Russian Officialdom in Crisis: Autocracy and Local Self-Government, 1861 1900 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780521361279)

Modern Russian history began with the "Great Reforms" of 1861-4 which emancipated the serfs and introduced public self-government to assist the state in managing rural administration and change. In this capacity, peasant and zemstvo self-government, established partly on the basis of Western administrative theory, was important to the solvency of the entire state, autocracy's political evolution, and the fate of the rural gentry, peasants, and townspeople. This book is the first full-scale account of the development of rural self-government from the "Great Reforms" to its bureaucratization in the counterreforms of 1889-90 and their implementation during the following decade. Drawing on a wide range of archival material in Moscow and Leningrad, Pearson pinpoints the concrete problems that Russian officials experienced in introducing rural self-government, and shows that the land captain and zemstvo counterreforms, like the earlier "Great Reforms," resulted from practical statist considerations.

Author: Thomas S. Pearson,Pearson Thomas S.
ISBN-10: 0521361273
ISBN-13: 9780521361279
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/31/1989
Pages: 308
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.37lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.81d