Penalties for Dishonour under the Sobornoye Ulozheniye of 1649, from Fines to the Knout

A word on Russian justice. Under the Law Code (Sobornoye Ulozheniye) of 1649, cases of dishonour were punished not only by fines but also by imprisonment or corporal punishment. The severity of the verdict depended on the standing of the injured party and of the accused, or, to be more precise, on their social status.

For the most part such cases ended in fines, and these were paid not to the treasury but to the offended party. A heavier punishment might be occasioned by the gravity of the insult, by attendant circumstances, or by the special position of the injured party. In July of that same year 1649, for instance, a servant who had insulted a close associate of the Tsar, an okolnichy named Khitrovo, was sentenced to a beating with the knout in place of the fine customary in such cases. The Tsar's counsellor can scarcely have been in such need of money as of moral satisfaction, while the culprit, one imagines, would gladly have paid a modest sum rather than be flogged.