Medicine, Law and the State in Imperial Russia

Examines the theoretical and practical outlook of forensic physicians in Imperial Russia, from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, arguing that the interaction between state and these professionals shaped processes of reform in contemporary Russia. It demonstrates the ways in which the professional evolution of forensic psychiatry in Russia took a different turn from Western models, and how the process of professionalization in late imperial Russia became associated with liberal legal reform and led to the transformation of the autocratic state system. Demonstrates the processes by which legal, social, and institutional authority was invested in disciplinary, scientific knowledge, and how these processes were linked to the shaping of a particular vision of legality tailored to Russia's social and political conditions. Identifying the ways in which social actors merged legal reform efforts with their professional objectives, it argues that this interrelationship was productive of a particular occupational perspective and course of reform, rather than an underdeveloped shadow of developments in Western, liberal states.