💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › leo-tolstoy-shame.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:16:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Shame! Author: Leo Tolstoy Date: 1895 Language: en Topics: Russia, crime Source: Original text from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10504, 2021.
There was a time between 1820 and 1830 when the officers of the Semenof
regiment the flower of the youth at that time; men who were for the most
part Freemasons, and subsequently Decembrists[1]—decided not to use
corporal punishment in their regiment, and, notwithstanding the
stringent discipline then required, theirs continued to be a model
regiment without corporal punishment.
The officer in charge of one of the companies of this same Semenof
regiment, meeting Serge Ivanovitch Muravief—one of the best men of his,
or indeed of any, time,—spoke of a certain soldier, a thief and a
drunkard, saying that such a man can only be tamed with rods. Serge
Muravief did not agree with him, and proposed to transfer the man into
his own company.
The transfer was made, and almost the next day the soldier stole a
comrade's boots, sold them for drink, and made a disturbance. Serge
Ivanovitch mustered the company, called out the soldier, and said to
him: "You know that in my company we neither strike men nor flog them,
and I am not going to punish you. I shall pay, with my own money, for
the boots you stole; but I ask you, not for my sake, but for your own,
to think over your way of life, and to amend it." And after giving the
man some friendly counsel, Serge Ivanovitch let him go.
The man again got drunk and fought, and again he was not punished, but
only exhorted:—
​"You are doing yourself great harm. If you will amend, you yourself will
be the better for it. Therefore I ask you not to do these things any
more."
The man was so struck by this new kind of treatment that he completely
altered, and became a model soldier. This incident was related to me by
Serge Ivanovitch's brother, Matthew Ivanovitch, who, like his brother,
and all the best men of his day, considered corporal punishment a
shameful relic of barbarism, disgraceful to those who inflict it, rather
than to those who endure it. When telling this story he could never
refrain from tears of emotion and delight. And, indeed, for those who
heard him tell it, it was hard not to follow his example.
That is how educated Russians, seventy-five years ago, regarded corporal
punishment. And in our day, seventy-five years having gone by, the
grandsons of these men take their places as magistrates at sessions, and
calmly discuss whether such and such a full-grown man (often the father
of a family, or sometimes even a grandfather) should or should not be
flogged, and how many strokes of the rod he ought to have.
The most advanced of these grandsons, meeting in committees and local
government councils, draw up declarations, addresses, and petitions, to
the effect that, on certain hygienic or pedagogic grounds,[2] it would
be better not to flog all the muzhiks (people of the peasant class), but
only those who have not passed all the classes of the national schools.
Evidently a great change has occurred in what we call the educated upper
classes. The men of the twenties, considering the infliction of corporal
punishment to be disgraceful to themselves, were able to get rid of it
even in the military service where it was deemed indispensable; but the
men of our day calmly apply it, not to ​soldiers only, but to any man of
one special class of Russian people, and cautiously, diplomatically, in
their committees and assemblies, draw up addresses and petitions to the
government, with all sorts of reservations and circumlocutions, saying
that there are hygienic objections to punishment by flogging, and
therefore its use should be limited; or that it would be desirable only
to flog those peasants who have not gone through a certain school
course; or not to flog peasants referred to in the manifesto issued on
the occasion of the Czar's marriage.
Evidently a terrible change has taken place among the so-called upper
classes of Russian society. And what is most astonishing is, that it has
come about just while,—in the very class which it is considered
necessary to expose to this revolting, coarse, and stupid torture by
flogging,—during these same seventy-five years, and especially during
the last thirty-five years (since the emancipation of the serfs), an
equally important change has taken place in the contrary direction.
While the upper, governing classes have sunk to a plane so coarse and
morally degraded that they have legalized flogging, and can calmly
discuss it, the mental and moral plane of the peasant class has so
risen, that corporal punishment has become for them, not only a
physical, but also a moral torture.
I have heard and read of cases of suicide committed by peasants
sentenced to be flogged, and I cannot doubt that such cases occur, for I
have myself seen a most ordinary young peasant turn white as a sheet,
and lose control of his voice, at the mere mention, in the District
Court, of the possibility of it being inflicted on him. I have seen how
another peasant, forty years old, who had been condemned to corporal
punishment, wept, when—in reply to my inquiry whether the sentence had
been executed—he had to reply that it had been.
I know, too, the case of a respected, elderly peasant of my
acquaintance, who was sentenced to flogging because he had quarreled
with the starosta, not noticing that the starosta was wearing his badge
of office. The man was brought to the District Court, and from there ​to
the shed in which the punishment is usually inflicted. The watchman came
with the rods, and the peasant was told to strip.
"Parmen Ermil'itch, you know I have a married son," said the peasant,
addressing the starshina, or elder, and trembling all over. "Can't this
be avoided? You know it's a sin."
"It's the authorities, Petrovitch; I should be glad enough myself,—but
there's no help for it," replied the elder, abashed.
Petrovitch undressed and lay down.
"Christ suffered and told us to," said he.
The clerk, an eye-witness, told me the story, and said that every man's
hand trembled, and none of those present could look into one another's
eyes, feeling that they were doing something dreadful. And these are the
people whom it is considered necessary, and probably for some reason
advantageous, to beat with rods like animals—though it is forbidden to
torture even animals.
For the benefit of our Christian and enlightened country it is necessary
to subject to this most stupid, most indecent, and most degrading
punishment, not all the inhabkants of this Christian and enlightened
country, but only that class which is the most industrious, useful,
moral, and numerous.
The highest authorities of an enormous Christian empire, nineteen
centuries after Christ, to prevent violation of the law, can devise
nothing wiser and more moral than to take the transgressors,—grown-up,
and sometimes elderly, people,—undress them, lay them on the floor, and
beat their bottoms with birches.[3]
And people, who consider themselves most advanced, and who are grandsons
of those who, seventy-five years ago, got rid of corporal punishment,
now, in our day, most respectfully, and quite seriously, petition his
excellency the minister, or whoever it may be, that there ​should not be
so much flogging of grown-up Russians, because the doctors are of
opinion that it is unhealthy; or that those who have a school diploma
should not be whipped; or that those who were to be flogged about the
time of the emperor's marriage should be let off. And the wise
government meets such frivolous petitions with profound silence, or even
prohibits them.
Can one seriously petition on this matter? Is there really any question?
Surely there are some deeds which, whether perpetrated by private
individuals or by governments, one cannot calmly discuss, and condemn
only under certain circumstances. And the flogging of adult members of
one particular class of Russian people, in our time, and among our mild
and Christianly enlightened folk, is such a deed. To hinder such crimes
against all law, human and divine, one cannot diplomatically approach
the government under cover of hygienic, or educational, or loyalistic
considerations. Of such deeds we must either not speak at all, or we
must speak straight to the point, and always with detestation and
abhorrence. To ask that only those peasants who are literate should be
exempt from being beaten on their bare buttocks, is as if, in a land
where the law decreed that unfaithful wives should be punished by being
stripped and exposed in the streets, people were to petition that this
punishment should only be inflicted on such as could not knit stockings,
or do something of that kind.
About such deeds one cannot "most humbly pray," or "lay our petition at
the foot of the throne," etc.; such deeds must only, and can only, be
denounced. And such deeds should be denounced, because when an
appearance of legality is given to them, they disgrace all of us who
live in a country in which they are committed. For if it is legal to
flog a peasant, this has been enacted for my benefit also, to secure my
tranquility and well-being. And this is intolerable.
I will not, and I cannot, acknowledge a law which infringes all law,
human and divine; and I cannot imagine myself confederate with those who
enact and confirm such legalized crimes.
​If such abominations must be discussed, there is but one thing to say,
viz., that no such law can exist; that no ukase, or insignia, or seals,
or imperial commands, can make a law out of crime. But that, on the
contrary, the dressing up in legal form of such crimes (as that the
grown men of one—only one—class, may at the will of another, a worse,
class,—the nobles and the officials,—be subjected to an indecent, savage
and revolting punishment) shows, better than anything else, that where
such sham legalization of crime is possible, there exist no laws at all,
but merely the savage license of brute force.
If one has to speak of corporal punishment inflicted on the peasant
alone, the needful thing is, not to defend the rights of the local
government, or appeal from a governor (who has vetoed a petition to
exempt literate peasants from flogging) to a minister,—and from the
minister to the senate, and from the senate to the emperor,—as was
proposed by the Tambof local assembly,—but one must unceasingly
proclaim, and cry aloud, that such applications of a brutal punishment
(already abandoned for children) to one—and that the best—class of
Russians, is disgraceful to all who, directly or indirectly, participate
in it.
Petrovitch, who lay down to be beaten after crossing himself and saying,
"Christ suffered and told us to," forgave his tormentors, and after the
flogging remained the man he was before. The only result of the torture
inflicted upon him was to make him scorn the authority which decrees
such punishments. But to many young people, not only the punishment
itself, but often even the knowledge that it is possible, acts
debasingly on their moral feelings, brutalizing some men and making
others desperate. Yet even that is not the chief evil. The greatest evil
is in the mental condition of those who arrange, sanction and decree
these abominations, of those who employ them as threats, and of all who
live in the conviction that such violations of justice and humanity are
needful conditions of a good and orderly life. What terrible moral
perversion must exist in the ​minds and hearts of those—often the
young—who, with an air of profound practical wisdom, say (as I have
myself heard said) that it won't do not to flog peasants, and that it is
better for the peasants themselves to be flogged.
These are the people most to be pitied for the debasement into which
they have sunk, and in which they are stagnating.
Therefore, the emancipation of the Russian people from the degrading
influence of a legalized crime, is, from every aspect, a matter of
enormous importance. And this emancipation will be accomplished, not
when exemption from corporal punishment is obtained by those who have a
school diploma, or by any other set of peasants, nor even when all the
peasants but one are exempted; but it will be accomplished only when the
governing classes confess their sin and humbly repent.[4]
December 14, 1895.
[1] Members of the party which attempted, but failed, to secure by force
a liberal constitution for Russia at the time Nicholas I. ascended the
throne.—Tr.
[2] By petitioning, openly, for the repeal of such laws as that which
empowers the local magistrates to have peasants flogged, the petitioners
would risk being looked at askance by those in power, and might easily
lose any places they held under government. But as members of local
health committees, or of committees to promote education, it is
sometimes possible for people (while appearing anxious only to further
the special cause entrusted to them) to utter veiled protests with a
minimum amount of risk.—Tr.
[3] And why choose just this stupid, brutal method of causing pain, and
not something else? Why not stick needles into people's shoulders or
other parts? or squeeze their hands and feet in vices? or do something
of that kind?—Author's Note.
[4] Though "Shame" was written by Count Tolstoy in December, 1895, and
incompletely printed soon after in a Russian newspaper, this is not only
the first English translation published of the article, but it is the
first time it has been printed complete in any language; for the Russian
version referred to above was mutilated to meet the equirements of the
Russian censor, and failed to convey the author's full meaning.
The brutality against which the article protests continues to be
practiced in Russia, and is still legal. The hope of obtaining moral
results by flogging those of whose conduct we disapprove is, however,
not confined to Russia. The question of corporal punishment is one which
claims attention in England and in some parts of America to-day.—Tr.