Tatiana A. Volodina

Associate Professor, Doctor of Science (History), Professor of the Department of History and Archeology

Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University

(Tula, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-4-47-63

Abstract. The article analyzes the practice of corporal punishment in the Russian army in the period from Peter the Great to the era of Great reforms. While recognizing a certain army dynamics and development over such a long period, it worth noting that it still shared a common set of basic features, among which corporal punishment played a significant role. The main problem that the author of the article raises is the following: why, despite the oppressive regulatory framework and the frequent use of gauntlet, the Russian army demonstrated a high degree of corporate solidarity and remarkable effectiveness on the battlefield? The main sources for research are military court cases, introduced into scientific discourse for the first time. The article analyzes the tools formed in the army as regulators of the execution practice or could serve as its natural limiters. The author concludes that these tools worked differently in judicial and disciplinary punishments. Such limitations include the following: the ambivalence of the force applied by soldiers during punishment; the personal financial responsibility of an officer for "spoiling" a soldier, the use of the "Slovo i delo" (Word and deed) formula, and such a peculiar phenomenon of military procedural law as the "Rotá prisyagi" (The Oath). The author concludes that the written norms of military law in the process of their implementation in the realities of army life inevitably generated informal tools that served as limiters of excessive cruelty and arbitrariness. These tools and methods ensured the balancing of the army as an integral system and supported its functioning.
Keywords: Russian army, gauntlet, corporal punishment, "Rotá prisyagi".

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Volodina, TA 2023, ‘How Much is a Pound of Gauntlets? Punishments in the Russian Army of the 18th – early 19th Centuries’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 4 (16), pp. 47–63, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2023-4-47-63 (in Russ.)

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