Table of contents:
- Legalized fight against religious dissent in the Russian Empire
- Court cases for obscene words and a condition for mitigation of punishment
- Funeral wedding and accusations of sacrilege
- The fall of the autocracy and the abolition of the most important articles
Video: Prisons of dissidents: How religious apostates were dealt with in the Russian Empire
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
It was customary to punish for insulting the feelings of the faithful (Orthodox) in the Russian Empire. Moreover, this happened with no less enthusiasm than during the repressions of the 1930s. Dissent in Russia was not only political, but religious until 1917. And the methods of persecution in some cases, even in the enlightened 20th century, were not inferior to the medieval European Inquisition.
Legalized fight against religious dissent in the Russian Empire
The persecution of dissidents was carried out in accordance with a separate document, an analogue of the current Criminal Code - "Code on penal and correctional punishments." For witchcraft or sorcery, a real long term, and sometimes a lifelong exile to Siberia was relied on. Healers, lovers of bewitching and casting the evil eye were also awarded imprisonment. The state censured even the disseminators of unpopular information about the origin and structure of the Universe, if they contradicted the biblical theory.
In the Code, a rather voluminous section was devoted to such measures of influence, because until 1917 the Orthodox Church in Russia was officially the most important element of the state structure. Deliberate or accidental humiliation of the Orthodox Church or its ministers was called blasphemy. Responsibility overtook even those who verbally dared to offend both religion as a whole and questioned its individual dogmas. Moreover, these laws extended exclusively to Orthodoxy. As for any other confessions, their canons could be reviled with absolutely impunity.
Court cases for obscene words and a condition for mitigation of punishment
In accordance with the Code, one could be sentenced to hard labor for up to 15 years for blasphemy against Jesus Christ within the church walls. It was also punishable to utter obscene words outside churches, in public places. Only the term was shorter - 6-8 years in prison. The permissiveness concerned only those who blasphemed, so to speak, without malicious intent - in a state of alcoholic intoxication. A drunkard who encroached on a holy thing was threatened with imprisonment at most for several months. From the archives of the Samara District Court, some similar facts of the period of the 19-20 centuries are known.
One of the investigations concerned a young Ukrainian peasant, Tambovtsev. Being heavily drunk, he allowed himself to speak obscenely in the walls of the wine shop. Those present reprimanded him, they say, one cannot behave like that in a room where the walls are hung with holy images. In response to this, Tambovtsev only became more furious, cursing not only those who were dissatisfied with his behavior, but also the icons and everyone depicted on them. For these liberties, he was immediately taken to the police station, where, having sober up, he admitted that he did not even remember anything of the kind, therefore he was not able to explain his behavior. Given the "mitigating" circumstances, the court sent him to prison for 6 months, which was a fairly tolerable punishment. But the court did not always make allowances for drunkenness. The 44-year-old Samara peasant Tkachenkov, who publicly swore at the owner of the tavern where he drank, and then the Lord God himself, got much worse. Despite all the assurances of the judges that "the devil misguided and the bitter took the upper hand," the swearing man ended up in prison for a whole year and a half.
Funeral wedding and accusations of sacrilege
In the summer of 1904, Nicholas II signed a manifesto, which softened punitive measures in the empire in the case of blasphemers. The results were not long in coming. The very next year, the peasant Bezrukov, who had made obscene remarks about the Holy Trinity, received only a week of arrest. The same insignificant sentence was passed on the peasant Novoseltsev, who cursed God and all his close saints. Even shorter was the conclusion of the blasphemer Martyanov, who publicly questioned the sanctity of the Trinity. He had to atone for his guilt in only some three days.
A case is known from the archives when a criminal case was opened against a whole group of peasants. They were charged with blasphemy against the Orthodox Church, which from the outside looked more like an anecdote. And it was like this. In January 1891, almost the entire village of Amanak celebrated a local wedding. On the first day, all the guests gathered in the groom's parental home, and later moved to the bride's territory. There, something happened, for which then everyone had to answer before the law. The groom's relative, who was drunk to an unconscious state, was decided to be laid on the boards to be transported home. The groom's father, warmed up by abundant libations of alcohol, such a procession strongly resembled a funeral procession. And he invited the others to play a whole theatrical performance with a bast shoe instead of a censer and a smoldering coal instead of incense. At the same time, the crowd sang obscene ditties, according to the script, replacing the funeral psalms. On the way, the participants in the show invited passers-by to an impromptu commemoration, and the main character was repeatedly dropped from his rookery to the ground.
After several falls, he actually died, having smashed his head on a stone. And the wedding ended no longer with a staging, but with a real funeral. At the end of the trial, the defendants were accused not of fatal mutilation, but of mockery of funeral church rites. However, due to massive alcohol intoxication, the judge did not recognize the actions of the participants in the process as intentional. Death was found to be due to abuse and all defendants were acquitted.
The fall of the autocracy and the abolition of the most important articles
Taking into account the observance of all articles of the Code, the district courts of the Russian provinces called tens of thousands of inhabitants of the empire to account. Violators of the law accused under ideological articles spent years in prisons and exiled to the most distant regions of the state. Since the pre-revolutionary archives have not reached our days in full, there are no exact figures. Yes, and with the fall of the tsarist autocracy, yesterday's serious articles of the law ceased to be in force. By the decree of the Provisional Government, thousands of prisoners returned from exile and prisons. The people who breathed freedom with full breast did not yet know that very soon the punishment for blasphemy would only be transformed into responsibility for political dissent. And everyone will have to answer for misconduct in the same places of detention.
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