Suchergebnisse

This study will trace the evolution of rights of women to acquire and own land in Russia during the period 1100-1750. While detailed studies of particular periods are valuable, only with a chronological comparison can one appreciate the overall direction in which women's legal rights were developing and, specifically, whether they were contracting or expanding. Taking the long view in legal history is particularly important because changes in legal rules and legal status are often gradual, even glacial, and such change may be perceptible only over centuries. An overview is also important for the placement of past and future studies of particular periods in context. While it would be more conventional to conclude at the end of the Muscovite period rather than in the early empire, there were developments in women's rights in the Muscovite period which reached logical conclusions only in the mid-eighteenth century, such as the consolidation of a widow's rights to her husband's property.

Richard Pipes's contribution to our understanding of Russian history has been substantial and my own interest in Russian history dates from taking his course on imperial Russia in college some thirty years ago. It is thus only with great reluctance that I would disagree with him. Nevertheless, I respectfully submit that his response to my article suffers not only from insufficient evidence but also from serious conceptual flaws.

The development or lack of development of private property rights in Russia commands interest and significance far beyond the narrow confines of legal history. The institution of private property serves not only as a bulwark of stability but also as a limit to the state's authority. In the words of Richard Pipes, "Ownership of property creates a commitment to the political and legal order since the latter guarantees property rights: it makes the citizen into a co-sovereign, as it were." Elsewhere Pipes notes that in the west private property "confronted royal power with effective limits to its authority."

Extent to which the military supports reform; with comments.

Der Autor befaßt sich schwerpunktmäßig mit der von Gorbacev in der Zeit zwischen 1971 und seinem Amtsantritt als Generalsekretär der KPdSU im Jahr 1983 formulierten Wirtschaftskonzeption für den mikroökonomischen Bereich der Landwirtschaft und Industrie sowie für das System der materiellen Anreize und schätzt kurz Bedeutung und Realisierungschancen dieses Reformprogramms als politische und ökonomische Strategie ein. (BIOst-Klk)