Rod and exclusive powers

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

Little is known about the history of the use of corporal punishment in Russia and the significance of this measure for the mental and physical health of people.

In ancient Russia, the so-called "pagan", corporal punishment was not particularly popular. And, apparently, did not even exist.

The usual measure of punishment at that distant time was a monetary fine (vira), although one can also find there a weak indication of corporal punishment, called in the sources "stream" and expressed in confinement, exile and, perhaps, in death.

All this, as impossible as possible, perfectly characterizes the soft nature of the peaceful Slavic tribes - "pagans".

The first inculcators of corporal punishment in Russia are representatives of the Byzantine clergy, who came to a foreign land with long-established views and beliefs, who grew up in the atmosphere of Byzantine monarchism and with mother's milk absorbed the spirit of Byzantine law.

Appearing in Russia in the role of guardians of the newly baptized country, the Greek clergy tried to lead the internal policy of a hospitable state, inspired the princes with the idea of the need to strengthen the supreme power, like the flourishing Caesarism.

The first sign of the strengthening of any ruling power is the strengthening of the criminal power, and the Greek clergy relentlessly repeated to the prince: “you are put to execution by the evil ones”, and the result of this sermon was that “they beat the whip at the bell” …

From that time on, corporal punishment in Russia began to increase in a rather rapid "crescendo".

The secular authorities "did not disobey" the spiritual fathers and, in legislative acts, formalizes this "advanced" Western ritual. So the "Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich" in 1649 prescribes corporal punishment for 140 cases of crimes and is already divided into several types.

Corporal punishment simultaneously penetrates into the spiritual environment: for example, Archbishop Joseph of Kolomna practiced whipping whips among his subordinates, stripping his priests naked and ordering them to whip them mercilessly, while he himself said: "Hit much, the dead are ours!"

Soon, the rod penetrated into the school, where its planters were mainly clergy. So, for example, Simeon of Polotsk wrote a hymn in honor of the rod, and priest Sylvester gave a whole educational code, where he preached: "Do not weaken the beating of a baby, but crush his ribs in his youth."

It is also curious to cite an excerpt from one letter of St. Dimitry Rostovsky, characterizing the views of the progressive people of that time on school pedagogy.

The saint writes: "children, children I hear badly about you … I am supplying you with Senor A. Yuriev to drill you, like gypsy horses … whoever opposes … will be awarded with a whip" …

Thus, the rod gradually, but firmly, took root in the Moscow state and, as AG Timofeev rightly puts it, “it was tricky to live in this state without experiencing any form of corporal punishment,” and there were a great many of these forms.

During his accession to the kingdom, Peter I made a revision of the "souls" and painted the peasants for one or another landowner: the estates then began to be evaluated by the number of "revision souls".

The landowner was responsible for ensuring that the peasants assigned to him did not run away and paid regularly the poll tax. For this they were placed at the complete disposal of the landowner. He tried and punished them, up to and including exile in hard labor.

And the peasants dared to complain about him on pain of the most severe corporal punishment; for filing a petition to the sovereign against the landowner as a "writer" of a petition (here it should be remembered that the peasants of that time were almost completely illiterate, therefore they could not write a petition), and the peasants who submitted it were subject to whip punishment.

Peter the Great brought from the West not only the technology of shipbuilding, but also pins, and cats, and molting.

For the military, the newly-named Emperor came up with:

1) carrying weapons: a soldier was loaded with dozens of guns and forced to stand motionless for several hours:

2) they put their hands and feet in iron; 3) they put them on bread and water; 4) they put them on a wooden horse:

5) forced to walk on wooden stakes; 6) beat without counting, at the discretion of the commander, with bathogs.

The landowner widely used the right of punishment granted to him to beat the peasant, and beat him brutally. For the slightest offense, sticks, whips and rods fell on the peasant's back in hundreds and thousands.

The primordial Russian punishments were sticks (batogs) and lashes, and the rods came to us from the enlightened West, from the German landowners of the Baltic provinces, they found that the rod was a punishment just as painful, but supposedly less harmful to health than the sticks.

At first, Russian landowners abused this "mild" form of punishment and ordered to flog with rods in the thousands and tens of thousands. Only gradually did they become convinced that rods could even more accurately detect a person than with sticks.

For this experience, probably, more than one thousand peasants paid with their lives, but not a single landowner paid with anything. For although there was no law that allowed the landowner to kill serfs, in fact they were tried only for murder only in the direct sense of the word.

Beating peasants was considered as commonplace as whipping a horse so that it could ride faster. The intelligent landowners of the 18th century, such as the author of the well-known "Notes" and the educated farmer Bolotov, talk about this without any shame.

Who describes how he beat the peasant five times in a row so that he would name his accomplice in theft. The peasant stubbornly kept silent or called people not involved in the case; those were also flogged, but of course they could not get anything out of them.

Finally, fearing to detect the thief to death, Bolotov “ordered that his arms and legs be wrapped around him, and, throwing him into a heated hot bath, forcefully feed him with more salted fish itself and, putting a strict guard on him, did not order him to give him anything to drink and kill him until then thirst, until he speaks the truth, and this was only able to penetrate him. He could not endure the intolerable thirst and finally announced to us the true thief, who was with him in a partnership."

Once, by torture, Bolotov brought one of his serfs to suicide, and the other to attempted murder of Bolotov himself.

But the conscience of this enlightened man, who wrote the book "A Guide to True Human Happiness", remained completely calm here, and the people tortured by him turned out to be "real villains, rebels and fiends".

And if the landowner's household means: rods, "feeding with herring", etc., were not enough, and the serf, not being afraid of all this, went before the assassination of the landowner or something like that, then the state court came forward with the same torture, but incomparably larger.

This court was again a landlord one: and the result of this arbitrariness was already an "official" whipping by the executioner.

One should not think that it was an innocent tool that peasants and cabbies used to drive a horse. The whip of the "shoulder master" (executioner) was a very heavy belt lash, the end of which was wrapped with iron wire and doused with glue, so that it was something like a weight with sharp corners.

This sharp-angled bump tore not only the skin, but also the muscles to the bone, and the weight of the whip was such that an experienced "master" could break the spine with one blow.

He did this, of course, not during torture (it was not calculated there), but during punishment: for the whip served as a means not only to obtain the truth, but also to punish convicts.

Everyone knew that if this number was more than two or three dozen, this was certain death, and 120 blows were appointed, and moreover, an experienced executioner could, as we know, kill with one blow, if the authorities ordered it.

And if the authorities did not want the death of the convict, and he was also a rich man, he could give a bribe to the executioner, so after a large number of blows he remained alive and even almost healthy. The punishment was very flexible and therefore doubly convenient.

For the nobles, however, Catherine completely abolished the whip, it remained only for the "vile" people. Her son Pavel restored the whip for the nobles, and, by the way, invented a replacement for the whip, introducing passage through the line for the military.

The convict was led between two rows of soldiers armed with sticks; everyone had to strike, and the authorities watched that they beat them properly.

They drove through the battalion, that is, a thousand people, and through the regiment, that is, 4 thousand people, the latter, like 100 blows with a whip, no one could withstand; it was again a disguised, hypocritical form of the death penalty.

In the dark kingdom of serf Russia, the voice of only one A. N. Radishchev sounded who wrote:

“The stream, blocked in its striving, becomes stronger, the more firmly it finds opposition. Having broken through the stronghold once, nothing in its spill can resist.

Such are the essence of our brothers, kept in bonds. They are waiting for a chance and an hour. The bell is striking! We will see sword and poison around us! Death and burning will be promised to us for our severity and inhumanity! And the slower we were in resolving them, the faster they will be in their revenge!"

A well-known humanist and writer of the Nikolaev era, Prince. V. 0. Odoyevsky, sometimes with his own hands cut his peasants and without regret gave them to factory work.

The emancipation of the peasants in Russia, by the manifesto of February 19, 1861, is always considered mainly as an act of humanity. In reality, it was also an act of state necessity, without which the further cultural life of Russia, even its very existence, was impossible.

By the time of the liberation of the peasants, almost all of the landowners' Russia had been pledged and re-pledged in the safe treasuries. Possessing free labor, the landlords unwittingly hindered the development of industry.

All industrial needs of their own, they tried to satisfy serf artisans: blacksmiths, carpenters, gardeners, shoemakers, lacemakers, tailors, even painters and hairdressers.

Some landowners' estates were the center where all the inhabitants turned to satisfy their craft needs, in the hope of the mercy of the magnate. It is easy to imagine what such a peculiar industrial luxury was worth!

This sad state of affairs forced the government to allow manufacturers and breeders to buy serfs in factories, and thus to factories and factories, all the disadvantages of serf labor were transferred, along with corporal punishment.

The labor for them and those serfs who were given to the factory owners by the landowners for a certain payment was no better. Thus, serfdom exerted the most harmful influence on the development of trade and industry in Russia.

The question of the emancipation of the peasants from serfdom, due to logical necessity, inevitably demanded the initiation of the question and the abolition of shameful corporal punishment.

Indeed, on June 6, 1861, the Highness ordered the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Chief Governor of the Second Branch of His Majesty's own Chancellery to submit considerations for mitigating and abolishing corporal punishment in general.

The committee formed as a result of this Imperial command, after a long debate, submitted its draft to the State Council for review, after which on April 17, 1863, a decree was issued “on some changes in the current system of criminal and correctional punishments.

This decree partially abolished corporal punishment in most cases (out of 140 articles). And at the same time, all the efforts of the Senate and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were directed towards the isolation of the peasant class.

And, finally, this isolation resulted in such an extreme form as the law of June 12, 1889, which removed from the general laws the entire civil circulation of peasants and expanded to the extreme the jurisdiction of special estate-peasant judicial administrative institutions.

As a result of this counter-reform, the peasant class found itself in approximately the same position in which it was under serfdom, with the only difference that the custodial discretion of the landowner was replaced by the discretion of the new custodial authority created by the said law - the zemstvo bosses.

Article 677 of the state laws says: "The villagers cannot be subjected to any punishment except by a court sentence, or by the lawful order of the government and public authorities appointed over them."

If earlier the landowner was punished with a feeling of "personal hostility", on his own, then from now on the punishment was carried out on behalf of the state by the same landowner who headed these structures.

The peasantry without exception met the act of "freedom" with hostility, convinced that "emancipation" was a new bondage in a different denunciation. The governor-generals, who reported to the tsar on the mood among the peasant masses after the announcement of the manifesto, were authorized to carry out the manifesto.

So, General Weimar reported that he pinned 20 people with rods for not recognizing the manifesto. The rods were trying to instill love for the new "will."

The answer to the rods and the manifesto were uprisings that erupted with renewed vigor, as follows: from 1861 to 1863 there were 1100 peasant uprisings in 76 provinces and volosts.

The peasant Anton Petrov, two months after the "liberation" manifesto, made a speech to the peasants of the village of Bezdna, Kazan province, in which he insisted on an uprising and the seizure of land from the landowners.

Two days later, Petrov was captured and shot. Together with him, several hundred insurgent peasants were shot and several thousand were flogged with rods.

Such is, in very, very short words, the history of corporal punishment in Russia, where they composed hymns to the rod, where they even put down a proverb, according to which two unbeaten ones are given for a beaten one. But times change, August 11, 1904. On the occasion of the birth of the Heir to the Tsarevich, the Imperial Manifesto was promulgated, heralding the abolition of corporal punishment in rural life, in the land and sea forces.

In a decree of December 12, 1904, the Governing Senate is ordered to bring "the laws on peasants to unification with the general legislation." But the note of December 10, 1905 in the press says the opposite, the laws are good on paper, but not in life.

“Horrors of the 20th century. [Chronicle of peasant troubles and unrest]. To the village of Chirikovo, Balashovsk. county, Sapat. gubernias, according to the "Son of the Fatherland", troops of all kinds of weapons were sent under the command of Colonel Zvorykin, from infantry to artillery and Cossacks, to suppress agrarian unrest, expressed, not in the example of other villages of Balashovsky district, in drawing up the entire sentence on the transfer of the lands of the surrounding landowners to the use of the community, and the estates remained completely intact and even in the estate of the landowner A. I. a cart of bread; the rest is all intact.

The next sin of this village was that it displaced the headman of the governor, who was illegally appointed in addition to the gathering, and installed the already elected by the entire gathering.

However, there was also a "sin": the next day after the announcement of the manifesto, the peasants walked around the village with a red flag embroidered with "Freedom of speech, freedom of the press." That's all.

The formidable colonel decided to root out sedition, stopping at nothing. A gathering was gathered among the entire male population and a savage reprisal began, forcing the horrors of serfdom to pale before itself. The peasants without hats were brought to their knees, and according to some unknown list drawn up, they began to summon the menacing eyes of their superiors.

- “Tell me who you were in the squad, you won’t say - I’ll screw it up!” - shouts the gallant Colonel Zvorykin.

“We didn't have any squads, your honor,” the answer follows, and then the “guilty” is undressed, left in one shirt, put right in the mud, and the Cossacks in dozens of hands begin to whip the lying person with whips.

They hit anything, the man turned over on his stomach, hit him on the stomach, on the head, beat him without counting until he got tired. The screams of those who were beaten spread far across the village, driving everyone into horror of wild tyranny and leading to powerless anger in front of such insolent mockery of modern guardsmen after the manifesto on the abolition of corporal punishment and after the last manifesto on personal inviolability. And, after all this, they want the peasants and the entire Russian society to believe in the law and the sincerity of the government!

In this way, 50 people were turned over from a village with an available male population of about 70 souls, and 43 of them were arrested.

They flogged both old people 60 - 65 years old and boys 17 - 18 years old. They flogged so that the next day it was impossible for the flogged to take off the shirt from the body.

All this flogging was a kind of interrogation with partiality, a desire to force testimony about the fighting squads.

By the way, a small detail: until now, almost none of the churches has read the manifesto, and where it was read, then with a rather peculiar interpretation, completely distorting the meaning of the manifesto, for example: "the inviolability of the person" - "no one can, except for the authorities, to carry out searches, arrests "… and so on in the same spirit."

All of Russia by the XX century, was a territory "in a special position"

Spontaneous uprisings and troubles at the mercy of the authorities or the owners of various industries have already become an integral part of the social life of Russia.

And, in 1879, military district courts appeared in the empire. Who are given the right to judge and pass sentences on punishment, including deaths, without appeal to a higher instance.

In 1881, at the time of a sharp reactionary turn against any manifestation of dissent, the Regulation on enhanced and emergency protection was introduced. And the time when this “provision” was created and its essence testified to the reactionary direction of domestic policy.

"Regulations" on emergency protection give the right to governors-general and mayors, among other things, to impose a sequestration on private property and income from them; remove from office officials of all departments and election officials, with the exception of persons holding positions of the first three classes; suspend periodicals, close educational institutions, exclude cases of known crimes and misconduct from the general jurisdiction, and transfer them to military courts under martial law, imprison for up to 3 months, etc.

The powers of the administration in the areas declared under the state of emergency protection are very close to the military dictatorship.

Local chiefs of police, as well as chiefs of gendarme departments and their assistants, both under martial law and under increased protection, have the right to conduct searches and seizures and detain persons who inspire solid suspicion of committing or preparing for state crimes, as well as those belonging to to illegal communities - for a period not exceeding two weeks.

This is on paper: according to the law … in reality a police officer in a volost or district is a tsar, a god over the illiterate population. He is a censor - he confiscates any book, magazine - "Not Permitted"!

He is the judgment:

Here in Kolpino - very close to St. Petersburg - in the garden of the restaurant, an official of the Ministry of Public Education Mokhov looked into one of the pavilions and saw there the assistant to the bailiff Epinatiev, who was drinking in the company of two police warders and several women, and said: "Is this how the police walk?" … The Kolpino ruler "considered himself insulted," ordered Mokhov to be arrested and held for a whole week in some basement."

In Turkestan, he was performing some kind of police post as headquarters. Golubitsky arrested Semyonov, who had appeared to him to receive the debt, and, without any arrest warrant, escorted him to the house of detention, where he was thoroughly beaten and put in a punishment cell.

On the complaint of the victim, the Fergana regional government brought Golubitsky to court, but the Turkestan governor general appealed against the decision to the Senate. When the Senate left his complaint without consequences, the Minister of War stood up for Golubitsky, but he failed to persuade either the administrative or general assembly of the Senate, who twice recognized the withdrawal of the Minister of War as unfounded.

A small fraction of the Russian press in 1912:

“Now this exceptional situation has become a part of everyday life and has created an absolutely impossible situation.

- We in St. Petersburg do not feel it the way the provinces feel.

- After all, there is no positive life there. All laws have gone

for a smark.

“All sense of regularity has been lost.

- No one is guaranteed that he will calmly walk along the street, because no one can foresee those very unexpected accidents that may happen to him. Everywhere there are some types standing under special! protection of the authorities: they behave so defiantly that you cannot always resist a collision. And then the type will always be right. And in recent years, this state of affairs, all developing, has come to the point that the whole provincial life is thickly colored by this specific way of doing things.

Most characteristic of all is that almost similar judgments have to be made.

hear from right-wing bureaucrats."

And almost no opinion in favor of exceptional provisions is heard at all!

Supporters of the monarchy very often refer to the share of acquittals in Russia and the low number of deaths in relation to the enlightened West.

And indeed it is: rarely - rarely in those years the news of some misfortune with the punished with the rod will slip through the press. No one kept statistics of those who were beaten to death or driven to suicide from shame after such executions.

And these are thousands, tens of thousands and millions who are ready to flare up for the outraged honor of their relatives and friends.