The History of Corporal Punishment in Russia

Nikolai Nikolaevich Yevreinov—a film director, playwright, theater theorist and historian—created a fundamental work devoted to the history of corporal punishments in Russia.

Atrocities of Ivan the Terrible during the era of the oprichnina terror, and Peter I’s executions of the Streltsy and the court aristocracy; the brutal suppression of peasant and Cossack uprisings, and violent methods of interrogation during the investigation of crimes. The rack, the wheel, the stake, quartering, tearing apart, cutting into pieces, roasting over a slow fire, skinning, and burying alive—dark pages of history that are hard for a modern person to even imagine.

However, the undeniable value of this book is not in learning about a long-defunct institution of corporal punishments, but in the “comprehensive study of the life and morals of a people who, for centuries, practiced mutilation, pain, and shame as lawful and customary means of influencing those who violated the law.”