Russell E. Martin is Professor of History at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Penna.   He took his BA in History from the University of Pittsburgh (1986) and his Master's (1989) and Ph.D. (1996) in History from Harvard University.  He is the co-director of the Muscovite Biographical Database (at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow), and a member of the Chancellery of the Russian Imperial House in Moscow (advisor on foreign media relations and translator for the official webpage). He has published broadly on topics in Muscovite history, and his book--A Bride for the Tsar:  Bride-Shows and Marriage Politics in Early Modern Russia (Northern Illinois University Press, 2012)--is to appear this spring.  Martin's current book project is on the imperial law of succession from 1797 to 1917 and the role of law and legal discourse in Imperial Russia.

Catherine the Great is known for the many new laws and institutions that appeared during her long reign, but just as important are the legal projects she drafted but were never promulgated.  One of these unrealized projects is her draft laws of succession to the throne.  Three times, the empress sat down and devised a new system to regularize the succession in Russia.  This lecture examines the texts of these three largely unstudied (and unpublished) laws.  The lecture explores the Muscovite origins of the laws, the provisions of the laws that reflect Catherinian concerns and anxieties, and the ways these three projects influenced the law that was eventually promulgated by Catherine's son, Paul I, in 1797.  The lecture advances the venturesome argument that the Russian autocracy was limited by law long before the Manifesto of 1905, and that the law of succession was the small but significant space for legal discourse that gave birth to Russian legal consciousness.