Concubines in serf Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the era of serfdom, there were many cases when a noble wife or daughter, who was forcibly taken away from her husband, turned out to be a concubine of a large landowner. The reason for the very possibility of such a state of affairs is precisely explained in her notes by E. Vodovozova. According to her, in Russia the main and almost the only meaning was wealth - "the rich could do anything."

But it is obvious that if the wives of minor nobles were subjected to gross violence from a more influential neighbor, then the peasant girls and women were completely defenseless against the tyranny of the landowners. A. P. Zablotsky-Desyatovsky, who, on behalf of the Minister of State Property, was collecting detailed information about the situation of serfs, noted in his report:

The principle that justified the master's violence against serf women sounded like this: "Must go if a slave!"

Coercion to debauchery was so widespread in landlord estates that some researchers were inclined to single out a separate duty from other peasant duties - a kind of "corvee for women."

The violence was systematically ordered. After the end of the work in the field, the master's servant, from among the confidants, goes to the yard of this or that peasant, depending on the established "queue", and takes the girl - daughter or daughter-in-law - to the master for the night. Moreover, on the way, he enters the neighboring hut and announces to the owner there:

“Tomorrow go to blow wheat, and send Arina (wife) to the master” …

IN AND. Semevsky wrote that quite often the entire female population of some estate was forcibly corrupted to satisfy the lord's lust. Some landowners, who did not live on their estates, but spent their lives abroad or in the capital, specially came to their domains only for a short time for nefarious purposes. On the day of his arrival, the manager had to provide the landowner with a complete list of all the peasant girls who had grown up during the absence of the master, and he took each of them for several days: "When the list was exhausted, he left for other villages, and came again the next year."

A. I. Koshelev wrote about his neighbor:

It is noteworthy that in the original author's version of the story "Dubrovsky", not passed by the imperial censorship and still little known, Pushkin wrote about the habits of his Kirill Petrovich Troyekurov:

Big and small Troekurovs inhabited noble estates, carousing, raping and rushing to satisfy any of their whims, without thinking at all about those whose destinies they ruined.

One of such countless types is the Ryazan landowner Prince Gagarin, about whom the leader of the nobility himself spoke in his report that the prince's lifestyle consists “solely in the hunting of dogs, with which he, with his friends, and day and night travels through the fields and forests and puts all his happiness and well-being in it. At the same time, the serfs of Gagarin were the poorest in the entire district, since the prince forced them to work on the master's arable land all days of the week, including holidays and even Holy Easter, but not transferring to a month. But as from a cornucopia, corporal punishment rained down on the peasant's backs, and the prince himself handed out blows with a whip, whip, arapnik or fist - whatever he could.

Gagarin started his own harem:

About the morals of the landowners gives an idea and description of life in the estate of General Lev Izmailov.

Information about the unfortunate situation of the general's courtyard was preserved thanks to the documents of the criminal investigation launched in the Izmailov estate after the cases of violence and debauchery that were somewhat unusual even for that time became known.

Izmailov arranged colossal drinking parties for the nobles of the entire district, to which they brought peasant girls and women belonging to him for the entertainment of guests. The general's servants traveled around the villages and forcibly took the women from their homes. Once, having started such a "game" in his small village Zhmurov, it seemed to Izmailov that there were not enough "girls", and he sent carts for replenishment to the neighboring village. But the local peasants unexpectedly resisted - they did not betray their women and, moreover, in the dark they beat up the Izmailovsky "oprichnik" - Guska.

The enraged general, not postponing revenge until the morning, at night, at the head of his courtyard and hangers, flew into the rebellious village. Having scattered the peasant huts on the logs and started a fire, the landowner went to a distant mowing place, where most of the village's population spent the night. There, unsuspecting people were tied and crossed.

When meeting guests at his estate, the general, understanding in his own way the duties of a hospitable host, would certainly provide everyone with a courtyard girl for the night for “whimsical connections,” as the investigation materials delicately say. The most significant visitors to the general's house, on the order of the landowner, were given up for molestation very young girls of twelve or thirteen years old.

The number of Izmailov's concubines was constant and at his whim was always thirty, although the composition itself was constantly updated. Girls of 10–12 years old were often recruited into the harem and for some time grew up in front of the master. Subsequently, the fate of all of them was more or less the same - Lyubov Kamenskaya became a concubine at the age of 13, Akulina Gorokhova at 14, Avdotya Chernyshova at the 16th year.

One of the general's recluses, Afrosinya Khomyakova, who was thirteen years old, was taken to the manor house, told how two lackeys in broad daylight took her from the rooms where she served Izmailov's daughters, and almost dragged her to the general, holding her mouth and beating her along the way. so as not to resist. Since that time, the girl has been Izmailov's concubine for several years. But when she dared to ask permission to see her relatives, she was punished for such "insolence" with fifty lashes.

Nymphodora Khoroshevskaya, or, as Izmailov called her, Nymph, he corrupted when she was less than 14 years old. Moreover, being angry for something, he subjected the girl to a number of cruel punishments:

Finally, they shaved half of her head and sent her to a potash factory, where she spent seven years in hard labor.

But the investigators found out, completely shocking them, that Nymphodora was born while her mother was herself a concubine and was kept locked up in the general's harem. Thus, this unfortunate girl also turns out to be Izmailov's bastard daughter! And her brother, also the general's illegitimate son, Lev Khoroshevsky, served in the "Cossacks" in the noble household.

How many children Izmailov actually had has not been established. Some of them, immediately after birth, were lost among the faceless courtyard. In other cases, a woman who was pregnant by a landowner was given in marriage to a peasant.