This is the first book to explore the largely unknown world of rural crime and justice in postemancipation imperial Russia. Drawing upon previously untapped provincial archives and a wealth of other neglected primary material, Stephen P. Frank offers a major reassessment of the interactions between peasantry and state in the decades leading up to World War I. Viewing crime and punishment as contested metaphors about social order, Frank's revisionist study documents the varied understandings of criminality and justice that underlay deep conflicts in Russian society and contrasts official and elite representations of rural criminality - and of peasants - with the realities of everyday crime at the village level. Richly detailed and providing important new perspectives on the great watersheds of Russian history, this much-anticipated work will gain wide attention among historians of crime and society.