Gender and the legal order in Imperial Russia
MICHELLE LAMARCHE MARRESE
This chapter will explore a single but significant dimension of women's experience in Imperial Russia: the transformation of their legal status from the Petrine reforms to the eve of the 1917 Revolution. It has become a truism among scholars that law codes both mirror and produce gender difference and hierarchies.[201] In this regard, Russian legal culture proved no exception: normative law drew marked distinctions between women and men, as well as distinguishing between individuals on the basis of social standing. When applied to women, the juridical system in Imperial Russia was also noteworthy for tensions and inconsistencies that intensified with the elaboration of women's status in written law. This essay will investigate the origins of competing definitions of gender in the realms of property, family and criminal law. In the pre-reform era, the clarification of women's civil status elevated noblewomen's standing in the patriarchal family by extending their rights over property, yet simultaneously institutionalised their subordination to their husbands. The legal regime that emerged after the Great Reforms of the 1860s placed a novel emphasis on female vulnerability and the assignment of women to the domestic sphere, at the very moment that unprecedented numbers of peasant women were making their way into the urban marketplace.[202] As I will argue in the following pages, if the legal order in eighteenth-century Russia minimised sexual difference in many respects, nineteenth-century innovations in the law highlighted gender distinctions to an unprecedented degree.
Noblewomen, inheritance, and the control of property
The pre-Petrine law of property was characterised by unequal inheritance for sons and daughters and limitations on women's use and control of landed estates. For all that Muscovite law codes allowed women a surprising degree of independence in matters judicial,[203] elite Russian women shared many legal disabilities with their European counterparts. The reforms of Peter the Great, however, initiated an era of profound cultural and legal change for Russian noblewomen. Most notably, the eighteenth century witnessed the gradual expansion of women's rights to property. Innovations in female inheritance were less dramatic than advances in women's control of their fortunes, yet the elevation of women's inheritance rights and married women's acquisition of the right to manage and alienate their estates were emblematic of a larger process of legal change: the trend toward individualised rather than familial property rights among the nobility in the eighteenth century, and the efforts of the elite to clarify their standing in the law of property in relation to other family members and the state. Significantly, noblewomen took active part in the extension of their property rights and went on to make ample use of their legal prerogatives.[204]
From the middle of the nineteenth century, inspired by debates over the 'woman question', Russian historians and jurists wrote extensively on the topic of women's property rights. Russian scholars issued extravagant pronouncements about the legal status of their female compatriots, declaring them the most fortunate women in Europe with regard to control of property but the most disadvantaged in the domain of inheritance.[205] Both generalisations were overstated, yet it cannot be denied that from the eighteenth century the evolution of Russian women's legal status diverged significantly from that of their
European equivalents. In Western Europe, differential control of property sharply distinguished the sexes, associating men with real estate and women with personality, while - as often as not - subjecting married women's property to control of their husbands.6
In regard to female inheritance, Russian law displayed only marginal superiority over European legal codes. The post-Petrine law of inheritance continued to favour male heirs, while failing to elucidate the claims of married daughters and the legal status of the dowry vis-a-vis inheritance. After decades of debate, imperial legislators guaranteed daughters, regardless ofmarital status, a statutory share of one-fourteenth, or 7 per cent, of their parents' immove- able property, as well as one-eighth of their personal assets, after which their brothers received equal shares ofthe estate. When no male offspring survived, daughters divided their parents' holdings equally. By the nineteenth century, intestate inheritance law was in dire need of revision, as European states began to equalise the inheritance rights of sons and daughters. Nonetheless, the revised rules of succession at the end of the eighteenth century represented a genuine achievement for noblewomen, who had won greater security in the law of inheritance and the right to litigate for a statutory share of family assets.7
It was in the realm of control of property, however, that Russian noblewomen made their most striking advance vis-a-vis their European counterparts. From 1753 Russian noblewomen enjoyed the right to alienate and manage their property during marriage.8 Noblewomen's control of their assets, whether acquired as dowry, purchased or inherited, inspired foreign observers to remark on this curious exception to Russian women's legal servitude. 'You must know that every Woman has the right over her Fortune totally independent of her Husband and he is as independent of his wife', Catherine Wilmot marvelled in a letter from Russia to her sister Harriet in 1806. 'Marriage therefore is no union of interests whatsoever, and the Wife if she has a large Estate and happens to marry a poor man is still consider'd rich . . . This gives a curious sort of hue to the conversations of the Russian Matrons which to a meek English Woman appears prodigious independence in the midst of a Despotic Government!'9 In his account of Russia in the 1840s, August von Haxthausen
6 A vast literature exists on the topic of women and property For a detailed overview of this literature, see Marrese, A Woman's Kingdom.
7 M. L. Marrese, 'From Maintenance to Entitlement: Defining the Dowry in Eighteenth- Century Russia', in W Rosslyn (ed.), Women and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 209-26.
8 PSZ, vol. 13, no. 10.111 (14.06.1753). M. L. Marrese, 'The Enigma of Married Women's Control of Property in Eighteenth-Century Russia', RR 58, 3 (July 1999): 380-95.
9 Martha Wilmot, The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot, 1803-1808, ed. and intro. Marchioness of Londonderry and H. M. Hyde (London: Macmillan, 1935), p. 234.
also observed, 'In Russia the female sex occupies a different position from its counterpart in the rest of Europe.' He went on to relate that 'A large part of the real estate is...in the hands of women', adding that 'it is easy to understand what a great influence women enjoy in society as a result'.[206]
Noblewomen's control of their estates was, moreover, an active concept, rather than a mere legal convention in many families. Greater equality in the law of property translated into women's acquisition of estates and into striking similarities between women and men in regard to use of their assets: noblewomen became enthusiastic participants in the market for land and serfs, as well as urban real estate. Women as a group engaged in the same range of property transactions as men, and the size of women's estates was commensurate with that of their male counterparts. Indeed, the scale of women's holdings grew dramatically from the middle of the eighteenth century: by the nineteenth century, noblewomen controlled as much as one-third of the land and serfs in private hands. The presence of married women as both sellers and investors in property after 1750 increased steadily, while the participation of widows and unmarried women dwindled.[207] Married women engaged in business in their own names, were present at property transactions and assumed responsibility for managing the family estate. Noblewomen's legal and economic autonomy, coupled with the frequent absences of their husbands on state service, ensured that significant numbers of women in Imperial Russia were as likely to concern themselves with investment decisions and large-scale management as with the supervision of house serfs and other domestic tasks.
201
would like to thank Barbara Alpern Engel, John Bushnell and Dominic Lieven for their thoughtful comments, which have greatly improved this essay
1 Laurie Bernstein,
202
B. A. Engel,
203
N. S. Kollmann, 'Women's Honor in Early Modern Russia', in Barbara E. Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel and Christine D. Worobec (eds.),
204
On women's role in the expansion of their property rights, see M. L. Marrese,
205
Anna Evreinova, 'Ob uravnenii prav zhenshchin pri nasledovanii',
206
A. von Haxthausen,