Recruitment and Service in the Ranks 167
Those court-martial records that have survived have not yet been studied, so
that it is difficult to assess the quality of Russian military justice. The few cases
referred to in published sources concern senior officers, and it is an open ques-
tion whether in Pctc;'s ieign ordinary sukiiers were affected at all by the new
system. By the 1760s at least they were: military courts convened regularly to
hear cases involving murder, arson, robbery, and desertion,^132 but most other
offences were probably dealt with informally. This augmented the widespread
use of physical punishment, and explains why Russian soldiers passed their
brief lives in an atmosphere of continual fear and tension.
In other European armies running the gauntlet was an exceptional measure,
seen as the equivalent of a death sentence. In Russia it was regularly applied as
a means of enforcing discipline, and was prescribed for quite insubstantial
offences: appearing late on parade (for the third time), talking or moving in
the ranks, or holding one's weapon incorrectly (for the second time). m A
soldier who stole cash or goods valued at less than 20 roubles had to run the
gauntlet once on the first occasion and twelve times on the second; if he dared
to do so a third time he suffered mutilation and exile with forced labour-as he
did if the sum exceeded 20 roubles, unless his offence was adjudged a capital
one.^134 There were also lesser penalties: beating with rods (batogi), demotion
and transfer, detention in the guardhouse, 'sitting on the wooden horse' and
'standing under the musket'. The last ordeal involved standing to attention for
two hours bearing three (or even six) heavy muskets.
It was the gauntlet that typified the military penal system, and however
distasteful the matter may be some description of it must be given here. It sub-
jected the victim to the humiliation of a public beating by his peers. Their
involvement in administration of the penalty was designed to isolate the mis-
creant morally from his comrades, who were lined up in two opposing ranks to
form a 'street' (ulitsa), through which the prisoner, stripped to the waist, stag-
gered along while the men on either side struck him with switches (prut 'ya) or
thongs about one inch in diameter. To prevent him from moving too fast he
was preceded by an NCO who held a rifle with the bayonet fixed and pointed
to the rear. Any indulgence by his fellow-soldiers was itself construed as an
offence, and an officer rode alongside on horseback to ensure that the blows
were properly administered; the victim's cries were drowned by drumbeats.
Although his back would soon be reduced to a bloody mess, beating continued
until he collapsed-and in some cases even thereafter, for his limp body
would be placed on a board and carried along.
132 TsGVIA, V-UA, ed. khr. 88 (1763), II. 15-16. Sentences were regularly reduced on con-
firmation. In 1759 the government had suspended proceedings against deserters who failed to
respond to an amnesty appeal; they were to be summarily knouted and exiled to forced labour. But
this decree was not enforced lest it impair the flow of recruits. PSZ xv. 10987 (10 Sept. 1759), § 5;
TsGVIA, f. 8, op. 5, d. 5, I. I.
133 Anisimov and Zinevich, Jstoriya, p. 26. The authors of this work, writing in 1911, call these
penalties 'relatively light'!
134 Voinskiye artikuly, §§ 189, 191 (PRP viii. 364-5).