The Story of Moscow

by Wirt Gerrare

In the reign of Ivan the Terrible, legal procedure was as follows:—

“When any dispute arises they appoint, in the first place, the land owners to act as judges, and these if unable to settle the dispute, refer the case to a higher magistrate. The complainant asks the magistrate for leave to summon his adversary to court; the leave granted, he calls an attendant (sergeant), cites the accused and hurries him along to the court. The attendant keeps scourging the man about the shins with the knout, until he can bring forward someone who on his behalf can satisfy the law. If he has no friend to go bail for him, the sergeant, grasping him by the neck, drags him along and subjects him to blows, until before the court to plead his cause. If it be a suit to recover a debt, the defendant is asked by the magistrate whether he is in debt to the plaintiff, and replies that he is not in his debt. Then the judge asks, ‘In what form can you make denial!’ The defendant answers, ‘Upon my oath.’ Thereupon the sergeant is forbidden by the magistrate to administer further blows, until the evidence makes the case clearer.

“The Muscovites are exempt from a great curse to a community, in that they have no pettifogging lawyers. Every man conducts his own case, and the plaint of the pursuer and defence of the accused are submitted to the prince in the form of written petitions, craving for a just sentence at his hands. When each party has supported his case with all the arguments available, the judge asks the accuser whether any arguments remain. He answers that he himself, or his champion for him, will, with a strong hand, make good his accusation on the person of his opponent, and he further demands leave to engage with him in single combat. Liberty to fight is accorded both disputants, who rush simultaneously to the onset. But if one or both be not strong enough to fight, they engage professional pugilists as substitutes. These men enter the lists armed, chiefly with a war-club and a hunting-pole. The fighting is on foot. He whose champion is beaten is cast at once in prison, where he is most shamefully treated, until he ends his dispute with his enemy. If of high rank it is not allowed to get proxies. If a poor man has incurred a debt, and is unable to pay, the creditor carries him off and makes him labour for him, yea he even lets out his services on hire to someone else, until by his labour he fills up the amount of his debt.”

Harry Best, an Englishman, made good his claim against a defaulter in a trial by combat, which resulted in an immediate petition by the Muscovites to the Tsar, to forbid foreigners engaging in the lists with citizens. As for criminals: thieves were imprisoned and knouted but were not hanged for a first offence; for a second offence, a thief lost the nose or an ear and was branded on the forehead; the third offence was punished with crucifixion, which was a customary penalty long after the days of Ivan IV. Impalement in various ways was also practised; heretics were burned; false-coiners boiled in oil; during winter the condemned were thrust under the ice and drowned. The long category of barbarous punishments borrowed from the west, being minutely followed in addition to excisions, amputations, mutilations and cruelties of local origin. One of these may be mentioned, “the death by 10,000 pieces,” when the condemned was cut away bit by bit and the parts seared to prevent death by hæmorrhage before it was necessary to attack a vital part. Another form of it was to insert a hook under a rib and pull the bone out of the side—the Muscovite equivalent of the western method of extorting money from Jews by the extraction of tooth after tooth. Ivan “Groznoi” practised even worse cruelties. The widow of one of his victims he put astride a coarse rope and drew her to and fro upon it until sawn through—in this rivalling the excesses of enthusiastic religious persecutors in the Netherlands. More refined was his fiendish practice of hanging in the doorway of a boyard’s house his wife, child, or some other loved one of the boyard, then compel the man to go to and fro past the corpse that day by day became more repulsive. Worse even than this did Ivan “Groznoi,” the cruel Tsar, but his worst need not be mentioned unless, at some future time, men name him not the “Terrible,” but call him the “Great.”

In the days of Peter the Great men were still impaled or crucified; were burned in small pens filled with straw; were beheaded on a block and “hanged as elsewhere.” Le Bruyn says, one day he saw a man burned alive, and in another part of the town a woman buried, with small tapers burning near her; and “all executions with such silence, that what takes place at one end of the town is unknown at the other.” Afterwards, were such barbarities as the Empress Elizabeth ordered to be inflicted upon the Boyarina Lapunof, and still later such cruelties as the Countess Soltikov exercised on her serfs. In fact the tale of Moscow’s woe was not told until the advent to the throne of that greatest of dead Tsars, Alexander II., the true reformer of Russia.

In the olden days the bearers of too illustrious names were forbidden to marry; others might not marry without permission first obtained; leave was necessary before one could carry arms. In times of peace it was unusual for weapons to be worn, a staff shod with steel took the place of sword or dagger, the voievodes only wore side arms generally. Trade was the privilege of the Tsar, and those to whom he granted the right; pen work was always done by humble secretaries or diaks—in the end they became the masters, rather than the servants of their employers.

In their bearing towards their superiors, ecclesiastic and secular, the Russian was abject in his deference; the customary mode of address being similar to that of the east. In Byzantium the petitioner prostrated himself and called, “May I speak and yet live?” In Moscow the Russ cried, “Bid me not to be chastised, bid me speak, I the humble, etc.,” and in Russian a petition, literally, is a “beating of the forehead” before superiority. Peter the Great did much to discourage the abject prostration of his subjects before the property of the crown, but as late as the reign of the Emperor Nicholas some serfs were compelled to uncover when passing any mansion of their lord, whilst other nobles expressly forbade it. The Church never expressly forbade prostration before sacred objects as Peter did before secular property, so in that, the old custom survives. But it is probably owing to the earlier use, and not particularly to the image of our Saviour over the Spasski Gate, that it is customary still to uncover when passing to or from the Kremlin by the state entrance. For in Russia when a practice has been once enjoined by a person in authority it will be continued until expressly forbidden. It is said that many years ago a distinguished visitor to one of the royal residences inquired why it was thought necessary to station a sentry in the centre of a grassplot in the pleasure grounds. It was then discovered that once upon a time, a Tsaritsa, long deceased, had noticed an early snow-drop budding forth at that spot, and expressed her wish that the flower should be protected. To ensure its safety a sentry mounted guard, and so for many years, day and night, in all seasons, a sentry continued to be posted there; for, although the circumstances had been forgotten, the order was conscientiously obeyed.

The rites of the orthodox church are not subject to change, and the ceremonies of to-day are practically the same as they were centuries ago. One of the most characteristic is connected with the periodical removal of some sacred picture from its ikonostas to a special service in a church dedicated to some other saint, or associated with a particular episode in the life of our Saviour. After a preliminary service, the ikon is taken down and reverently borne away by the priests appointed, attended by prelates, deacons, acolytes, choristers and the bearers of “standards.” These standards—znamia, literally “token”—are akin to the banners of the western Church; they are of diverse form, usually of metal, adorned with gems, and always have either a representation of a saint or some sacred symbol upon them. Some are but a fit setting to a small ikon; many are beautiful specimens of metal work, others are of curious design, all are attractive; and when, sometimes to the number of a hundred or more, they are carried aloft through the streets of the old town, they add greatly to the stateliness of an impressive pageant.

It is on such occasions as these—and they are many—that the attitude of the people towards their church may be studied with advantage, and the beholder will realise how strong is the affection of the orthodox for all that pertains to their religion. The great reverence shown the symbols, the fervour and sincerity of the greeting, are convincing evidence of deeply-rooted belief, simple piety and existing close relations between the Church and people. In short, a procession of this kind does more than suggest the religious phase of mediævalism, it is a revelation of its actual potency.

Easter is of course the great festival; then the Great Bell of Moscow thunders forth that Christ has risen, and the people embrace each other and with pious glee call “Vosskresenni Khristos” much as in the west acquaintance greet each other with good wishes at the new year. Students of comparative ecclesiasticism cannot afford to miss witnessing the celebration of the feast in Moscow any more than they can that in Rome.