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Национальный вопрос в российских судебных реформах конца XVIII — начала XX вв.
This article proposes a new conceptual framework for analyzing the judicial reforms in the RussianEmpire from the late 18th to the early 20th century. The authors examine the history of judicialtransformations not as a series of disparate, ideologically driven acts, but as a single, consistent processof the empire’s search for the most effective model of legal integration for its heterogeneouspopulation. The study shows that the management of ethnocultural diversity was not a secondaryproblem but a central challenge that determined the design and logic of the reforms at all key stages.Analyzing the reforms of the late 18th century, the authors show how the first, estate-based model ofintegration was constructed, combining unification with managed particularism. Next, using theexample of the 1864 Judicial Statutes and the institution of the jury trial, the article examines theambitious project to create a common civil justice system and its internal contradictions. Finally, the1912 reform of local justice is considered the culmination of the late imperial search for a complexhybrid model designed to overcome the legal cleavage created by the preceding transformations. Thestudy demonstrates that all three stages reveal a similar internal logic: the initial unificationist projectwas inevitably adjusted toward the preservation of particularism, forming a complex institutionalstructure that can be characterized in terms of Alfred Rieber’s concept of a “sedimentary society”.Thus, the evolution of judicial policy emerges as the story of a fundamental contradiction between theideal of a unified nation-state and the reality of a composite, multiethnic empire – a contradiction thatwas resolved each time not through a definitive choice, but through the creation of complex, hybridinstitutional compromises.