Peasant Woman Goes to Court: Practices at the Volost Court in Post-Reform Russia

The article attempts to answer the question of the degree of peasant women inclusion in the system of socio-economic relations in the post-reform Russian village, through appeals to the volost court. In the post-reform period, the volost court — a space in which the interests of villagers, men and women, clashed — became a platform for broad gender interaction, contributing to the formation of everyday legal consciousness and — more broadly — the development of practices of peasant self-government. The author analyzes this issue both within the framework of the general imperial positions analysis and with the involvement of local material, in particular, the consideration of women's court cases in the books of decisions of the Perm provincial presence on peasant affairs for 1878 and the Irbit district presence on peasant affairs for 1884.The article concludes that the liberation from serfdom marked the beginning of the rapid adaptation of peasant women to post-reform legal proceedings. Peasant women were not afraid to go to court even for the most insignificant claims, considering themselves to be fully equal participants in property disputes. At the same time, they could count on clear support from representatives of the volost boards.