According to contemporary observers, an alarming phenomenon began to become
evident in the Russian countryside during the last decades of the nineteenth century:
peasants were becoming more and more involved in disputes and legal proceedings.
This phenomenon appeared to intensify after 1906, with the implementation of
agrarian reforms. A study of the activities of local tribunals reveals more specifically
how peasant judges and government appeal proceedings managed these rural
disputes. In so doing, it allows us to define more clearly the basis and limits of
peasant solidarity and, indirectly, the Russian peasantry’s attitudes towards the
state on the eve of the Revolution.
