In the name of freedom: Suicide, serfdom, and autocracy in Russia

Slavonic and East European Review

Volumn 82, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 268-291

  Morrissey, Susan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33748332540     PISSN: 00376795     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (110)

1. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Nizhcgorodskoi oblasti (hereafter, GANO), f. 5, 1828g., op. 45, d. 202, ll. 2-3.
2. This letter states only that Miasnikov's body had been found in a room located in a wing of the school. A memoir written by a fellow student recalls that he was found in the Gallery of Antiquity (which was located in this wing). This has not been confirmed by other sources but seems probable due to the way in which Miasnikov carefully constructed his suicide. For the memoir account, see I. K. Zaitsev, 'Vospominaniia starogo uchitelia I. K. Zaitscva, 1805-1887' (hereafter, 'Vospominaniia'), Russkaia starina, June 1887, pp. 663-91 (p. 669).
3. For the letter of the striapchii, see GANO, f. 180, op. 640, 1828, d. 15, l. 1.
4. For the letter sent to the Ministry of Justice, see l. 3, and Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsii (hereafter, GARF), f. 109, 4aia Eksped, 1828g., op. 168, d. 139, l. 2.
5. GARF, f. 109, 4aia Eksped., 1828g., op. 168, d. 139, l. 1. Results of the investigation were collected in this file.
6. For the report, which is dated 9 January 1829, see Rossiiskoi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (hereafter, RGIA), f. 1167, op. XVI-1826, d. 183, ll. 1-5;
7. for the decision of the Committee, see its official Journal (vol. 5, pp. 101-04) in d. 142d, ll. 280-83.
8. On the committee, see Hugh Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire 1801-1917, Oxford, 1967, pp. 202-06.
9. On suicide as a criminal offence in Russia, see N. S. Tagantsev, O prestupleniiakh protiv zhizni po russkomu pravu, 2 vols, St Petersburg, 1871, 2, pp. 401-46.
10. On honourable and dishonourable forms of punishment, see Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987, London, 1996, pp. 53-56.
11. In France, the introduction of the guillotine was seen as a social equalizer; see Dorinda Outram, The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class, and Political Culture, New Haven, CT, 1989 (hereafter, Body and the French Revolution), pp. 106-10.
12. For a fascinating discussion of method and suicide, see Alexander Murray, Suicide in the Middle Ages, vol. 2: The Curse on Self-Murder, Oxford, 2000 (hereafter, Curse on Self-Murder), ch. 13 and passim.
13. I am referring here to a secular tradition which I will describe in more detail below. A different tradition dating to the late seventeenth century is associated with the mass self-immolation of Old Believers, and this too had political connotations. See Georg Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia, Stanford, CA, 1999
14. and Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of the Antichrist: The Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855, Madison, WI, 1970.
15. On the history of the school, see P. Kornilov, Arzamasskaia shkola zhivopisi: pervoi poloviny XIX veka, Moscow and Leningrad, 1947 (hereafter, Arzamasskaia shkola).
16. Aleksandr Pushkin, 'Zamechaniia na annaly Tatsita', Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, 10 vols, Moscow, 1962, 7, p. 235.
17. On the overlap between the duel and some suicides as well as Pushkin's own thoughts on committing a suicide of honour, see Irina Reyfman, Ritualized Violence Russian Style: The Duel in Russian Culture and Literature, Stanford, CA, 1999 (hereafter, Ritualized Violence), pp. 16-17, 126 and passim
18. and A. V. Vostrikov, 'Ubiistvo i samoubiistvo v dele chesti', Smert' kak fenomen kul'tury, Syktyvkar, 1994, pp. 23-34.
19. See Reyfman, Ritualized Violence, and Iurii Lotman, Besedy o russkoi kul'ture: Byt i traditsii russkogo dvorianstva (XVIII-nachalo XIX veka), St Petersburg, 1994 (hereafter, Besedy), pp. 164-79.
20. On earlier notions of honour, see the excellent study by Nancy Shields Kollman, By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia, Ithaca, NY, 1999.
21. See Patrick O'Meara, K. F. Ryleev: A Political Biography of the Decembrist Poet, Princeton, NJ, 1984.
22. For an overview of the movement, including a reference to this scene, see A. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement, its Origins, Development, and Significance, Berkeley, CA, 1937, p. 164.
23. See Iurii Lotman, 'The Poetics of Everyday Behavior in Eighteenth-Century Russian Culture' (hereafter, 'The Poetics'), and 'The Decembrist in Daily Life. Everyday Behavior as a Historical-Psychological Category', The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, ed. and trans. Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Alice Stone Nakhimovsky, Ithaca, NY, 1985, pp. 67-94, 95-149 (pp. 86-87).
24. M. V. Nechkina, Dvizhenie dekabristov, 2 vols, Moscow, 1955 (hereafter, Dvizhenie), 2, p. 266.
25. See also A. E. Rozen, 'Iz zapisok dekabristov', Pisateli-dekabristy v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 2 vols, Moscow, 1980 (hereafter, Pisateli-dekabristy) 1, pp. 143-205 (p. 155).
26. Nechkina, Dvizhenie, 2, pp. 285, 398.
27. Sergei Gcsscn, Zagovor dekabrista Sukhinova, Moscow, 1930, esp. pp. 46-48.
28. See also Pisateli-dekabristy, 1, pp. 119, 155, 189, 395.
29. The death penalty was subsequently replaced by penal servitude, and I have found no evidence that desecration was widely practised. For the articles on suicide in the Military and Naval Regulations, see Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, first series, St Petersburg, 1833 (hereafter, PSZ), 5, p. 370; 6, p. 77.
30. On the formation and jurisdiction of the Regulations, see Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, New Haven, CT, 1998 (hereafter, Russia in the Age), ch. 3.
31. Despite many variations in law and enforcement, suicide was a felony offence in most parts of Europe at this time. Peter based his statutes on a Saxonian model. On the legal status of suicide in Western Europe, see R. Weichbrodt, Der Selbstmord, Basel, 1937, pp. 76-98.
32. On the history of suicide in general, see A. Bayet, Le Suicide et la morale, Paris, 1922;
33. George Minois, Histoire du suicide, Paris, 1995 (hereafter, Histoire);
34. Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England, Oxford and New York, 1990 (hereafter, Sleepless Souls).
35. On the reign of Peter the Great, see Hughes, Russia in the Age.
36. On the representations of power, see Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, Princeton, NJ, 1995, esp. pp. 42-78.
37. The link to political rebellion was made explicit in a 1722 decree directed at schismatics. For the synodic decree, PSZ, 6, pp. 742-46;
38. for the version, which includes a preface relating the tsar's order and the admonition to read it monthly, see Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia rossiiskoi imperii: Tsarstvovanie gos. imp. Petra I, St Petersburg, 1872, no. 588, pp. 232-35.
39. J. G. Garrard (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Russia, Oxford, 1973
40. and Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, New Haven, CT, 1981, chs 21, 33, 34 (hereafter, Russia in the Age);
41. Gary Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800, Princeton, NJ, 1985;
42. Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility, New York, 1966;
43. Douglas Smith, 'Freemasonry and the Public in Eighteenth-Century Russia', in Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (eds), Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1998, pp. 281-304
44. and Catriona Kelly, Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin, Oxford, 2002, ch. 1.
45. On the philosophical and literary debates over suicide during the Enlightenment, see John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France, Oxford and New York, 1981, ch. 12;
46. MacDonald and Murphy, Sleepless Souls, chs 5, 9;
47. and Minois, Histoire, chs 8-10.
48. See V. Zhirmunskii, Gete v russkoi literature, Leningrad, 1937, pp. 46-47.
49. Most of Rousseau's works (except Social Contract) and Voltaire's Roman tragedies were likewise translated. See de Madariaga, Russia in the Age, pp. 330, 338-39, 626 n. 14, 537.
50. Accounts of Socrates appeared frequently in journals beginning as early as the 1760s. See, for example, 'O smerti Sokratovoi', Sochineniia i perevody, k pol'ze i uveseleniiu, April 1760, pp. 362-67;
51. 'Smert' Sokrata', Rastushchii vinograd, July 1786, pp. 23-36
52. and 'O sokratovoi smerti', Novyia ezhemesiachnyia sochineniia, pt 71, 1792, pp. 55-67.
53. For pieces on Cato, see 'Pis'mo Katona k Iuliiu Tsesariu', Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskago slova, pt 8, 1783, pp. 34-39;
54. 'Monolog. Iz tragedii Katon, sochinennoi g. Adissonom', Novyia ezhemesiachnyia sochineniia, pt 25, July 1788, pp. 74-76;
55. 'Katon v Livii. Perevod iz Lukanovoi Farsalii', Panteon innostrannoi slovesnosti, pt 1, 1789, pp. 79-92 (untitled translation from Lucan);
56. St Peterburgskii Merkurii, pt 3, 1793, pp. 35-37;
57. 'Smert' Katona, ili Rozhdenie rimskago edinonachaliia', Ippokrena, pt 8, 1801, pp. 90-229
58. and Katon, tragediia, trans. Aleksei Kolmakov, St Petersburg, 1804.
59. More rare were also such pieces as 'Epigramma na smert' Liukretsii', Novyia ezhemesiachnyia sochineniia, pt 2, August 1786, p. 64.
60. Rousseau's passage on suicide was especially popular. See 'Samoubiistvo', Pokoiashchiisia trudoliubets, pt 4, Moscow, 1785, pp. 193-95;
61. Odnaia dama, 'O samoubiistve: Iz sochinenii Zh. Zh. Russo', Priatnoe i poleznoe preprovozhdenie vremeni, pt 2, 1794, pp. 117-21
62. and 'Samoubiistvo', Chto nibud' ot bezdel'ia na dosuge, 1800, pp. 257-62.
63. Many of these stories, including Bednaia Liza, are reprinted in P. A. Orlov (ed.), Russkaia sentimental'naia povest', Moscow, 1979.
64. As Dorinda Outram (Body and the French Revolution, chs 5, 6) has shown, a stoic ideal as embodied by Cato would form a primary model for the wave of political suicides during the French Revolution. Cato's death has inspired extensive commentary, both positive and negative.
65. See the extensive discussion in Murray, The Curse on Self-Murder, esp. pp. 116-18, 400-42, 309-15, and passim.
66. Zapiski Sergeia Nikolaevicha Glinki, St Petersburg, 1895, pp. 102-03.
67. See the reprinted version, V. Savodnik (ed.), Vadim Novgorodskii: Tragediia Ia. Kniazhnina, Moscow, 1914.
68. See also the discussion in V. Ia. Stoiunin, 'Kniazhnin-pisatel'', Istoricheskii vestnik, 2, 1881, 7, pp. 425-54, and 2, 1881, 8, pp. 735-64.
69. Hans Lemberg, Die nationale Gedankenwelt der Dekabristen, Köln and Graz, 1963, pp. 95-98.
70. Though I disagree with some aspects of his interpretation, the best discussion of Sushkov (including copies of his suicide notes) is the well-researched article by M. G. Fraan'e [Martin Fraanje], 'Proshchal'nye pis'ma M. V. Sushkova. (O probleme samoubiistva v russkoi kul'ture kontsa XVIII veka', XVIII vek, 19, St Petersburg, 1995 (hereafter, 'Proshchal'nye pis'ma'), pp. 147-67.
71. For a brief discussion but penetrating analysis, see also Irina Paperno, Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia, Ithaca, NY, 1997 (hereafter, Suicide as a Cultural Institution), pp. 13-14.
72. Finally, see V. M. Zhirmunskii, 'Rossiiskii verter' (hereafter, 'Rossiiskii verter'), Sbornik statei k sorokaletiiu uchenoi deiatel'nosti akademika A. S. Orlova, Leningrad, 1934, pp. 547-56.
73. On the reception of Voltaire in Russia, see P. R. Zaborov, Russkaia literatura i Vol'ter XVIII-pervaia tret' XIX veka, Leningrad, 1978.
74. Another example of a suicide influenced by Voltaire is that of Ivan Opochinin, a Iaroslavl' nobleman, who justified his 1793 act on purely rational (atheistic) grounds. For his suicide note, see L. N. Trefolev (ed.), 'Predsmertnoe zaveshchanie russkogo ateista', Istoricheskii vestnik, 1883, 1, pp. 224-26.
75. For a fascinating analysis of 'unbelief' in Russia that discusses the image of Voltaire, see Victoria Sophia Frede, 'The Rise of Unbelief Among Educated Russians in the Late Imperial Period', unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2002, pp. 1-44.
76. On Radishchev and his attitude toward suicide, see Lotman, 'The Poetics', pp. 87-94
77. and his Besedy, pp. 258-69
78. and Paperno, Suicide as a Cultural Institution, pp. 15-16.
79. Aleksandr Radishchev, Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu, Moscow, 1981 (hereafter, Puteshestvie), p. 103.
80. This is a reference to a serf who was also the accomplice of his cruel master and not simply to a serf as such. See Radishchev, Puteshestvie, p. 157.
81. This issue is discussed extensively in my 'Patriarchy on Trial: Suicide, Discipline, and Governance in Imperial Russia', The Journal of Modern History, 75, 2003, 1, pp. 23-58.
82. On the school, including an overview of its holdings, see Kornilov, Arzamasskaia shkola, esp. pp. 163-64.
83. See the account in Stupin's 1847 memoirs, 'Sobstvennoruchnye zapiski o zhizni akademika A. V. Stupina', Shchukinskii sbornik, Moscow, 1904, no. 3, pp. 309-482 (pp. 406, 409).
84. A. S. Gatsiskii, Liudi nizhegorodskogo povolzh'ia: Biograficheskie ocherki, Nizhnii Novgorod, 1887 (hereafter, Liudi), p. 153.
85. While Gatsiskii (Liudi, p. 153) mentions Stupin's hopes in this area, Zaitsev ('Vospominaniia', p. 669) privileges this aspect beyond all others.
86. L. A. Kogan, Krepostnye vol'nodumtsy (XIX vek), Moscow, 1966, p. 71.
87. As Paperno shows, science cannot provide an explanation for suicide, which is instead best understood as a 'cultural institution: a practice associated with patterns of symbolic meaning adapted to the general ends of culture and specific needs of society'. See her Suicide as a Cultural Institution, pp. 2-3.
88. N. N. Bantysh-Kamenskii, 'Moskovskie pis'ma v poslednie gody Ekaterininskogo tsarstvovaniia' (hereafter, 'Moskovskie pis'ma'), Russkii arkhiv, 1876, 11, pp. 257-84 (p. 274).
89. By one account, Catherine reputedly commented: 'What an education! Christian law was not inculcated [in him]' ('vot kakoe vospitanie! Ne vkorenen zakon khristianskii'). See N. Barsukov (ed.), Dnevnik A. V. Khrapovitskogo, 1782-1793, St Petersburg, 1874, pp. 405-06. According to another version, she later said to Sushkov's uncle and her personal secretary, 'I am sorry for the father and mother who lost such a son. But I pity him even more.
90. If he had remained alive, we would soon have forgotten about Voltaire'. Cited in Fraan'e, 'Proshchal'nye pis'ma', p. 158.
91. For Karamzin's response, including a reference to Sushkov's letter (a copy) in his possession, see Ia. Grot and P. Pekarskii (eds), Pis'ma N. M. Karamzina k I. I. Dmitrievu, St Petersburg, 1866, p. 30.
92. For the report, see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov (hereafter, RGADA), f. 16, d. 582, ch. 3, l. 132.
93. Actual suicides did sometimes provide the material for sentimental literature. A. I. Klushin's 'Neschastnyi M-v' (Russkaia sentimental'naia povest', pp. 119-41) was apparently based on the suicide of two Vyrubov brothers
94. which were mentioned as well by Bantysh-Kamenskii ('Moskovskie pis'ma', pp. 276, 277-78) with a reference to the 'English disease'.
95. See Zhirmunskii, 'Rossiiskii Verter', p. 549.
96. Nikolai Strakhov, Moi Peterburgskie sumerki, St Petersburg, 1810, pp. 44-54.
97. 'Doneseniia gubernatora Petra Konovnitsyna po upravleniiu Peterburgskoi gubernii', RGADA, f. 16, d. 526, chs 1-7; here ch. 1, l. 5.
98. On administrative reforms under Catherine the Great, see J. P. LeDonne, Absolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political Order, 1700-1825, New York, 1991;
99. Marc Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600-1800, New Haven, CT, 1983, pp. 181-250
100. While the statutes in the Military and Naval Regulations redefined suicide into a crime and thus shifted its jurisdiction from the church to secular authorities, actual practice lagged behind. In his study of crime in eighteenth-century Moscow, Christoph Schmidt used local archival collections and failed to find prosecutions for suicide. My own research confirms this as well. See his Sozialkontrolle in Moskau: Justiz, Kriminalität und Libeigenschaft 1649-1785, Stuttgart, 1996.
101. To the best of my knowledge, the first mention of suicide in a statistical context was by Genrikh Liudvig fon Attengofer in his Mediko-topograficheskoe opisanie Sanktpeterburga, St Petersburg, 1820, p. 142.
102. For further discussion of the relationship between suicide and drunkenness, see my 'Drinking to Death: Suicide, Vodka, and Religious Burial in Russia', Past and Present (forthcoming).
103. V. Androssov, Statisticheskaia zapuka o Moskve, Moscow, 1832 (hereafter, Statisticheskaia zapiska), pp. 87-89.
104. Statisticheskie svedeniia o Sanktpeterburge, St Petersburg, 1836 (hereafter, Statisticheskie svedeniia), pp. 191-92.
105. Androssov, Statisticheskaia zapiska, pp. 87-89.
106. Statisticheskie svedeniia, 196;
107. See also Alcksandr Bashutskii, Panorama Sanktpeterburga, St Petersburg, 1834, pp. 91-93.
108. The view that education should be appropriate to one's social station underlay policy making on the highest levels in this period, and concerns were often raised about educating peasants. See Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914, Berkeley, CA, 1986, ch. 1.
109. On the subversiveness of suicide as well as our own attempts to deny it, see Lisa Lieberman, Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide, Chicago, IL, 2003.
110. For further discussion, see Howard I. Kushner, 'Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Medical and Social Thought', Journal of Social History, 1, 1993, pp. 461-90.