Soviet Justice in the Local Courts: Civil Claims, Messy Divorces and Social Rights in Early Soviet Russia

press release: 

(Refreshments starting at 3:45)

Where: Room 206, Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive

Speaker: Aaron Retish, Assistant Professor of History at Wayne State University

Sponsored by CREECA, the UW-Madison History Department, and The Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Chair in Russian History

About the talk: People’s courts were established in 1917 as the courts of first review in Soviet Russia.  They adjudicated petty crimes and heard most civil claims—where everyday people sought justice over everyday disputes. They were the most widely used courts by both citizens and state prosecutors and an important entry into what citizens and state expected from the Soviet legal world. In an examination of the functioning and cases of people’s courts in the early Soviet countryside, I show that Soviet rural citizens entered the courtrooms with a deep understanding of legality and used these courts to fight for what they saw as their legal or social rights, be it in property and alimony disputes or fighting criminal charges.

About the Speaker: Aaron B. Retish (University of Wisconsin-Madison BA, 1992; The Ohio State University, Phd, 2003) is associate professor of Russian and Soviet history at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.  He is the author of Russia’s Peasants in Revolution and Civil War: Citizenship, Identity, and the Creation of the Soviet State, 1914-1922(Cambridge University Press, 2008), co-editor of Russia's Home Front In War And Revolution, 1914-22: Book 1. Russia's Revolution In Regional Perspective (Slavica, 2015), and co-editor of the journal Revolutionary Russia.  He is currently completing his book manuscript "In the Courts of Revolution: Social Rights, Legality, and Citizenship in the Rural Soviet Courtroom, 1917-1939,” which examines how rural Soviet citizens engaged local legal organs from the 1917 Communist revolution until the eve of World War II. It has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellowship, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant.

Sponsored by CREECA