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Insulte et châtiment devant les tribunaux locaux : la construction de la civilité en Russie impériale tardive -
Le présent article examine les litiges pour insultes portés devant les tribunaux locaux en Russie impériale tardive. Les paysans, considérés comme extérieurs au domaine du droit, eurent de fait largement recours aux tribunaux locaux pour résoudre les controverses issues de comportements publics insultants. Les paysans firent appel au droit écrit (statute law, par opposition au droit cou- tumier) et à la procédure des tribunaux locaux pour se défendre contre les abus verbaux et physiques et pour élaborer des normes de civilité. La participation de paysans aux débats devant les tribunaux de volost' établit un lien entre la population rurale et les autorités nationales, constituant un forum utile à la défense de la dignité individuelle, à la confrontation publique d'opinions contradictoires et à l'évaluation officielle d'actes perturbateurs.

Les tribunaux paysans, instaurés en Russie après l'émancipation de 1861, permirent à la population rurale de se forger des connaissances juridiques. Ces tribunauxvolost' siègèrent pendant plus d'un demi-siécle, attentifs à la fois à appliquer la réglementation nationale et à s'assurer la participation locale. La procédure suivie par ces tribunaux, où les affaires étaient évoquées et jugées par des juges paysans, permit de régler, sur des bases à la fois locales et juridiques, des questions de grande importance pour la population rurale: dignité de la personne, petite criminalité, contrôle des droits de propriété et des transactions économiques. Ces tribunaux ruraux furent populaires et ils contribuèrent en partie à créer des liens entre la population rurale et l'Etat.

Lenin's views on law, like so many other aspects of his intellectual life, appear in scholarly and political literature primarily as weapons—a striking quotation from State and Revolution here, an insistent instruction to the commissar of justice there—arms wielded in the service of particular aims and, often, interpretations of the Soviet project. A collection of these citations would yield a most disparate arsenal—jabs, slings, barbs and bombs, and sometimes the most precise button-pressings (especially when Lenin was head of state)—an arsenal drawn, it would seem, from different wars and different epochs of combat technology. It might also seem from such a survey that, where law was concerned, Lenin's various missiles were hurled at each other.

Jane Burbank, Waiting for the people's revolution: Martov and Chernov in revolutionary Russia, 1917-1923.
In the chaotic and decisive years after the October Revolution, Iu. O. Martov and V. Chernov, leaders of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary parties, were unwilling to give their full support either to the Bolsheviks or to popular rebellions against the new government. This article explains their cautious and ultimately self-destructive positions as a consequence of the contradictions between their theories of revolution and their observations of mass behavior after 1917. In particular, the revolutionary years shook the confidence of the democratic left in the national values of workers and peasants. Fearful of rebellions against the fragile state, yet repulsed by the authoritarian tactics of the Bolsheviks, Martov and Chernov could find no militant position consistent with their ideological commitments and retreated to their traditional, non-violent stance of moral criticism.

A history of three transnational political projects designed to overcome the inequities of imperialismAfter the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally, and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental projects aimed at bringing together peoples of different regions to mitigate imperial legacies of inequality. Eurasia, Eurafrica, and Afroasia-in theory if not in practice-offered alternative routes out of empire.The theory of Eurasianism was developed after the collapse of imperial Russia by exiled intellectuals alienated by both Western imperialism and communism. Eurafrica began as a design for collaborative European exploitation of Africa but was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s into a project to include France's African territories in plans for European integration. The Afroasian movement wanted to replace the vertical relationship of colonizer and colonized with a horizontal relationship among former colonial territories that could challenge both the communist and capitalist worlds.Both Eurafrica and Afroasia floundered, victims of old and new vested interests. But Eurasia revived in the 1990s, when Russian intellectuals turned the theory's attack on Western hegemony into a recipe for the restoration of Russian imperial power. While both the system of purportedly sovereign states and the concentrated might of large economic and political institutions continue to frustrate projects to overcome inequities in welfare and power, Burbank and Cooper's study of political imagination explores wide-ranging concepts of social affiliation and obligation that emerged after empire and the reasons for their unlike destinies

"After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturally, and economically? In Post-Imperial Possibilities, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine three large-scale, transcontinental projects aimed at bringing together peoples of different regions to mitigate imperial legacies of inequality. Eurasia, Eurafrica, and Afroasia--in theory if not in practice--offered alternative routes out of empire. The theory of Eurasianism was developed after the collapse of imperial Russia by exiled intellectuals alienated by both Western imperialism and communism. Eurafrica began as a design for collaborative European exploitation of Africa but was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s into a project to include France's African territories in plans for European integration. The Afroasian movement wanted to replace the vertical relationship of colonizer and colonized with a horizontal relationship among former colonial territories that could challenge both the communist and capitalist worlds. Both Eurafrica and Afroasia floundered, victims of old and new vested interests. But Eurasia revived in the 1990s, when Russian intellectuals turned the theory's attack on Western hegemony into a recipe for the restoration of Russian imperial power. While both the system of purportedly sovereign states and the concentrated might of large economic and political institutions continue to frustrate projects to overcome inequities in welfare and power, Burbank and Cooper's study of political imagination explores wide-ranging concepts of social affiliation and obligation that emerged after empire and the reasons for their unlike destinies."--

How empires have used diversity to shape the world order for more than two millenniaEmpires—vast states of territories and peoples united by force and ambition—have dominated the political landscape for more than two millennia. Empires in World History departs from conventional European and nation-centered perspectives to take a remarkable look at how empires relied on diversity to shape the global order. Beginning with ancient Rome and China and continuing across Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Africa, Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper examine empires' conquests, rivalries, and strategies of domination—with an emphasis on how empires accommodated, created, and manipulated differences among populations.Burbank and Cooper examine Rome and China from the third century BCE, empires that sustained state power for centuries. They delve into the militant monotheism of Byzantium, the Islamic Caliphates, and the short-lived Carolingians, as well as the pragmatically tolerant rule of the Mongols and Ottomans, who combined religious protection with the politics of loyalty. Burbank and Cooper discuss the influence of empire on capitalism and popular sovereignty, the limitations and instability of Europe's colonial projects, Russia's repertoire of exploitation and differentiation, as well as the "empire of liberty"—devised by American revolutionaries and later extended across a continent and beyond.With its investigation into the relationship between diversity and imperial states, Empires in World History offers a fresh approach to understanding the impact of empires on the past and present