Memoirs of a Provincial Lawyer

Lev Filippovich Volkenstein (1857–1935) — a Rostov lawyer at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, who received his education first at the Taganrog Gymnasium (where he studied alongside A. P. Chekhov), and then at the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University. Ironically defining himself as a "provincial," the memoirist meticulously describes the everyday life and legal practice in Rostov at that time, with particular attention to colorful criminal and civil cases he handled. An important topic in his memoirs is the issue of Jewish identity.