In society

The charms of the whip

September 29, 2008 Nikita Sokolov

On September 27, 1801, the name of Emperor Alexander I was ordered to the Senate “everywhere throughout the empire to confirm that anywhere or under any kind, nor in the higher or lower governments and ships, no one dared to do, to allow, nor to fulfill any tortures, under the fear of inevitable and strict punishment”, so that “the very name of torture, shame and reproach of humanity Approaching, it was applied forever from the memory of the people. ”

It was to smooth out what. The Russian torture system unassuming in appearance did not have exotic devices at its disposal, such as the Spanish Inquisition. But domestic masters used a meager home inventory with great art. The main instrument of torture was a whip. Yes, the reader will not mislead the word, we are not talking about the harmless shepherd Hlyst, but about unprecedented anywhere in the world of a rather sophisticated gun. According to the description of an attentive foreigner (careful, he experienced the action of the tool literally on his own skin) “The whip consists of pointed belts cut from the notable bull skins and attached to a short handle. To give the ends a greater elasticity, they are wetted in milk and then dried in the sun, so they become very elastic and at the same time firmly as parchment or bone. ” The whip was specially prepared for executions, honing the edges of the belts, as a result, he pulled out a large strip of skin from the back of a person, lifted on the rack, with every blow. The executioner could kill a man with three blows, but the art of Kata was to continue torture, without depriving the tortured life and even consciousness. The norm was considered 30 strokes for the “session” (the expansion said “Vespers”), but often, especially in political search, and up to 400 shocks of SUDA. The custom was supposed to be tortured no more than three times. Not pleasing his guilt on three torture was considered “cleansed blood” and was released. However, this rule was not strictly observed, especially in the investigation of “large sovereign affairs”. So during the Streletsky search for 1698, one dad did not obey, withstanding 12 torture, but he was still executed.

Blood -freeing the customs of the Russian “search” are described in historical literature in great details . And at first glance, the Alexander Decree only continues a number of humane well -wishes for previous compassionate Russian ruler. Indeed, even with the cheerful queen Elizabeth Petrovna, the use of torture was somewhat limited: they stopped torturing an amenicular who allowed the “in simplicity” an inventory in a monarch title, and children under 12 years old (the Senate wanted to remove all the youngsters up to 17 years of age, but the synod insisted at 12 years, because from this age, Russian subjects have married). Ekaterina the Great was repeatedly asked in private, so that the investigators would not be too zealous, and even in her “penalty” of the commission to compile a new Code after the fashionable Italian lawyer Cesare Beckaria loudly proclaimed that “the use of torture is disgusting to common sense, natural reasoning; Humanity itself yells against them and demands that it be completely destroyed. ” But the law did not cancel the torture. And not surprising. The torture was perhaps the most important tool for the statement of the autocracy.

This connection between the formation of Russian “autocracy” and “the charms of the whip”, which is much closer and has a much more strong substantial base than simply “rudeness of morals”, is known less than the inquisitive custom itself. The essence of this connection is that torture is an indispensable attribute of a “search” trial.

Antiquity our antiquity did not know torture as a routine reception of the judicial procedure. Both in ancient Rus' and in the specific period, the courts were publicly performed, and the “competition” process certainly dominated, consisting in a dispute between two equal sides before the judge, evaluating the testimony of internal conviction. The main engine of justice was a free citizen who belonged to both the initiative of the initiation of the case and the burden of proof, while the state power valued its judicial function only as a source of income and did not at all consider it as an instrument of influence on subjects in a desirable direction. Actually, only such a way of sending justice in Russia was called a “court” until the 18th century, when this type of process was finally supplanted by the state “search”.

As the “swelling” of the Moscow state and the power of the Moscow sovereign begins to spread far over the limits that the ancient free custom placed it. Since the end of the 15th century, state crimes (intent on the life and health of the sovereign, treason), and then - all criminal and even many civil offenses begin to be interpreted as an attempt not to private rights, but damage to the general state order. The state, accordingly, becomes not only a judge, but the only legal plaintiff in any case. And the “court” is gradually inferior to the inquisition “search”, in which the authorized state official at once is assigned the duties of the investigator and prosecutor, defender and judge.

The significance of the “search” for the development of “citizenship” a hundred years ago in an exhaustively outlined manner was outlined by the professor of criminal law of St. Petersburg University Ivan Yakovlevich Foynitsky. In the search process, he wrote, “The idea of ​​statehood ... absorbs all others: the rights of the individual are denied in the accused, who becomes the subject of the study, subject to experiments, the most severe in the name of state interest; These rights are denied in the accuser, who is replaced by the impersonal will of the law, who has striving to determine the movement of the process in advance; It is also denied in judges who are binded by the formal theory of evidence. ”

The judge is obliged to be guided in the search process when evaluating evidence not by “internal conviction”, but by “external” instructions of the law. The law, on the other hand, determined the power of evidence in detail, dividing them into “perfect” and not quite perfect. The most advanced evidence was revered by the personal recognition of the accused, and the most direct and simple way to obtain such recognition, of course, is torture.

The approval of the search process in Russia is hand in hand with the formation of Russian "autocracy". For the first time, its elements are found in the first Moscow “all-Russian” lawship of 1497, and he reaches absolute predominance in judicial practice in 1716, when “a brief image of processes” personally compiled by Peter the Great for military courts became a mandatory leadership for all courts in general.

Thus, one of his first orders as a full -fledged monarch (a decree was followed a week after the coronation) Alexander I, the pupil of the Swiss Republican Frederick Lagarp, made the most important turn to the liberation of citizens' subjects, which neither the meek Elizaveta Petrovna, nor the Russian Minerva, Ekaterina the Great, decided. This action would be of great importance, being built into a common chain of reforms, which was then discussed by the sovereign with “young friends” as part of an informal “unspoken committee” and later received the form of a completed and connected plan in “introduction to state laws” by Mikhail Speransky. However, the Russian Sphinx did not act on other parts of the plan. The monarch's will can never be quite consistent in the absence of binding public institutions, which are only able to ensure continuous improvement of public order.

The search process was strongly destroyed in the era of the great reforms of Alexander II with the introduction of new court charters in November 1864. But, which is characteristic, as soon as the state in Russia begins to “fluff”, the inquisition “search” and the inseparable torture with it are returning. So, on January 10, 1939, Comrade Stalin informed all the regional committees of the party with a special ciphermam that “the use of physical impact in the practice of the NKVD has been allowed since 1937 with the permission of the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ... the Central Committee of the All -Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks believes that the method of physical impact should necessarily be applied, in the form of an exception, in relation to the obvious and uniform enemies of the people as completely Correct and appropriate method. "