The Letters and the Law: Legal and Literary Culture in Late Imperial Russia by Anna Schur (review)

community and intelligentsia. Slavophiles and Westernizers, the writers of the so-called ‘National School’ of the 1840s, the ‘penitent nobleman’ trying to atone for his privileged status, and Russia’s early ethnographers and folklorists — all are seen afresh here. Many readers will also applaud Safran’s refusal to ‘exoticize’ Russia, her rejection of the ‘ideologically laden binaries’ endorsed by believers in Russian exceptionalism, and the attention she pays instead to ‘the everyday experiences mid-century Russians shared with people of their class elsewhere’ (p. 11).