Recruitment and Service in !he Ranks 169stupor some of their fellows asked him, through their NCO, to have the usual
penalty applied because dishonour had been brought upon the regiment. He
ordered each of them to be given 15 blows with rods.^139
Disciplinary controls were intensified whf'nf"v~r the empire v.-a.; ai war and
also, of course, depended on the whim of the autocrat and his or her chief
military advisers. Both Mtinnich and Shuvalov were leaders with an authori-
tarian cast of mind. They set up commissions to revise Peter l's military
statute, but with no practical result; as one official historian daintily puts it,
'changes in the application of military law occurred not by legislative action
but largely through practice'.^1411 In the 11.maylovsky guards regiment in the
1730s soldiers who made mistakes at gunnery trials were beaten with rods
'without any indulgence' (bez vsyakogo upushcheniya), although most of
them will have been of gentry background; one man was beaten before his
entire company for failing to denounce a comrade who falsely claimed to be of
noble stock.^141 Chernyshev's 1755 statute is said to have introduced (or
perhaps legalized?) the practice of beating soldiers with a cane or baton (palka)
for mistakes committed on parade, such as dropping a cartridge while loading
one's musket.^142 Peter Ill sought to improve morale by banning rods (batogi)
and the cat-o'-nine tails (koshka)-which probably had the unintended effect
of increasing resort to the gauntlet.^14 l
The degree to which the penal system was liberalized under Catherine II has
generally been exaggerated. Shortly after her accession the empress gradually
abolished torture in investigations by civilian agencies, but it persisted in the
military until 1782, when a decree was issued prohibiting it.^144 Court presidents
were instructed to take their cue from the empress's Nakaz of 1766, the
penological principles of which were derived from Beccaria. Perhaps for this
reason she ordered the decree to remain a secret, only divisional and corps
commanders being informed. Some years earlier, to mark her first victory over
the Turks, Catherine ordered that men in the ranks should not be whipped,
since this was 'a sentence of death' rather than a punishment, but she was
careful to add the words bez suda, 'unless the court so rules'; whipping
therefore continued.^145 Dubrovin claims that 'proceedings began to be taken
against [those who ordered] beatings and cruel punishments', 146 but offers no
evidence in substantiation. It would be nearer the truth to say that some
leading generals, anxious to maintain their standing at court, echoed
Catherine's own humanitarian sentiments without, however, either initiating
revision of the military statute or erecting effective legal barriers against
139 Glinka, Zopiski, pp. 168, 183.
140 Shendzikov;ky, in SVM xii (I. i.) 131-4.
141 Vish, 'Tele;nye nakazaniva'. p. I KJ.
142 Shcndzikovsky (.SVM xii) p. 1~2. Tc\I in VS 11 ( 1~71 ), pt. II, di. IV.
14) PSZ xv. 11467 (9 Mar. 1762); 1hc la11cr wa' med 111 lhc navv.
144 PSZ xxi. 15313 (I Jan. 1782).
145 PSZ xx. 14275 ( 17 Mar. 1775).
14~ Dubrovin, Suvoro1·, p. 107.