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Contract enforcement in Russian serf society, 1750–1860 1
Author(s) -
Dennison Tracy
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2012.00661.x
Subject(s) - enforcement , landlord , variety (cybernetics) , socioeconomic status , emancipation , estate , real estate , law enforcement , business , law , political science , sociology , politics , population , demography , artificial intelligence , computer science
This article examines questions about contract enforcement in the absence of formal legal institutions, using archival evidence for one particular rural society in pre‐emancipation Russia. The evidence presented indicates that enforcement services provided by the local landlord made it possible for Russians from different socioeconomic and legal strata to engage in a wide variety of contractual transactions. However, this system had significant drawbacks in that the poorest serfs could not afford these services and no serf had recourse beyond his local estate.