The Russian peasant woman in a family conflict: legal views of rural society and the verdicts of volost courts (middle of the 19th century)

The article based on previously unknown archival documents examines a conflict lasting for years between a husband and a wife in the Bogomolovs’ family. The main attention is paid to the fight for justice by Avdotya Bogomolova, a peasant woman, who sued her husband at a volost court. The reasonable persistence and firm stance of this married peasant in defending her own and her infant son’s interests occasionally brought her success: the peasant volost court as well as provincial administration responsible for peasant affairs made decisions in her favour. These decisions were progressive compared to customary legal views on family relations and the woman’s position in the family, which were predominant among the peasants in the 19th century. At the same time, the analysis of the Bogomolovs’ case shows that the verdicts of the volost court were decisively affected by the traditional legal views of the rural community. When family conflicts were dealt with by judges elected from the peasantry, they were judged according to the peasants’ customary legal views rather than by following the letter of the law. This led to a total lack of legal protection for peasant women. The judges from the volost court following the norms of customary law and rural traditions felt entitled to slander the woman, fictitiously divorce her from her husband, and deprive her and her child of the husband’s financial support and maintenance.