Murder most Russian
Subtitle: true crime and punishment in late imperial Russia
By: Louise McReynolds
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780801451454
Subjects: Sociological jurisprudence; Trials (Murder); Murder in mass media; History and criticism; Russian Detective and mystery stories; Murder; History
Description: "How a society defines crimes and prosecutes criminals illuminates its cultural values, social norms, and political expectations. In Murder Most Russian, Louise McReynolds uses a fascinating series of murders and subsequent trials that took place in the wake of the 1864 legal reforms enacted by Tsar Alexander II to understand the impact of these reforms on Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. For the first time in Russian history, the accused were placed in the hands of juries of common citizens in courtrooms that were open to the press. Drawing on a wide array of sources, McReynolds reconstructs murders that gripped Russian society, from the case of Andrei Gilevich, who advertised for a personal secretary and beheaded the respondent as a way of perpetrating insurance fraud, to the beating death of Marianna Time at the hands of two young aristocrats who hoped to steal her diamond earrings"--Publisher's Web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Law and order; title: Criminology : social crime, but individual criminal; title: The jurors; title: Murder as one of the middlebrow arts; title: Russia's postrevolutionary modern men; title: Maria Tarnovskaia and the degenerate Slavic soul; title: Crime fiction steps into action; title: True crime and modern gendered identities.