The Russian Empire 1450–1801

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condemned a few days for repentance (the 1649 Lawcode mandated six weeks, but
that was rarely enforced) and to gather a crowd“to deter those watching from similar
crime.”Executions were generally by hanging or beheading (women who murdered
their husbands were buried in the ground; witches and heretics were burned).
In its violence, Muscovite criminal practice—torture and punishment—was
comparable to its European counterparts. All were painful and cruel. Muscovy’s
diminished use of capital punishment constitutes some mitigation, but the
alternatives—knouting and exile—were hardly benign. Knouting could be mild
or death-dealing depending upon the judge’s order to the executioner, while travel
to exile alone could kill, as could harsh conditions in the new land.
Early modern Russia constantly balanced the use of official violence with the
benefits of mercy. In the criminal law, judges routinely mitigated sentences in the
name of the tsar’s favor and mercy. Rulers awarded amnesties for special occasions
such as birthdays in the dynasty and holydays; they distributed alms on pilgrimages
and travels around their realm. How the state punished public unrest perhaps
demonstrates best its measured use of official violence. In 1648, 1662, and 1682
when urban uprisings rocked major cities in the center, the state responded with
massive investigations of suspects, but meted out punishment in gradations of guilt.
Ringleaders were publically executed in prominent spaces and scores were knouted
and/or exiled, all“to deter others”in the words of court transcripts. But hundreds
of rioters were not punished, the state perhaps realizing the futility of arresting
everyone and the greater benefit of mercy. Even in the massive Stepan Razin
rebellion on the lower Volga (1670–1), large groups of rebels were hanged in
prominent places to shock and deter, but at the same time, whole villages were
forgiven and left unpunished if they were willing to renew their oath of allegiance to
the tsar. Moscow’s rulers strove for a balance between the deterrent effect of pain
and the integrating possibility of forgiveness.


EMPIRE-WIDE CONTROL: BUREAUCRACY


Like the army and the criminal law, bureaucracy represents an institutionalization
of the state’s right to control and coerce. Empires had been ruled by bureaucracies
connected by networks of communication since before the celebrated Roman
empire. Certainly in the energetic state building of early modern Europe and
Eurasia, systematic recording of material and human resources—what Anthony
Giddens calls“surveillance”—and effective communication networks were essen-
tial. In Europe, monarchs and municipalities emulated the Catholic Church’s
record-keeping practices; professional lawyers and notaries evolved in the late
medieval period. As state apparatuses developed in early modern England, France,
German principalities and states, and Prussia, civil service became an acceptable
career, although military heritage retained superior social status. The power of early
modern states depended upon the strength of their bureaucracies as much as the
power of their armies.


172 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801

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