Peksmine ja löömine Eesti külas 1868-1911 Nursi vallakohtu protokollide näitel. Õigusetnoloogiline perspektiiv
Investigation into the Records of the Communal Court of Nursi: The Discussion of the Beating Cases in Estonian Rural Village Society

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to study the beating cases - one of the problems and conflicts in the 19th century Estonian peasant society and their transformation in time on the basis of a study of the Communal Court of Nursi materials. The article investigates the modernization process of Estonian society as exemplified in the transformation of court practice on the background of general modern legal reform. Local communal courts constituted a class-specific peasant court system in the Baltic guberniyas of the Russian Empire. These courts tried peasants for their minor offences and solved their civil disputes. The present study is based on Communal Court of Nursi records from 1868 to 1911, currently being preserved in the Estonian Historical Archives. It is requisite for the better comprehension of the topic to provide a survey of the institutional development of communal court. This task has been accomplished in the first part of the article, which contains an overview of the general peasant court system that existed on the Estonian territory and a more detailed historical account of the institutional development of communal court set in stages. The second part discusses the general problems and themes of legal anthropology. The theoretical framework is to a great extent based on Simon Roberts' social stratification scale of disputes. The court disputes from 1868-1888 are discussed on the basis of Simon Roberts' social stratification scale of disputes. I will give separate treatment to the beating cases of municipality and court officials, conflicts between the employer and the employees, and the cases between the peasants themselves. Last part of the article is devoted to the survey of the court minutes from the period after the judicial reform of 1889 (court dispute from 1883-1911). The beating incidents and fights in taverns will receive here a lengthier treatment, since the taverns had become in a way a source of social problems. It was the period of transformation in the general perception of justice by Estonians and the modern legal reform. The nature of conflicts was also changed, as smaller disputes gave way to bigger and more important economical matters. In comparison with the 1870s the court practice in Nursi had been considerably transformed by 1890s. The number of court disputes decreased and their nature was changed. The beating cases were quite frequent in the second half of the 19th century among Estonian peasants, occupying the second position after theft. Most beating cases in 1870s and 1880s (67,7%) occurred between social equals. But quite a number of cases (almost a quarter) crossed the borders of social stratification: these were the conflicts between landlords and their servants. Only two cases were found, where the peasant beat the municipality or court officials.

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