Much has been written and said about the methods of ideological struggle in our country in Stalin's times. It has long been no secret that in those years one could go to places not so distant not only for an anecdote about the "leader of all peoples", but also simply for careless words about the Communist Party and the Soviet government. However, now no one remembers that dissidents in Russia were persecuted even before 1917. This happened on a scale no less than even under Stalin.
Shards of the Middle Ages
In the coming year in Russia, two round dates are celebrated at once, directly related to the system of domestic jurisprudence. Exactly 180 years ago, the work of the commission of Count Mikhail Speransky was completed, which, in accordance with the decree of Nicholas I, carried out the systematization of Russian legislation, and 95 years ago the Provisional Government canceled the operation of the most odious of these laws.
Now, few people know that in accordance with the "Code on criminal and correctional punishments" (an analogue of the modern Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), developed on the basis of Speransky's Code of Laws, even at the beginning of the enlightened XX century, the authorities persecuted Russian citizens for dissent in about the same way, as the European Inquisition did back in the XIV-XVII centuries.
In particular, a considerable prison term or lifelong exile to Siberia could then be obtained for witchcraft and sorcery, for treating people with witchcraft methods (now they are called traditional medicine methods), for divination and targeting the evil eye, and even for disseminating information about the origin and structure of the Universe. contrary to biblical teaching.
Since until 1917 the Orthodox Church in our country was officially considered one of the most important elements of the state structure, a whole section of the Code … was devoted to punitive measures for those citizens who dared, with or without intent, to somehow humiliate the Orthodox Church or its hierarchs (this was called "blasphemy against the church").
Punishment also awaited those who, by word or action, insulted the entire Christian religion as a whole or its individual dogmas, that is, committed blasphemy. However, the law extended these punitive measures only to protect Orthodoxy. In tsarist Russia, it was possible to defame the canons of other religions, as well as the priests of all other confessions, with impunity in every possible way.
At the same time, in accordance with the "Code …" for blasphemers, considerable terms of imprisonment were provided. In particular, for "blasphemy" against Jesus Christ in the premises of the church, the guilty person could be sent to hard labor for a period of 12 to 15 years, and for the same words, but spoken not in the temple, but in any other public place, - from 6 up to 8 years old. But if someone blasphemed in front of witnesses without malicious intent, but "out of unreason, ignorance or drunkenness," then he was sentenced to "only" imprisonment for a term of no more than 1 year and 4 months.
For obscene words
Here are just some facts on this score from the practice of the Samara District Court of the late XIX - early XX centuries. The case was investigated against 25-year-old Pyotr Tambovtsev, a peasant from the village of Ukrainka. One of the April days in 1890, being drunk, he went to a local wine shop, where he began to swear abusively. Other visitors noticed to him that he was uttering obscene words in the room where the holy icons were hanging. In response, Tambovtsev "also cursed the icons and witnesses for the offer to take off the cap in front of the icons … for which he was pushed out into the street by the neck."
Tambovtsev was taken to the police, where he sobered up the next day and explained that he did not remember anything he had said because of the vodka he had drunk. By a court decision, the blasphemer was sentenced to imprisonment for six months.
A similar charge was brought against 44-year-old Trofim Tkachenkov, a peasant from the village of Lopatino, who in September 1892, in a state of intoxication in a local tavern, cursed first the innkeeper, and then the Lord God. Later, the accused assured the investigation and the court that he did not remember whether he uttered any blasphemous words at all. Nevertheless, the court did not believe him, but the witnesses, and the swearing man eventually went to prison for a year and a half.
Only after Emperor Nicholas II signed the All-Merciful Manifesto of August 11, 1904, the penalties for blasphemy and other similar crimes were significantly reduced in the empire. So, in February 1905, 23-year-old peasant Ivan Bezrukov was sentenced to only seven days of arrest for obscene words.
The same term was received by the 33-year-old peasant Ivan Novoseltsev, who, in the building of the volost administration of the village of Maksimovka, Buzuluk uyezd, in a drunken state, “scolded the police officer Sotsky Anti-Pov, and when he took him out of the public place, he cursed God and the saints with the same abuse . And 45-year-old peasant Vasily Martyanov from the village of Tashla spent only three days under arrest for public blasphemy of the Holy Trinity by a court decision.
Here you can recall similar laws of Stalin's times, when, under similar circumstances, men who cursed the "leader of all peoples" usually went to camps for at least ten years …
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Fun in Russia is drinking
But the case, after which a criminal case was initiated against the peasants of the village of Amanak for committing blasphemy against the Orthodox Church, can be called anecdotal without exaggeration. On that January day in 1891, almost the entire village was celebrating a wedding. The peasant Yakov Plotnikov married his 20-year-old daughter Aksinya to a 24-year-old fellow villager Ivan Berezin. First, the guests and relatives of the newlyweds gathered in the house of the groom's father, Alexei Berezin, and then the whole company decided to go to the house of the bride's father. Then an incident happened, which was then discussed for a long time in the village.
When everyone was getting ready to go, it turned out that 30-year-old Timofey Popov, a distant relative of the groom, could not get up due to severe intoxication. Some of the guests suggested taking the sleeping Popov to a new place, putting him on two boards. For the groom's father, Alexei Berezin, who by that time was also very tipsy, such a procession seemed like a funeral. Taking an old bast shoe, he put a smoldering coal in it and walked ahead of everyone, waving the smoking bast shoe like a censer, while singing obscene ditties instead of psalms.
Most of the participants in the action immediately picked up Berezin's play and began to pretend to be a funeral procession, inviting everyone they met to a "commemoration for the untimely deceased Timofey Popov." During the passage through the village, the "deceased" was dropped several times from the boards, and it all ended with the fact that during the next fall Popov hit his head on a stone, from which a few minutes later he actually died.
This is how the wedding ended with a real, not a comic funeral. As a result of the investigation, Alexey Berezin and 11 other residents of the village of Amanak were brought to trial, although at least 50 people participated in the unfortunate procession. Moreover, the defendants were accused not of causing death to Timofey Popov, but of mockery of church funeral rites (sacrilege).
However, the judge hearing this case came to the conclusion that the peasants had no intention of committing blasphemy that day, "for they did not know what they were doing." It was an ordinary Russian wedding with massive drinking and immoderate fun, during which the groom's father simply joked unsuccessfully. As for Popov, he, according to the expert, became a victim of his own drunkenness, from which he died. As a result, all the accused were acquitted by the court decision.
End of "Regulations"
During the entire existence of the Samara District Court (from 1870 to 1917), tens of thousands of residents of the province were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and exile in remote areas of the empire under the aforementioned "ideological" articles of the "Penal Code". These figures are approximate, because the pre-revolutionary judicial archive has not been completely preserved to this day.
The effect of all such articles of tsarist legislation was canceled only after the fall of the autocracy in Russia, about which the decree of the Provisional Government of Russia of March 6, 1917 was adopted. Numerous “prisoners of conscience” returned from prisons and exile. However, at that moment they, inspired by freedom, did not even suspect that in a few months another wave of repression would roll across the country, the basis for which will now be not Christian, but communist ideology.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №19. Author: Valery Erofeev