The French Bar and the Emerging Legal Profession in Russia

Elizaveta Blagodeteleva ()
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Elizaveta Blagodeteleva: National Research University Higher School of Economics

HSE Working papers from National Research University Higher School of Economics

Abstract: The complex and seemingly inconsistent use of the social vocabulary has been on the research agenda of those who study the Russian Empire for quite some time. Historians have long believed that the indiscriminate use of such terms as “estate” (“soslovie”) and “corporation” reflected Russian backwardness and eventually impeded further social and economic development, especially when it came to professional groups. The paper examines this assumption by focusing on the terminology deployed for the designation of Russian lawyers, in comparison to their French counterparts. Therefore, it dwells at length on the references to the French Bar in the bureaucratic discussion and in current press at the time of drafting the basic principles of the future Bar organization in Russia between 1857 and 1864. The comparison of the two sets of references provided plenty of evidence that the French notion of the estate (l'ordre des avocats) had a dramatic impact on the interpretation of Russian soslovie of legal practitioners. The French model seemed to spur social imagination and eventually helped Russian political and intellectual elites envisage a new type of social organization encompassing free, well-educated and politically engaged men.

Keywords: Russian Empire; France; legal profession; lawyers; the Bar; estate; estate paradigm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-his and nep-law
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Published in WP BRP Series: Humanities / HUM, October 2015, pages-21

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hig:wpaper:110hum2015

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