Article Alert: Ekaterina Pravilova, " Truth, Facts, and Authenticity in Russian Imperial Jurisprudence and Historiography,"

Article Alert:

Ekaterina Pravilova, " Truth, Facts, and Authenticity in Russian Imperial Jurisprudence and Historiography," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 21, Number 1, Winter 2020, pp. 7-39

DOI: 10.1353/kri.2020.0001

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Truth, Facts, and Authenticity in Russian Imperial Jurisprudence and Historiography
• Ekaterina Pravilova (bio)

How do historians think? How do judges arrive at their decisions? What can a historical comparison between the methods of reasoning and substantiation in two contiguous disciplines contribute to our understanding of Russia's politics and culture? This article focuses on the use of evidence and the different ways of seeking truth and justice in historical studies and jurisprudence to reveal and explain the effects of legal and political governance on intellectual life and the processes of decision making. Instead of dealing with such visible and obvious frames and mechanisms of control as censorship and policing, the article analyzes more subtle methods, revealing the role of power in the creation of epistemic regimes. My research traces the transition from a regime circumscribed by the formal theory of proofs—under which a judge or a historian was forced to operate by registering, recording, and summarizing proofs—to a freedom in the interpretation of evidence that verged on extreme and was unseen elsewhere in Europe. Both regimes, as we will see, led to debates and discontent.

At the same time, as this article suggests, the influence of power was never all-encompassing: intellectuals, lawyers, and writers learned how to adapt their rhetorical means to the rules and, more importantly, developed new methods in dialogue with one another. Historians of European thought have shown that the development of rhetoric and the methods of reasoning in modern Europe resulted in the emergence of common "evidential paradigms" across [End Page 7] several disciplines, including history and jurisprudence.1 The Russian case shows a similar trajectory: historical studies and jurisprudence did not only continuously borrow jargon and tools from each other, they also drew ideas and inspirations from common sources such as logic, philosophy, philology, and the sciences and contributed to the general development of epistemology in the social sciences and humanities. A small world of intellectuals was permeated with ideas that circulated from one field to another, and this was especially true for the methods of source analysis and the examination of authenticity of things, texts, and facts.2 Vladimir Spasovich—one of the most outstanding jurists and writers of his time—in a series of lectures on the theory of evidence (1860) pointed out that the methods of cognitive activity were universal. "The question of legal proof is not essentially a judicial one. It belongs to the sphere of logic and anthropology, while its roots go deep into the philosophical soil."3 As he observed, "the history of legal proof is the history of the national mind."4

Yet the Russian case and its specifics need further exploration. First, the way in which Russian lawyers and scholars connected the issues of cognition and rhetoric with the freedom of thought and civil freedom in general deserves our attention. The liberation of the mind from the stifling pressure of the formal theory of proof was one of the main motives driving historiographical debates in the 1820s–30s and the principle of the legal reform in 1864. In the late 19th century, intellectuals interpreted the proposed reintroduction of the rules concerning the use of evidence in courts as a limitation on their [End Page 8] free will, even though the absolute freedom of judging in jurisprudence often conflicted with one of the main premises of the judicial system—legality. Second, the dichotomy of freedom/unfreedom in the interpretation of sources and evidence was often seen in religious dimensions, where belief was opposed to reason. In the official pre-reform historical literature, history, being based on belief in tradition and consensus, made the issue of authenticity irrelevant. Third, and most importantly, the issues of truth and authenticity often had strong moral connotations. The centrality of the tension between the two kinds of truth in Russian culture has been observed many times. It corresponded to two different words designating truth in Russian: istina factual (or cognitive) truth, and pravda moral truth.5