enable it to regain the international position achieved after the Napoleonic Wars. Thus the period of history from the mid-seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, when serfdom became a securely entrenched legal and economic institution, was also the period in which Russia -the Muscovite state and Russian Empire -became relatively more powerful than at any other time in its history before 1945. This article seeks to examine some of the features of serfdom in Russia, to look briefly at its place in the structure and dynamics of Russian society, and to investigate the relationship between the establishment of serfdom in practice and the success of Russian governments both in domestic affairs and on the international stage.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%