Legal Societies in Pre-Revolutionary Russia and the Development of Russian Journalism

   In pre-revolutionary Russia, the activities of legal societies encompassed several areas, and the development of legal scholarship and education held an independent and important place. The pursuit of this objective was associated, inter alia, with publishing activities, manifested both in the issuance of individual works on jurisprudence and in the establishment of legal periodical press. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Yuridicheskii Vestnik (Legal Herald) and the Journal of Civil and Criminal Law (later renamed Vestnik Prava — Herald of Law) emerged as journals of the legal societies of Moscow and St. Petersburg. There also existed a number of periodical publications that featured materials on the activities of professional associations of jurists. In the course of the present study, the author examined the thematic scope of the published texts, the composition of authors and editorial boards, and the readership. Particular attention is devoted to the personal impressions of the editor of one of these journals, which makes it possible to gain insight into the specific features of the editorial work of legal journals.

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