The maniac could have gone unpunished if she had not encroached on the life of a nobleman in blind rage.
In 1768, the landowner widow Daria Saltykova was sentenced by the court to life imprisonment for the proven sophisticated murder of 38 people (her serfs and servants). She was suspected of sadistic murders of more than a hundred people. After 33 years, Saltychikha, as she was called, died in captivity.
The trial of the "cannibal" led to unexpected consequences.
Resonant case
The Saltychikha case received a great public response. Torture and murder of serfs were not uncommon in Russia, but for the first time they were brought to justice for this: the scale of the atrocities was too extensive. Today Saltykova would be called a maniac and a serial killer.
The trial became possible thanks to the fact that two serfs Saltychikha, whose wives she had earlier killed, managed to submit a petition to the Empress during the coronation celebrations of Catherine II in Moscow in September 1762. Earlier, serfs wrote complaints to the appropriate authorities, but they always returned to the landowner, and she fiercely took revenge on the complainants.
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It would seem that such circumstances should have convinced the Empress that she is the highest protector for her subjects. How did Catherine react? She launched the investigation and trial of Saltykova. But, apparently, not without reason, frightened by the precedent, she forbade, on pain of severe punishment, the serfs to complain about their masters to the Monarch personally.
Prohibition of petitions
The determination of the Governing Senate, confirmed by Catherine II on January 19, 1765, prescribed: “When someone who is not a Nobleman and has no ranks dares to bother Her Majesty with giving petitions to her own hands, then for the first daring to send them to work in hard labor for a month; for the second, with public punishment, send them there for a year, returning them after the expiration of the term to their previous dwellings; and for the third crime, with public lashes, to exile forever to Nerchinsk."
The attempts of the serfs to find justice for their masters continued, since, in the course of the same trial, on August 22, 1767, Catherine II issued a decree to the Senate, toughening the previously prescribed punishment. Now whipping and life-long penal servitude in Nerchinsk were relied on for the first attempt at filing a petition. This decree, which threatened with heavy punishments for those who “in due obedience to their landlords, will not remain,” the philanthropic Empress ordered to read in all rural churches for a month.
Showy shake-up of officials
But did Catherine know about the venality of Russian judges and that by prohibiting petitions, she robbed the serfs of the last opportunity to achieve justice? The story with Saltychikha, who for several years went unpunished due to her connections in the courts, was supposed to teach the Empress that the lower authorities in Russia are not fulfilling their duties. Well, Catherine drew attention to this side too.
An investigation was launched against the Moscow provincial government. For taking bribes from Saltykova and covering up her guilt, six officials were dismissed and prosecuted, among them the prosecutor Khvoshchinsky and the head of the police chief's office, Molchanov. This was the end of it. The authorities did not resort to a broader "anti-corruption" campaign.
How the grandfather of the poet Tyutchev left Saltychikha's revenge
We do not know how many more Saltychikhs who escaped responsibility thanks to Catherine's decree of August 22, 1767. And Saltychikha herself would hardly have been condemned if it had not encroached, among other things, on the life of the nobles. At one time, Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the famous poet, was Saltychikha's lover. Moreover, one of the versions of the legend says that Saltychikha forcibly kept him at home. But then Tyutchev wooed Saltykova's neighbor on the estate - Pelageya Panyutina - and hastily married her.
Saltychikha ordered her people to set fire to Panyutina's house so that both newlyweds would burn down in it, but the courtyards refused to obey the order. Tyutchev, having learned about the killers sent by Saltykova, who were supposed to wait for him with his wife on the road, turned to the police. It was in the summer of 1762. Had it not been for this case, Catherine might have not given a way to the serfs' complaint against Saltychikha.