The Samara District Court found the peasants of the village of Chuvash Kalmayur guilty of sacrilege, the people received real sentences.
In the 60s and 90s of the 19th century, the police of the Russian Empire investigated a number of mysterious deaths that occurred in various parts of the country, which the famous journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky called ritual crimes. Reporters attributed to them the incident that happened in the Stavropol district a few months after the abolition of serfdom.
Terrible find
This story began at the end of May 1861, when in the Stavropol district, bystanders found two severed human bodies packed in bags. The police quickly identified the dead. They were recently buried residents of the village of Chuvash Kalmayur - a retired soldier Ivan Popov and a lonely peasant woman Marfa Kuzmina.
As the investigation found out, Kuzmina's house was on the outskirts, and she had a very bad reputation in the village. All the villagers told the magistrate that she was engaged in divination, witchcraft, often drank and greeted suspicious-looking strangers. The protocol even said that "the late peasant woman Kuzmina led a depraved lifestyle." Local drunks were also constantly visiting her, and one of the regulars was the soldier Ivan Popov. His friends later said that after visiting the "bad" house, Ivan was often drunk, but at the same time he also looked unusually cheerful and cheerful, as if this hermit with her witchcraft returned him a piece of youth, and the soldier's age was approaching 50 years.
Ivan himself said that Martha treated him to a strange potion, which does not seem to taste like vodka, but only after him the whole body seemed to be filled with an unknown force. As proof of his words, after one of these parties, he once knocked the village bull Fedka Khramov to the ground with one blow, who began to mock his story. After that, Popov easily lifted the nine-pound Fedka from the ground and, without apparent effort, threw him over the fence. This made a strong impression on the public.
True, this bodily strength from a retired soldier evaporated rather quickly. The next morning, after partying with the witch, he barely crawled out of his hut, and then it was already difficult to recognize yesterday's strongman in this at once aged drunkard. And his neighbors, seeing this striking change, were baptized and complained in a whisper that everything that was happening to Popov was nothing but witchcraft, and it would not lead to good.
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White dog
Therefore, none of the villagers was even surprised when a local drunkard, having come one morning in May to the house of Martha Kuzmina for a drink, suddenly flew out of her yard with a bullet and rushed down the street with a heart-rending cry: "They are both dead!" The villagers who ran to shout saw a sad picture. On a bench by the porch, leaning against each other, sat Marfa Kuzmina and Ivan Popov. One might think that they were just resting, if both did not have a glazed gaze and a strange expression on their faces, in which one could guess at the same time surprise, and death melancholy, and even fright. And when someone lightly touched the seated Popov on the shoulder, both bodies fell silently to the ground.
They sent for the police officer Dmitry Matveyev. It is worth noting that in the Russian Empire this was an elective position, to which a respected and wise peasant who was literate and knew the basics of legislation was usually nominated. His duties included conducting an initial inquiry on minor incidents in the village, and in the event of a serious crime - organizing the protection of the scene and summoning an investigator and a county bailiff to the village.
Dmitry Matveev, who arrived at Kuzmina's house, immediately sent messengers for representatives of the authorities and appointed guards who were supposed to guard the bodies until the police arrived, so that everything would remain unchanged at the scene. Everyone knew from experience that the investigator and his entourage would not arrive earlier than tomorrow. Therefore, with the onset of night, the guards decided to sit in the courtyard together so that they would not be so creepy in this witchcraft place.
In the morning a Sotsky policeman came to the house to check how things were going, and found both guards lying drunk in the bushes outside the yard. When the men came to their senses, they said that they had drunk moonshine, because they had endured fear at night. According to them, around midnight, something white, resembling a small cloud, suddenly appeared near Kuzmina's body. They cautiously approached and saw some strange creature resembling a white dog. She turned her head in their direction, opened her mouth and before their eyes began to grow, quickly reaching the size of a calf. The men stood and looked at this sight, as if paralyzed. The dog bared its teeth, the expression on its muzzle looked like an ominous smile, and suddenly the vision disappeared.
The district investigator, who arrived closer to lunchtime, wrote down in detail the story of the guards about the white dog, but expressed the opinion that this was nothing more than a drunken delirium. Meanwhile, the police found in Kuzmina's house the remains of some strange potion that smelled of alcohol, and the investigator wrote a conclusion that Kuzmina and Popov had poisoned themselves with a homemade alcoholic drink of their own making. The bailiff's assistant instructed the police officer to bury the dead in the village cemetery, so as not to arouse unnecessary suspicion among the residents of the district. With that, the district officials left the village.
Dmitry Matveev did not dare to disobey the orders of his superiors, and therefore both deceased, as expected, were buried according to the Orthodox rite on the third day after death. But soon after the funeral, a delegation of several village men and women came to the police officer's Sotsky with a demand to convene a village gathering. It turned out that for several nights after the memorable event, the villagers heard groans and screams from the side of the cemetery, and someone seemed to even see there figures in ghostly vestments.
It was perfectly clear to all the villagers what was the matter.
“These are the souls of the sorceress and her lover, who cannot find peace for themselves,” the men said. - At night after their death, Satan himself came for their souls in the form of a white dog, but he did not begin to do his job in the presence of the guards. We must remove the evil spirits from the Orthodox cemetery so that a curse does not fall on our entire village."
Punishment for sacrilege
As a result, the village gathering decided that the bodies of the wicked should be immediately dug out of the graves and taken away from the Chuvash Kalmayur - and let Satan do whatever he wants with them there. The policeman sotsky tried to object, but the villagers did not listen to him at first, and then they even promised to remove him from office. As a result, Matveev was forced to agree with the opinion of the gathering.
14 village men, the bravest and strongest, volunteered to go to the excavation of the graves. They tore them open quickly, and when they pulled the coffins up and smashed them, it turned out that there were no signs of decay on the bodies at all. This convinced the villagers even more of the correctness of the decision, because the most experienced of them said that only the corpses of sorcerers, whose souls had not yet been taken by Satan, did not undergo decomposition after death. Therefore, it was decided not only to take the bodies out of the cemetery, but to cut them into small pieces. The Tatar Ibyat Rafikov agreed to perform this action, but before that he asked to drink a bottle of wine.
The parts of the bodies of Kuzmina and Popov, put in bags, were put into a cart, and the peasant Guryan Ilyin took this terrible load 20 miles away, where he threw it into a ravine. And the remaining peasants, meanwhile, buried empty graves and poured water over them so that the growing grass would hide the traces of their crime.
By the decision of the Samara District Court, all the peasants who took part in the desecration of the graves were found guilty of sacrilege. Most of all went to the former police officer Dmitry Matveyev, who, although he did not take part in the excavation of the burial site, still could not stop the criminals and did not report the incident to the district police administration. By court order, he was sentenced to three months in prison. The rest of the participants in the action received two months in prison. At the same time, the Tatar Ibyat Rafikov, as not related to the Orthodox faith, the court ruled to punish "only" with 30 blows of rods.
Valery EROFEEV