(^166) The Imperial Century, I 725-1825
was introduced at a time when the regular army was still in a formative phase.
1 his to some extent explains (but scarcely justifies) the extremely harsh
penalties that it specified for all n1anner of offences, major and minor: soldiers
still needed to be intimidated into giving their superiors the automatic and
unthinking ouc:uic:nce characteristic ot eighteenth-century armies. On behalf
of the statute it may be said that it defined in detail the functions of military
office-and rank-holders at every level, the composition and procedure of
military tribunals, and the standard penalties for various offences; moreover,
in these judicial instances it was allowed to vary sentences according to the
specific circumstances of each case, and confirmation by higher authority was
provided for. As in Western armies, the court included an auditor whose func-
tion was to see that justice was done. Officers were forbidden to punish their
men arbitrarily, to beat them cruelly or to injure them on pain of dismissal if
they did so repeatedly.^129 Instead they were enjoined to behave in a pater-
nalistic way, treating their subordinates as if they were their children.
It will be noted that the paternalistic principle was compatible with beating
as such: only 'cruel' punishment was discouraged. It was hardly reasonable to
expect officers to take this general injunction seriously, especially when the
law laid down such barbarous penalties for numerous 'major' offences: run-
ning the gauntlet (shpitsruten, from the German Spitzruten) was mentioned in
the statute no less than 40 times!1^3 ° Furthermore, the auditors had no judicial
training or genuine administrative independence. As NCOs or junior officers
they were inferior in rank to the court president, so that (as in Prussia) their
role inevitably degenerated into a formal one; their assent to a verdict could in
practice be taken for granted.
There were many other major deficiencies in the system of military law
which Peter established. The accused had no qualified person to help him
prepare or present his defence; the trial was held in secret; the preliminary
investigation (called Jerger, from the German Verhor) was conducted by the
same authorities that held the trial-and they acted as they thought fit, with
scarcely any formal regulation; torture could be used to extract a confession;
and commanders had wide discretionary power to punish men for minor
('disciplinary') offences without instituting legal proceedings or reporting on
the matter to their superiors. Last but not least, men in the armed forces, like
all other Russian subjects, were covered by the special procedure that per-
tained in cases of suspected political crime, which before 1762 at any rate
meant that anyone might be denounced and sent for investigation by the
dreaded Chancellery for Secret Affairs. This was the successor to Peter's
Preobrazhensky prikaz, which as we know had military associations.^131
129 Voinskiye anikuly, § 33 (PRP viii. 328); Yepifanov, 'Voinskiy ustav', p. 203. On the
Military Statute in general, see Shendzikovsky in SVM xii (I, i). 44-109; Rozengeym, Ocherki,
105-85.
130 Vish, 'Telesnye nakazaniya', p. 136; Shendzikovsky (SVM xii) p. 54.
131 Keep, 'Secret Chancellery'; on weaknesses in the statute see Bobrovsky, 50 let spetsia/'noy
•hkoly, pp. 4-6.
wang
(Wang)
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