A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia

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"Property rights" and "Russia" do not usually belong in the same sentence. Rather, our general image of the nation is of insecurity of private ownership and defenselessness in the face of the state. Many scholars have attributed Russia's long-term development problems to a failure to advance property rights for the modern age and blamed Russian int

Reviews

"Winner of the 2015 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies"
"Winner of the George L. Mosse Prize 2015, American Historical Association"
"Winner of the 2015 Historia Nova Prize, Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation and Academic Studies Press"
"Honorable Mention for the 2015 J. Willard Hurst Book Prize, Law and Society Association"
"Longlisted for the 2015 Historia Nova Prize, Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation and Academic Studies Press"
"Pravilova provides a nuanced analysis of the shifting nature of debates, concepts, and laws concerning public and private property in the Russian Empire from the late 18th century to the revolutions of 1917. . . . Challenging familiar narratives that couple liberalism with the defense of individual private property rights, she provides abundant evidence of a liberal vision that was not exclusively individualistic." * Choice *
"Even an extended review cannot do justice to this book's wealth of thought-provoking insights."---Adele Lindenmeyr, Slavic Review
"A short review cannot do justice to this fine, meticulously researched, and well-written book. It is essential reading for all historians of imperial and Soviet Russia."---Michelle Lamarche Marrese, Russian Review
"[An] engrossing study. . . . These questions are meant as tributes to what is clearly a major and agenda-setting work, whose discussion will greatly sharpen our understanding of Russia's past."---John Randolph, American Historical Review
"A lively text that is readily accessible to those with a non-legal history background. This is a rich, ambitious and complex project, which cuts across any number of traditional cultural and political boundaries; Pravilova switches adeptly from irrigation in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, to the preservation of churches in the Russian north, to the public's right to read posthumously published correspondence."---Jennifer Keating, Slavonic and East European Review
"In this extremely erudite and comprehensively researched book, Ekaterina Pravilova argues compellingly that attempts in late imperial Russia to reform property law, and specifically to establish in practice as well as the imagination a domain of public things' (res publica), were central to efforts to transform the tsarist social and political orders. . . . An extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of late imperial Russia."---William G. Wagner, Journal of Modern History
"A short review cannot embrace all the topics that Ekaterina Pravilova's book engages and for which it suggests possibilities for new studies. No doubt this is what makes this book a highly valuable contribution to the so very complicated process of rethinking Russian history."---Alexander Kamenskii, Canadian-American Slavic Studies
"A highly original and essential re-assessment of the role of property rights in Russia during the last days of empire and through the revolution. . . . A short summary cannot do justice to all the insights and scholarly contributions of this book. . . . The book will be mandatory reading for all historians and graduate students, as it refocuses on the possibilities--and limitations--of the tsarist system. Pravilova has identified the crucial nexus between law, property, and change, providing a vivid snapshot of where Imperial Russia stood on the eve of revolution."---William E. Pomeranz, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review

Author Bio

Ekaterina Pravilova is associate professor of history at Princeton University.