XIX century in the history of Russia. What is the 19th century in numbers?

Many are interested in the history of Russia, the 19th century in which became one of the most controversial eras. And it is not surprising, because this is a special time in our country, full of reforms and transformations, comparable only to the era of Peter the Great.

The history of Russia, in which the 19th century fell under the reign of three emperors, is of great interest to researchers. Russia entered the beginning of the century as a feudal-serf, autocratic state. In terms of population and military power, during this period it was in first place among the European powers.

But the history of Russia, in which the 19th century became perhaps one of the most reactionary and at the same time progressive, testifies to the archaic nature of the country's economy due to backwardness in economic development. The country's budget was based on peasant taxes.

According to the law, the country was ruled by the emperor with the help of officials who concentrated serious power in their hands.

The 19th century was a turning point in the history of capital punishment. Either the mass extermination of heretics and witches in Europe, or bloody terror french revolution, or something else, finally forced humanity to come to its senses and reconsider its attitude towards the death penalty.

True, the humanization of laws was slow and uneven.

For example, in Prussia, the criminal code adopted in 1794 provided for a whole bunch of types of death penalty: beheading, hanging, wheeling sequentially from bottom to top, wheeling sequentially from top to bottom, burning alive. Only burning alive was provided for as punishment for 14 types of crimes. Moreover, it was abolished only in 1851 with the adoption of a new criminal code.

And it must be said that the executioners in Prussia did not stand idle. For example, from 1748 to 1776, in one district of Bavaria with a population of 174,058 people, 11,000 people were sentenced to death.

However, throughout the 19th century, European countries saw a steady decline in death sentences and executions. In France, 605 people were sentenced to execution in 1803, 72 people annually from 1826 to 1830, and 6 people in 1908. In Belgium in 1800 - 1804 there were 71 people annually, and 37 people were executed. In 1908 - 6 people. In Germany in 1822 - 95 people, in 1910 - 43 people. In Austria there has been a decrease in sentences: since 1877 - 128 people, 1 person was executed, in 1908 45 people were sentenced, 1 person was executed. In England, 802 people were executed between 1800 and 1810, and in 1908, 25 were sentenced and 13 were executed.

And only in Russia, due to the rampant revolutionary terror, reverse processes occurred. In Russia, the number of those sentenced in the 19th century and until 1905 did not exceed 54 per year, but the number of executions in 1906 was 574; in 1907 - 1139; in 1908 - 134; in 1909 - 717 and in 1911 - 60 people.

The Code of 1872 established the death penalty in Germany only in two cases: for premeditated murder and for an attack on the life of the emperor or the head of a separate state, when the attack was committed by his subject or a person located on the territory of this state. True, under military criminal laws the number of cases of application of the death penalty was much greater.

In Austria, under Emperor Joseph II, the death penalty was abolished in 1787, then restored in 1796. But the Code of 1803 significantly limited its use, leaving it in only five cases - riot, premeditated murder, robbery accompanied by murder, aggravated arson and some generally dangerous cases of damage to railway structures.

The death penalty was abolished in the second half of the 19th century in Romania - since 1864, Italy since 1890, Holland since 1870, Portugal since 1867. In Belgium, although the death penalty has not been abolished, it has not actually been used since 1863.

The death penalty for political crimes was abolished in the 19th century or the very beginning of the 20th century in countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Serbia, the United States of America and others.

It is curious that in the harsh Scandinavian countries, which have long had a reputation for being the most humane in the 19th century, heads were chopped off right and left. For example, the Swedish criminal code of 1864 established the penalty of death in 23 cases. The last execution by beheading in Norway was carried out in 1876 using an axe. Similarly - in Denmark in 1892. In Sweden, the last head was cut off by guillotine in 1910 - the first use of the guillotine in that country and the last death penalty.

The last case of auto-da-fé—the public burning of a “criminal of the cross”—was recorded in Spain in 1826.

In Spain and many countries Latin America with a traditionally strong Spanish influence, the technique of garrote strangulation, a rope noose, was used instead of hanging. The Spanish King Ferdinand II abolished hanging in 1828 and left only one type of execution - garrote. The person sentenced to garrote strangulation was seated with a bag on his head on a chair with his back to a vertical pillar; The suicide bomber's arms and legs were tightly tied to a chair. The rope was wrapped around the neck, the ends of the rope were passed through holes in the post and tied in a knot. The executioner threaded a stick between the rope and the post, rotating it to tighten the rope around the throat. After the execution of the sentence, the bag was removed from the head of the executed person so that spectators could see the face of the victim.

Over time, this execution was improved and the rope was replaced. metal arcs, which were tightened by rotating the screw. The screw was equipped with a point, which, when turned, gradually screwed into the neck of the convicted person and crushed his cervical vertebrae. Contrary to popular belief, such a device was “more humane”, since the victim died faster.

M.N. Gernet, analyzing the situation around the death penalty in Europe in the first half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, noted that “while in some states political crimes do not entail the death penalty (France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Serbia, United States of North America, etc.), in some others these crimes are punishable by death (Austria, England, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Finland, Uruguay, Paraguay, Russia, etc.).” Moreover, of the countries that had the death penalty for political crimes in their legislation, it was most widely represented in England and Russia. In Austria, for example, the death penalty could be imposed for a violent change in the form of government, while in Russia not only an attempt, but also preparation for an encroachment on the rights of state power was punishable by death.

And the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty completely and irrevocably was Venezuela in 1846.

England in the 19th century

England is still in early XIX century ranked first in the number of crimes punishable by death. According to Blackstone, in his time English laws included up to 160 crimes that provided for the death penalty as punishment.

It was imposed on the same basis as state crimes and murder, for such not very serious crimes as threatening in a letter, for mutilating animals, for forest felling, for theft from shops in an amount exceeding 5 shillings, theft from a church, at a fair in an amount exceeding 1 shilling , stealing animals, etc.

Nowadays, so democratic and so prim, England at the beginning of the 19th century was surprisingly cruel. Britain's main gallows in the Tower worked tirelessly. It had 21 hinges on beams of different heights, having served for five hundred years in a row. In the period 1749-1772. In London, 1,121 people were sentenced to hanging, of which 678 were actually hanged.

Between 1810 and 1826, 2,755 people were sentenced to death in London and the surrounding county of Middlesex. Moreover, in England very young children were sometimes executed.

The youngest offender is considered to be an 8-year-old English boy, accused of setting fire to two barns, for which he was hanged. This happened in the 18th century. On June 26, 1885, James Arsen was executed in England for a murder he committed at the age of 10.

True, starting from the 1830s, especially due to the statutes of Queen Victoria in 1837 and 1841, the number of crimes punishable by death began to decrease significantly, and after 1861 only the following were punishable by death: assault on the person of the queen and members of the reigning house; riot accompanied by violence, murder, malicious wounding resulting in death; sea ​​robbery and arson of docks and arsenals.

The dramatic humanization was due to a number of reasons. First of all, the strictness of the laws blocked the mechanism of the criminal process - the jury had no choice but between the death penalty and acquittal, and therefore these processes were often delayed. In addition, executions themselves became a dangerous gathering of people. In February 1807, due to a stampede during a public execution at Newgate Prison, which supposedly 40 thousand people had gathered to watch, 36 corpses remained in the square. It is curious that Owen Haggerty and John Holloway, who were about to be hanged, remained alive that day. Their execution had to be postponed.

However, public executions in England continued for quite some time. On August 13, 1868, the first “closed” execution in the history of this state was carried out on the murderer Wells.

And of course, the active position of the intelligentsia contributed to humanization. For example, Charles Dickens actively opposed the death penalty.

Dickens, in one of his articles, cites parliamentary statistics prepared by Lord Nugent:

“In 1843 an account was laid before Parliament of the arrests and executions for murder carried out in England and Wales during the thirty years to December 1842, divided into five periods of six years each. It appears from the report that during the last six years, from 1836 to 1842, when there were only fifty executions, sixty-one fewer persons were convicted of murder than during the previous six years, which included seventy-four executions; sixty-three fewer than during the six years that ended in 1830, which included seventy-five executions; fifty-six people less than during the six-year period that ended in 1824, which included ninety-four executions, and ninety-three people less than during the six-year period that ended in 1818, when as many as one hundred and twenty-two people were executed.”

And the conclusions that Dickens made based on these statistics are very interesting - the abolition of the death penalty leads to a decrease in the number of crimes. For example, after the abolition of the death penalty for theft of cattle and horses, theft and counterfeiting of money, these crimes immediately began to decline.

Humanization was also reflected in the sentences given to teenagers. If only recently 8-10 year old boys were executed, then in the middle of the 19th century 12-year-old William Allnut was spared. In 1847, he poured arsenic into the sugar bowl that his grandfather, Samuel Nelm, used for tea. During the week, other family members, in particular the boy’s mother, used the same sugar bowl. On October 27, 1847, Samuel Nelm died of arsenic poisoning. And two weeks later it was possible to establish that his grandson poisoned him. William was not executed, but was sent to prison for the rest of his life.

England gave the world the first precedent when mental illness spared a criminal from execution. This happened during the trial of Daniel MacNaghten, who killed the secretary of the British Prime Minister with a pistol shot in 1843. By a special resolution, called the “McNaghten Law,” parliament formalized its decision not to bring a mentally ill offender to a criminal court, but to send him for treatment to a psychiatric hospital.

The method of hanging invented by the British – “new drop” – can also be called a certain humanization of execution.

Doctors, studying the corpses of hanged people, discovered that the fastest to die in a loop were sailors who were hanged on yards, pushed from Mars. Based on this observation by doctors, the executioners began to try to hang the condemned so that they would fall from a certain height and have time to gain speed before the noose tightened. This ensured a quick fracture of the cervical vertebrae and an easy death, in which one did not have to squirm in a noose and kick one’s legs for several minutes. Lawrence Shirley, Earl of Ferrers, was hanged for the first time by the new-drop method in 1760.

Soon after the sailors suggested to the executioners a way to quickly hang themselves, they stopped hanging on the yards. On July 13, 1860, Royal Marine John Dalliger was executed on the HMS Leven on charges of attempted double murder - the last execution by hanging by yardarm in the history of the British Navy.

In 1880, state executioner William Merwood proposed an improvement to the New Drop method. According to his proposal, the height of the fall of the convict's body depended on its gravity. Based on this, the length of the rope was already selected.

English Colonel Alton Bisham in 1885 proposed another improvement - a collapsing floor under the feet of the condemned on the scaffold. By 1890, all gallows in England were equipped with drop-in floors. Since gallows were usually located in buildings no lower than the third floor, the floor was cut underneath them down to the basement in such a way that a kind of well was formed under the hatch, no less than 5 meters deep. It was into this well that the suicide bomber fell with a noose around his neck.

The English Gallows Reform of 1890 regulated many aspects of execution. For example, a suicide bomber was required to wear a leather belt to which his elbows were tied, and his wrists were grabbed with a leather strap, causing his hands to be fixed in front of his chest in the “praying position.” This looked like a sign of humility and repentance of the convicted person, and therefore once again convinced of the correctness of justice. After hanging, the prison doctor was supposed to examine the body 40 minutes later and declare the death of the executed person. With such a scrupulous approach, the English executioners had almost no defects in their work. If anyone was sentenced to hanging, he would die from the noose, and not from old age.

France of the 19th century

In medieval France, criminals were treated no less harshly than in England. The 1670 Ordinance provided for the death penalty for 115 crimes. And only towards the end XVIII century French legislation has been significantly liberalized. The Criminal Code of 1791 reduced the number of cases of applicability of the death penalty to thirty-two. And according to the Napoleonic Code of 1810, it was appointed in 27 cases. Moreover, for parricide or for an attack on the life and person of the emperor, it was associated with additional punishment. A criminal's hand was cut off before execution right hand. This provision was abolished in 1832, but even before 1958, the criminal code in France provided for a special ritual for the execution of a parricide: the criminal had to be escorted to the place of execution barefoot, in a shirt, with a black veil on his head.

From 1826 to 1830, an average of 111 death sentences were handed down per year in France; from 1841 to 1845 - 48; from 1846 to 1850 - 49; from 1856 to 1856 - to 53. In France, in the mid-19th century, capital punishment for political crimes was abolished. The death penalty was imposed only in connection with the violent deprivation of human life or a threat to human life: “for premeditated murder, inflicting a wound or blow on an official with the intent to kill, arrest or taking away things, accompanied by physical torture, deliberate arson and destruction of habitable life with explosives.” buildings, castration resulting in the death of the victim within 40 days after castration, and some others.”

But this was enough to provide the people with a portion of bloody spectacles. Russian writer Pyotr Boborykin, recalling executions in Paris in the second half of the 19th century, writes: “Whoever lived in Paris for a long time, like me, knows what kind of disgust it was: the public executions that took place near the La Coquette prison.” Nasty, nothing more vile than this could be imagined! Thousands of people, from socialites and first-class cocottes to the rabble - pimps, street sluts, thieves and escaped convicts, spent the whole night in the surrounding taverns, drank, sang obscene songs and at dawn rushed to the cordon of soldiers surrounding the area where "les bois" stood de la justice" (the gallows), as this disgusting apparatus is officially called. From a distance it was impossible to see clearly, but this whole crowd felt in admiration just because they “were at the execution” and spent the night so dashingly and cheerfully in anticipation of such a captivating spectacle.”

And the Russian writer I.S. Turgenev did not deny himself the pleasure of looking at the work of the guillotine, being invited to a public execution by the French writer M. Dukan. On that day, the head of Jean Baptiste Troppmann was publicly cut off, who killed for the purpose of robbery the Kink family, who lived near the town of Pantin near Paris - husband, wife and five children aged 5 to 16 years.

Turgenev outlined his impressions in the essay “The Execution of Troppmann”:

“Vaguely and more strangely than scary, two of them (guillotines) were drawn in the dark sky, half an arshin apart from each other, pillars with an oblique line of blade connecting them. For some reason I imagined that the pillars should be further apart from each other. This proximity of them gave the car a kind of ominous slenderness - the slenderness of an elongated, long neck, like a swan's. A feeling of disgust was aroused by a large, wicker body, like a suitcase, dark red. I knew that the executioners would throw a still warm, shuddering corpse and a severed head into this body. I saw how Troppmann appeared upstairs, how two people from right and left rushed at him like spiders on a fly, how he suddenly fell head first and how his soles kicked up. But then I turned away - and began to wait - and the earth quietly floated under my feet... It seemed that I was waiting for a very long time, although in fact from the moment when Troppmann stepped foot on the first step of the guillotine until the moment when his corpse was thrown into the prepared box, twenty seconds passed. I managed to notice that when Troppmann appeared, the din of people suddenly seemed to curl up in a ball - and there was a breathless silence... Finally, a light knock was heard, as if from wood against tree - it was the upper semicircle of the collar falling from longitudinal groove for the blade to pass, it covered the criminal's neck and kept the head motionless. Then something growled dully and rolled - and hooted, as if a huge animal had coughed up its throat.”

Some of the most famous executions in France in the 19th century include the following:
On Thermidor 9 of the VIII year of the Republic (July 28, 1800), he announced the verdict to the members of the Orgers gang of chauffeurs (translated from French as “warmers”), the most sinister murderers in France. 22 defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence, 37 people were sentenced to chains and imprisonment, and 23 people, including four women, were sentenced to death. On the 12th of Vandemire, Year IX of the Republic, the public execution of the drivers took place. The defendants in red shirts were brought to Chartres Square, where a guillotine had already been installed and a huge crowd of people had gathered. After the execution, the headless corpses were dumped into huge baskets and, on carts that left behind pools of blood, sent to the burial site across the city.

Many years later, when there were terrible mechanical carts on the city streets, spewing soot and flames, driven by no less terrible helmsmen in black leather jackets and with glasses on their eyes, the French remembered the Orger gang. And they dubbed the drivers of mechanical carts “chauffeurs.” And only then this name migrated to other countries, including Russia.

On December 7, 1815, in Paris, on the Observatory Square, General Michel Ney himself gave the order to the “firing squad” of grenadiers to fire a volley at him. One of Napoleon’s best marshals, nicknamed in France “the bravest of the brave” and awarded the title of Prince of Moscow for valor in the Battle of Borodino, General Ney swore allegiance to the restored Bourbons on the throne in 1814, then again joined Napoleon, who fled from the island of Elba, and led an unsuccessful French attack at Waterloo, after the battle he was arrested and, on charges of treason and incitement to rebellion, was sentenced to death by the royal court. It is curious that Ney was tried for treason against Louis XVIII on the basis of... the laws of the time of the revolution and the Napoleonic criminal code.

Pierre François Lassner is called a murderer by vocation and the French forerunner of Raskolnikov. Convinced of his own exclusivity, he decided to show the world what a real criminal is, a killer without fear or reproach. When he was detained, he told not only about the two murders he had committed, but also about many others that he had just invented. And he was terribly offended when the investigators did not believe in the crimes he had imagined. However, the judges, based on two proven murders, granted Lessner's wishes and sentenced him to death. While Pierre was awaiting execution, his cell became a place of pilgrimage for the creative bohemia of Paris. Poets, writers, and artists came to his prison and saw him as a romantic hero.

On January 8, 1836, Lassner calmly climbed the steps of the guillotine. He calmly accepted the actions of the executioners while they tied him to the board and turned him in horizontal position. Concern was reflected on his face only when the guillotine knife, distorted, got stuck in the grooves. Lassner turned his head around impatiently to find out why there was a delay, and at that moment, a sparkling scythe blade came down and decapitated him.

July 28, 1835 in Paris during the parade in honor of the fifth anniversary July Revolution Conspirators made an attempt on the life of King Louis Philippe I of France.

The liquidator was supposed to be the fighter for the independence of Corsica, Giuseppe Fieci. Realizing that he might not get a second chance, Fieci decided to make himself a weapon that would definitely work. He designed a unique “volley fire” system of 24 guns connected to each other by a complex system of levers and drive belts. Louis Philippe I was frankly lucky, 18 people around him were killed, and the king was not hit by a single bullet. But Fiechi was unlucky; not only did his invention explode after being shot and seriously wound the designer, but he was also captured. Fiechi and his two accomplices were guillotined on February 19, 1836. But the skull of the terrorist inventor was preserved for history; it is still kept in the Paris Museum of Anatomy.

François Koenigstein, better known as Ravachol, claimed to be an ideological killer, but in reality he was an ordinary criminal. At first he killed people for the purpose of robbery, and then he contacted anarchists and began making bombs and organizing explosions. Thus, with his help, in 1892, explosions were carried out on the Boulevard Saint-Germain and on the Rue de Clichy in Paris, causing numerous casualties and spreading panic in the capital.

Koenigstein-Ravachol was sentenced to death. On July 10, 1892, he was taken to the guillotine. On the way, he continuously sang: “If you want to be happy, hang your masters. And cut the priests into pieces.” Before losing his head, he managed to shout: “You are all pigs, long live the revolution!”

On May 28, 1871, the Paris Commune fell. During its defeat, 25 thousand rebels died, and of the 45 thousand arrested, 279 people were sentenced to death and 13 thousand to prison.

In December 1893, anarchist Auguste Vaillant detonated a bomb in the halls of the French Parliament to intimidate the authorities. But the deputies were not afraid and demanded that Vaillant be executed. French President Sadi Carnot could have commuted the terrorist's sentence, but did not. Then the Italian anarchist Santo Caserio decided to take revenge on him for his inaction.

On June 24, 1894, he mortally wounded President Carnot while he was visiting a theater in Lyon. Captured at the scene of the crime, Caserio declared that he was avenging his “comrade in arms” Vaillant, who had been guillotined in Paris a few days earlier.

President Carnot was buried in the Pantheon next to his illustrious grandfather Lazare Carnot, a figure of the Great French Revolution. And on August 16, 1894, the anarchist Caserio was beheaded by court in Paris on the same guillotine as his “comrade in arms” Auguste Vaillant.

USA in the 19th century

The United States of America is a relatively young state on the world map. But the settlers from Europe who formed it brought their customs, laws and rituals of the death penalty to it. At first, the laws in the USA were as cruel as in England. For example, Mark Twain wrote about the completely draconian “Connecticut Blue Laws.” Moreover, blacks and Indians in America were generally considered a practically powerless population and they were hanged at the slightest provocation. Blacks were lynched, Indians were scalped and hanged in batches. On December 26, 1862, in Minnesota, on a square in the city of Mankato, thirty-eight Sioux Indians, accused of persecuting white settlers, were hanged on one gallows. In the Wild West, the main thing was the “Colt Law”. There, criminals did not stand on ceremony with the sheriffs, so the sheriffs did not hesitate to shoot some notorious bandit with their own hands. America did not escape the trials of sorcerers and witches.

The 19th century in North America was marked, first of all, by the final victory of the European conquerors of the Wild West over the indigenous population - the Indians.

But this victory was not easy. The Indians, with their much more primitive weapons, tried to counter the cannons and rifles of the pale faces with their courage and cruelty.

The favorite Indian pastime - scalping captives - has become a classic of the Western.

Removing hair from people was not an Indian invention. This was practiced by the Scythians and ancient Germans. They made an incision around the neck under the ears and tore the skin off the skull. Due to unsanitary conditions, such an operation very often led to death.

The Indians acted more humanely. They grabbed the hair on the top of the victim’s head with their left hand, and with a knife held in their right hand, they made a circular cut, at the same time tearing off a palm-sized flap of skin by the hair. It was believed that along with the scalp, the warrior received the strength of his victim.

Civilized, pale-faced settlers passed on their bad habits to the “redskins”, for example, they taught them to drink whiskey, and they themselves adopted wild customs from them. Governor Kieft in 1641 established a cash reward for each Indian scalp brought. And when a military confrontation between England and France began in North America, representatives of these two most developed and civilized countries set monetary bonuses for each other’s scalps.

So, on February 20, 1725, a group of American colonists from New Hampshire snuck into the Indian camp and scalped 10 people. The Boston authorities paid 100 pounds for each scalp.

Ultimately, the palefaces defeated the redskins. The victory was marked by several demonstrative executions.

On December 26, 1862, the largest mass execution in US history took place. In the city of Mankato (Minnesota), 38 Sioux (Santee) Indians were hanged, accused of persecuting white settlers. Initially, the court-martial imposed more than 300 death sentences, and only thanks to the intervention of President Lincoln, the number was reduced.

On October 3, 1873, Modoc Indian leader Kintpuash, better known as Captain Jack, was executed.

He led the Indian forces during their war with the US federal government. In an effort to gain an advantage in the war, the Indian leader decided to kill the leaders of the American army. During negotiations on April 11, Kintpuash and several other Modocs took out pistols and killed two enemy commanders. In particular, Captain Jack personally shot and killed General Edward Canby. However, this only embittered the Americans. General Davis brought reinforcements of a thousand soldiers and dispersed the Modoc forces.

After a grueling escape through sharp rocks and dense thickets, Captain Jack and the three warriors who remained with him until the end were discovered by a small detachment of soldiers. Dressed in a dirty, tattered general's uniform taken from Edward Canby, Captain Jack came out to surrender. He handed the officer his rifle. “Jack's legs don't serve him anymore,” he said. “I’m ready to die.”

The trial took place at Fort Klamath in July 1873. Captain Jack and three Modocs who were with him were accused of killing General Canby and other negotiators. While the trial lasted, the soldiers built gallows, so there was no doubt as to what the verdict would be.

On October 3, Captain Jack was hanged. There are two versions of what happened next. According to one, Captain Jack was beheaded after execution, and his head was sent to the Museum of Military Medicine in Washington. It was not until 1984 that Kintpuash's remains were returned to his family.

According to another version, the next night after the execution, the body of Captain Jenk was secretly dug up, taken to Ireka and embalmed. Soon the corpse of the Indian chief appeared in eastern cities as a fair attraction with an entrance fee of 10 cents.

The famous French science fiction writer Jules Verne seemed to be endowed with a kind of third eye, capable of looking into the future. One can only wonder how in his books he accurately predicted the appearance of many technological miracles. In 1863, he wrote the novel “Paris in the 20th Century,” in which he predicted that the guillotine would fall out of use among descendants and that criminals sentenced to death “would be struck with a powerful electric discharge.” It took humanity another quarter of a century to make the writer’s words prophetic with the invention of the electric chair.

The end of the 19th century was marked by one extremely important invention in American history. It all started when a dentist from Buffalo, Albert Southwick, told his friend, New York Senator David McMill, a story about how he witnessed the death of a certain drunkard who touched the exposed wires of an electric generator. Senator McMillan relayed this story to New York State Governor David Hill. And he, unexpectedly for others, saw a rational grain in this horror story, which he decided to use for practical purposes and members of the state legislative assembly with the question: could electricity replace hanging as a method of death penalty. In 1886, the State of New York passed "An Act to establish a commission to examine and report on the most humane and acceptable method of executing the death penalty." The commission members recruited the famous scientist Thomas Edison as an expert in the field of electricity.

Edison expressed his authoritative opinion that killing with electricity can be done quickly and easily. Thanks to this, already in 1888, the New York State Legislature passed a new law - on “electrical executions”, which declared killing with electric current the only method of carrying out death sentences.

Inventing a new way of killing people, Edison also pursued certain goals of his own. For electrical execution, he decided to use the generators of his main competitor, George Westinghouse. Like, his Edison generators direct current– safe, and Westinghouse generators alternating current- murderous. However, Westinghouse refused to sell his generators to Edison’s assistant, engineer Brown, for conducting experiments. True, he nevertheless purchased two of his used generators and began research. After a series of experiments, Edison organized a demonstration of a new method of execution in West Orange, New Jersey. Cats and dogs were lured onto a metal plate that was energized with 1000 volts of alternating current. The press described in detail how animals were dying.

In Edison's laboratory, journalists were shown how current has a fatal effect on dogs and cats. The time has come to move from animals to humans. At first it was assumed that the convicts would be placed in a bath of water and then shocked. But Brown suggested that it would be more convenient to sit them on a chair with electricity connected to it.

The electric chair is traditionally made of solid oak. The wood is coated with heat-resistant paint, the same as the nose of the space shuttle. The seat is made of plexiglass (to make it easier to clean if the executed person has a bowel movement). The belts are tightly adjusted to the figure of the executed person and are attached to the wrists, ankles and chest. Electrodes are brass or copper. One is attached to the front legs of the chair, the other is placed under a leather helmet placed on the head of the convict. A helmet with a chinstrap consists of two layers: leather (outer) and copper mesh (inner). The lining is sponge, which is soaked in a salt solution before execution (for better contact).

The power cable runs from the helmet itself, along the floor, to the power source. The transformer increases the voltage to 2500 volts.

The “honor” of becoming the first person in the world to be executed in the electric chair fell to farmer Joseph Chappleau, who was sentenced to death in the spring of 1989 for poisoning a herd of neighboring cows. Suddenly, the best lawyers came to the defense of the poor farmer and, with eloquence, began to convince the jury that it was wrong to kill a man because of cows. It turned out that the lawyers' services were paid for by George Westinghouse. They decided not to execute Chappleau. But Westinghouse was no longer able to completely prevent the testing of the electric chair on humans.

He also tried, through lawyers, to spare William Kemmler, who was accused of the brutal murder of his mistress, from the death penalty on Edison’s chair. Lawyers tried to convince the judges that electrocution was a cruel and inhumane punishment, but they decided to find out if this was true and assigned Kemmler the role of a pioneer.

The merchant from Buffalo, Kemmler, was one of the same breed of people that abound in Russia. He was a drunkard, and when drunk he became jealous and angry. After drinking whiskey, William began to be tormented by suspicions that his mistress was going to run away with another man. Somehow, after a night of heavy drinking, these suspicions overpowered him so much that, following the principle “don’t let anyone get you,” he took an ax and hacked her to death. After this, drunken remorse washed over him. He went to his neighbors and told them:

I killed her. I had to do it. I did this on purpose. I'll take the rope for that.

However, the state freed him from the rope in order to test the effect of electricity on him.

On the morning of August 6, 1890, historical event. William Kemmler was imprisoned wooden chair and fixed his arms and legs. The condemned man was asked if he wanted to say anything before he died. And Kemmler said:

Well gentlemen, I wish you good luck in this world. I think I'm going to a good place, and the newspapers wrote too much that doesn't exist."

Executioner Edwin Davis, who was now legally called the “state electrician,” was pretty nervous about the responsibility of the moment. Kemmler even reprimanded him:

God, warden, be calm. Do not rush.

Soon the preparations were completed. An electrode with a washcloth was attached to the convict's head. Another electrode was passed to the spine to open an unobstructed path for the current to flow through the body. The electrodes were moistened with saline solution. A black cap was pulled over Kemmler's head. Edwin Davis pulled the power switch.

The current was applied for 17 seconds. This time was quite enough for cats and dogs to become numb. But Kemmler survived the “electrical attack.” However, it did not pass without a trace; the severely burned Kemmler moaned loudly, which evoked sympathy for his suffering. The Davis State electrician clearly did not expect the convict to remain alive and was slightly confused. But I decided to finish what I started. He turned on the switch again and increased the voltage to 2 thousand volts.

This time the current did its job. Kemmler convulsed, his body began to smoke, and a terrible smell of burning flesh spread throughout the room. Those present at the execution began to faint from this spectacle. The 70 seconds of turning the electric chair back on seemed like an eternity to many. But finally, the current was turned off, and the doctors declared the death of the convict. The goal was achieved.

The next day, opinions were divided regarding the subsequent use of the electric chair. Such an authoritative publication as the New York Times called Kemmler's execution "a terrible spectacle, much worse than hanging." However, representatives of the prison administration liked the new method more than hanging, and this predetermined the decision to continue using the electric chair.

On March 20, 1899, another historic event took place in Sing Sing Prison, New York. The first woman, Martha Harrison Place, who was convicted of strangling her 17-year-old stepdaughter, gave her soul to either God or the devil in the electric chair. The prison electricians-executioners had to rack their brains, deciding on which part of the body to attach the electrode. As a result, a cut was made in the convict’s dress, and the wire was secured to her ankle.

However, despite the fact that in the 19th century the United States began to take a leading position in the world in terms of death penalties, it should be noted that America at the same time demonstrated examples of humanism. The first territory in the world to permanently abolish the death penalty for murder was the Territory of Michigan (now the state of Michigan) in the United States. This happened in 1846.

19th century Russia

Russia entered the 19th century with Emperor Paul I on the throne. There are still conflicting opinions about him - either a “tyrant” or a “Russian Hamlet”. On the one hand, it should be recognized that Paul I was not bloodthirsty. He did not execute any of the conspirators who overthrew and took the life of his father. On the other hand, many stories have been preserved that give Paul a reputation as a zealot for corporal punishment and other strictures.

For example, a historical anecdote has survived to this day about one French teacher who came to Russia during the reign of Paul I and ended up in a prison fortress for not taking off his hat in front of the Mikhailovsky Castle, the residence of the emperor. The poor fellows figured out the matter quite quickly and, making sure that he had arrived in the capital recently and, as a foreigner, did not know the rules established there, they released him from the dungeon to freedom. But the shock was too great. The Frenchman spent another 4 decades in Russia and all these years, even in severe frosts, he went without a hat.

And yet, Paul continued the process of humanizing punishment. During his reign, the abolition of the death penalty was extended to those provinces that were granted trial and execution on the basis of their ancient rights and privileges.

The beginning of the 19th century in Russia was marked by the last palace coup in 1801, as a result of which his son Alexander I came to power instead of Paul I - “a weak and crafty ruler, a bald dandy, an enemy of labor, accidentally warmed by glory...”. Emperor Alexander had a brilliant education for those times, he knew how and wanted to please. Therefore, he began his reign as a liberal.
The liberality of Alexander I also affected the issue of the state’s attitude to the death penalty. During the entire 25 years of his reign, only 24 people were executed. During the reign of Alexander I, the abolition of the death penalty was extended to those annexed to Russia: in 1801 - Georgia, in 1804 - Mingrelia and in 1811 - Guria.

True, the liberal image of Alexander I was greatly damaged by his support for the ideologist of conservative politics, Count A.A. Arakcheeva. He wanted to turn Russia into one big military camp, where everyone would toe the line, and the slightest deviation from the minutely detailed rules of life would result in corporal punishment.

Military settlements, born of the imagination of artillery general Alexei Arakcheev, seemed to him an ideal society. However, those who lived in them did not think so at all. To punish the guilty, Arakcheev got himself two executioners - two soldiers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment of enormous height and strength. But at the same time, he could be considered a good-natured person in comparison with his partner, Anastasia Shumskaya. This simple, uneducated gypsy somehow magically gained enormous power over Arakcheev. He even made her false documents about noble origin. In addition, Anastasia was officially enrolled in the count’s staff and received 400 rubles from the funds of the War Ministry. per month.

Anastasia Shumskaya mocked the serfs on the estate of Count Gruzino no less fiercely than “Saltychikha”. Flogging the servants was in the order of things for her. But she mocked her three maids especially cruelly - the room girls Antonova, Anikeeva and Ivanova. The most beautiful of them, Praskovya Antonova, was subjected to caning twice a day for a long period of time. None of the servants sat in the punishment cell on bread and water as long as these girls. Shumskaya forced them to wear slingshots around their necks for a long time, special devices designed to make it difficult for a person to eat and sleep. Even to church services, girls were forced to come wearing these medieval torture instruments. The gypsy “noblewoman” was clearly going to throw off her room girls for their beauty and youth, fearing that by doing so they would seduce Count Arakcheev.

Brought to the boiling point by the regular beatings and sadistic tortures to which Shumskaya subjected them, the servants decided to deal with her. The initiator of the massacre was Vasily Antonov, the brother of Praskovya Antonova, whom the housekeeper abused the most. In August, Anastasia’s corpse was found at seven o’clock in the morning on September 10, 1825 in her mansion across the road from the count’s estate with his head cut off, his hands and fingers broken, his mouth torn. It turned out that all of Arakcheev’s servants in Gruzino were somehow involved in this murder, since everyone hated the housekeeper. Having given the murder a political character, Arakcheev brutally took revenge for the death of his mistress. 22 people were convicted.

On October 5, 1825, the first and main batch of defendants were sentenced. Vasily Antonov was sentenced to 175 blows of the whip, branding of the face and exile to hard labor forever, his sister Praskovya was sentenced to 125 blows of the whip and eternal hard labor. The rest were also sentenced to flogging, but to fewer strokes. In addition, all convicts were stamped on their faces: “B” on the forehead, “O” on one cheek, “R” on the other.

The Antonov brother and sister were actually sentenced to death under the whip. At that time, even for murder, more than 30-40 lashes of the whip were rarely prescribed. And Vasily and Praskovya Antonov were also minors.

Vasily Antonov was the first to be whipped. As soon as the number of counted blows exceeded a hundred, Vasily Antonov began to agonize. The doctor demanded to stop the punishment. Vasily, who was in an unconscious state, was thrown from the machine to which the convicts were tied, which was called the “mare.” A few minutes later he died. And Praskovya took his place on the “mare”. Her agony began at the ninth dozen strokes; as soon as she was untied, she, too, gave her soul to God.

After her, they flogged Elena Fomina, who was given “only” 50 lashes, but they also turned out to be fatal for her. Three days later she died in the prison infirmary.

So corporal punishment often became a camouflaged form of the death penalty in Russia.

On the Russian throne, Alexander I was replaced by the third son of Paul I, Nicholas I. Nicholas was not prepared to rule the country, and he himself gravitated toward military affairs. Perhaps that is why he dealt so quickly and simply with the Decembrist uprising, which coincided with his accession to the throne. The rebel troops were shot with grapeshot on Senate Square in the capital and in southern Russia. And then the repressions began.

545 Decembrists were involved in the investigation, of which 289 were found guilty. Five leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death: Colonel Pestel, poet Ryleev, Colonel Muravyov-Apostol, second lieutenant Bestuzhev-Ryumin and retired lieutenant Kakhovsky.

According to the Decembrist N.R. Tsebrikov, in a conversation with Wellington, Nicholas I promised to “surprise Europe” with his “mercy.” And I was surprised. Pushkin recorded the opinion of one surprised Englishman: “We would probably have executed three thousand people in a case of a military mutiny of such magnitude!”

However, even the execution of just these five was a real shock for Russia. First of all, because the country has already lost the habit of public executions. The last of them, the executions of Mirovich and Pugachev, took place during the time of Catherine the Great.

Nicholas I, fearing an explosion of public indignation, tried to make this execution non-public. Its time and place, and even preparations for it, were strictly classified, its performers were carefully selected and their circle was extremely limited. To eliminate the possibility of any public demonstrations, there was no prior notification of the execution, as Tsar Peter did. Only after the fact, information appeared in the press about the date of the execution backdated. But even despite this conspiracy, they decided to play it safe and carry out the execution at three in the morning, when the whole city was sleeping.

The way the authorities responsibly approached the deprivation of life of five far from the most senior officers is also evidenced by the fact that the execution scenario was developed by the emperor himself, and its implementation was entrusted to the “most reliable” people: St. Petersburg Governor-General P.V. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Minister of War A.I. Chernyshev, chief of gendarmes A.Kh. Benckendorff.

However, despite such solid preparation, as often happens in Russia, at a crucial moment everything went topsy-turvy.

Firstly, due to a number of unforeseen circumstances, the execution had to be postponed from three o'clock in the morning to early morning. Secondly, despite all the conspiracy, on the crownwork Peter and Paul Fortress where the execution was to take place, a lot of people gathered. And finally, the execution itself was not without incidents.

Initially, the Decembrists: Kondraty Ryleev, Pavel Pestel, Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin and Pyotr Kakhovsky were sentenced to quartering, but Emperor Nicholas I, with the highest mercy, replaced the cutting off of arms and legs with hanging. The execution took place on July 25 (13 old style) July 1826. By order of the tsar, all the condemned, dressed in white shrouds, were first buried alive. And the historian Schnitzler described the execution procedure itself as follows:

“On July 13, 1826, near the rampart, opposite the small Church of the Holy Trinity on the banks of the Neva, at two o’clock in the morning they began to build a gallows of such a size that five people could be hanged on it... Five people condemned to death appeared on the rampart. The distance made it difficult for spectators to recognize their faces; only gray overcoats with the tops raised were visible, which covered their heads. They ascended one after another onto the platform and onto the benches placed side by side under the gallows, in the order prescribed in the sentence. Pestel was on the extreme right, Kakhovsky was on the left side. Each had a rope wrapped around his neck; the executioner stepped off the platform, and immediately in a minute the platform fell down.

Pestel and Kakhovsky hung, but the three who were between them were spared death. A terrible sight presented itself to the spectators. Poorly tightened ropes slid along the top of the overcoat, and the unfortunate people fell down into the gaping hole, hitting stairs and benches. Since the sovereign was in Tsarskoe Selo and no one dared to give an order to postpone the execution, they had to experience their death throes. The platform was immediately straightened and those who had fallen were lifted onto it.

Ryleev, despite the fall, walked firmly, but could not resist a sorrowful exclamation: “And so they will say that I couldn’t do anything - not even die!” Others claim that he also exclaimed: “Cursed land, where they can neither form a conspiracy, nor judge, nor hang!”

These words are also attributed to Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, who, like Ryleev, cheerfully ascended to the platform. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who probably suffered more severe bruises, could not stand on his feet, and he was taken into custody. They tied their necks with ropes again, and this time successfully. A few seconds passed, and the beating of drums announced that human justice had been served. It was at the end of the fifth hour. The troops and spectators dispersed in silence, and an hour later the entire street was cleared out.”

And the St. Petersburg governor Pavel Golenishchev-Kutuzov presented a memorandum to the emperor with the words: “Due to the inexperience of our executioners and the inability to arrange gallows the first time, three, namely Ryleev, Kakhovsky and Muravyov, failed, but were soon hanged again and suffered a well-deserved death.”

It is curious that one of the descendants of the executed Decembrist Muravyov is Count M.N. Muravyov received the nickname “The Hangman” for pacifying the Polish uprising of 1863. When they reminded him about his Decembrist relative, he replied: “I am not one of those Muravyovs who are hanged, but one of those Muravyovs who are hanged.”

In 1826, the royal manifesto of April 21 abolished the death penalty for general crimes in Finland, but when the Quarantine Charter was published during the reign of Nicholas I, the death penalty was determined for a number of crimes committed during the plague.

In the 19th century, old types of execution were still preserved in Russia for some time. Thus, in 1836, in Moscow, two men accused of robberies and Prince Dolgoruky’s courtyard girl, Marfa, were put to fire. However, they gradually gave way to “civilized” types of punishment - hanging and shooting.

For example, the Decembrist Ivan Sukhinov was sentenced to death by quartering by the Military Court at the Headquarters of the 1st Army in Mogilev. But the commander-in-chief of the 1st Army expressed his opinion that it was inappropriate to quarter a brave hussar, a participant Patriotic War 1812 and proposed to shoot him. However, upon the highest confirmation on July 12, 1826, his execution was completely replaced by exile to hard labor forever.

The brave hussar did not want to put up with the vegetation of the rest of his life in the Nerchinsk mines and tried to start an uprising. However, he was captured and sentenced to be whipped and shot. He prevented his execution by committing suicide by hanging himself in prison. But five of his comrades in preparing the uprising: Bocharov, Golikov, Bondarev, Ptitsyn and Nepomnyashchy were shot.

After this, for twelve years there were no death penalties in Russia at all.

True, sometimes they were replaced by corporal punishment with spitzrutens. A man stripped to the waist was driven through a line of soldiers, with long flexible sticks made of wicker with which they whipped him. This execution was used in Russia from 1701 to 1863 and was usually used as punishment for soldiers. Russian Emperor Nicholas I wrote on one of the death sentences “the guilty should be driven through 1000 people 12 times” and wrote a note: “Thank God, we never had the death penalty and it is not for me to introduce it.” However, surviving 12 thousand blows was probably not easy for a person.

After the Decembrists, no large revolutionary organizations arose, but small ones began to multiply like mushrooms after rain. Freethinking has become fashionable among intellectuals. And the capital's salons, officers' circles and universities became centers of freethinking. One of the most popular was the circle created in the 1840s by M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky, which included officers, officials, teachers, as well as writers and publicists, including Dostoevsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin. The members of the circle called themselves “Petrashevites.” At first they simply met on Fridays to talk about the fate of Russia. But over time, Petrashevsky began to create some program documents, for example, the “Project for the Liberation of Peasants,” and the radical part of his circle began to agitate for organizing an uprising of peasants and the Ural proletariat.

Information about this reached the authorities, who “slammed down” the hotbed of freethinking. 120 Petrashevites came under investigation. A military court sentenced 21 of them to death by firing squad, including Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

On January 3, 1850, those sentenced to death were read the verdict on the Semenovsky parade ground. Then swords were broken over the heads of the condemned, which meant deprivation of their noble dignity. The first three convicts had already begun to be tied to poles; the command “To charge!” was heard. Everyone was waiting for the command “Fire!” to sound. and a rifle salvo rang out, but at the last moment the aide-de-camp of His Imperial Majesty Rostovtsev arrived in a carriage, who read out the decision of Nicholas I to replace the death penalty with hard labor and exile for the convicts.

Dostoevsky's execution was replaced by 4 years of hard labor with deprivation of all rights and subsequent surrender to the army. These ten terrible moments he later described it in his novel “The Idiot.”

Under Alexander II, it began to seem that capital punishment was becoming a thing of the past. His reign was also marked by a reduction in the practice of using corporal punishment, which sometimes played the role of a hidden death penalty. In the naval department of the Russian Empire in 1857, 607 people were sentenced to flogging with spitzrutens, in 1858 - 577, in 1859 - 519, 1860 - 487. And on April 29, 1863, corporal punishment was abolished in Russia, and judicial branding was completely prohibited.

However, the norms of the Criminal Code, by which the whole country lived, did not apply in hard labor. The convict administration had the right to impose the death penalty. This was done to intimidate the dangerous contingent that was kept there, and for a kind of protection of this very administration. The murder of one convict by another threatened him only with an increase in his sentence, but an attack by a prisoner on convoy soldiers, prison guards, administration officials or doctors was fraught with death for him.

After the death sentence was imposed, the prisoners were kept separately, since it was quite reasonably believed that they had nothing to lose. All caretakers were required to be especially vigilant when contacting them. On the evening before execution, the condemned person received a set of clean linen. At night, communion of the Holy Mysteries and confession followed. Usually after this, the priest put on a black robe, and the condemned man put on the clean linen received the day before.

They were usually taken out for execution at dawn. Before the scaffold, the confirmation was read, after which the drums immediately began to beat. This muffled the curse of the condemned man and strengthened the impression on the prisoners, who were taken out to watch the execution. On the scaffold, the executioner threw a shroud in the form of a large bag over the condemned man, after which he inserted his head into a loop greased with lard and forced him to stand on a special hatch in the floor, nicknamed the “trap.” The assistant knocked out the supports from under the trap and the condemned man hung on the rope. Often this was followed by involuntary emptying of the bladder and bowels, but a long shroud hid these negative points from the eyes of those present.

It is curious that although, before hanging, the convicts' shackles were removed and their hands were untied, few resisted the executioner or tried to escape. Apparently, by the time of execution, internally, the majority of the condemned had already reconciled with it. It is known that in 1890, the exiled convict Kucheryansky, sentenced to hanging for inflicting wounds on the warden of the Alexander Shackled Prison, Shishkov, offered active resistance to the executioner Komlev on the scaffold. However, the prisoners present at the execution did not support him, and Komlev and the convoy dealt with Kucheryansky and still hung him on the gallows. His last words were: “Don’t be timid, brothers, death is easy, the rope is thin!”

But even after this execution, they did not tie the hands of the death row prisoners, apparently considering that this would be a violation of Russian tradition.

Russian history, on the one hand, is rich in various paradoxes, but on the other hand, many of them are easily explained. One of these paradoxes is seen as peasant revolts after the abolition of serfdom. For centuries, the people humbly endured serfdom and did not even think about their liberation. The Decembrists had to think and die for him. But as soon as he received his freedom, he began to rebel. However, this only looks paradoxical if you do not take into account the psychology of the Russian peasant. He began to rebel not because he received little freedom, but because he received little land.

The peasants, having learned that they would still have to work for the master for another two years, that their plots would be reduced, and that they would have to bear duties and then pay a heavy ransom for the land, decided that the “good king” could not deceive their aspirations like that. The local authorities are to blame for everything, hiding the original royal charter. In the first five months of 1861, there were 1,340 peasant riots, and in the year as a whole - more than 1,850. Troops were sent against the peasants more than 900 times. 64 infantry and 16 cavalry regiments took part in suppressing peasant unrest.

The most famous was the peasant revolt in the village of Bezdna, Kazan province, where local Anton Petrov convinced the peasants that, by tsar's command, all the land of the lords was given to the peasants free of charge, and urged them not to go to corvee and not to pay quitrent. He was afraid to ignite the people with his speeches, who drove away the police officer and the district leader of the nobility, who were trying to persuade him to reconcile. Then troops were sent to the Abyss under the command of Major General Apraksin. Only after the fifth volley did the peasants flee, leaving in place the instigator of the riot, Petrov, as well as about 70 killed and more than a hundred wounded, of which 21 people later died from their wounds. The court sentenced Petrov to death, and on April 16, 1861 he was shot.

On Apraksin’s report on the suppression of peasant riots in the Kazan province, Alexander II wrote: “I cannot but approve of the actions of the gr. Apraksina; no matter how sad it was, there was nothing else to do.”

However, the peasants were ready to die for the land, but not for the revolution. When in 1874, inspired by the ideas of Bakunin, more than a thousand young revolutionaries “went to the people” to rouse the peasantry to revolt, they returned with nothing.

In general, life in Russia in the second half of the 19th century was quite calm, and therefore few were executed, as statistics show:

1878 - 1 person executed.

1879 - 16 people.

1880 - 5 people.

1881 - 5 people.

1882 - 4 people.

1883 - 1 person.

1884 - 4 people.

1885 - 1 person.

1886 - 5 people.

1887 - 5 people.

1889 - 3 people.

1890 - 2 people.

The nineteenth century in the history of Russia, in my opinion, is the most interesting for research. This is an era of brilliant victories and crushing defeats, successes and disappointments. This century could be called the “chameleon century”, because the periods liberal reforms here policies were replaced by a conservative orientation, and after great victories there were crushing defeats. Revealing the reasons for this instability, one should pay attention to the fact that the entire policy of this period was determined not only by objective factors, but also by subjective ones (in particular, it was associated with the personalities of the new emperors - there were five of them during the nineteenth century).

Speaking about the reasons for the general instability of the nineteenth century, we should start with the socio-economic development of Russia at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. This period is notable for the fact that two processes occurred in parallel - the decomposition of the feudal-serf economy and the beginning of the industrial revolution, undoubtedly closely interrelated.

It is worth recalling the characteristics of a feudal economy, the main one of which is its natural character (products are produced mainly for consumption within the economy itself, and not for sale). The crisis of the feudal-serf system was primarily expressed in the increasing involvement of landowners in commodity-money relations. This process consisted of the abolition of corvee and the transfer of peasants to cash rent - in non-black soil provinces, as well as the transfer of peasants to the so-called month - the peasants were obliged to work only on corvee, while the landowner fed and clothed them, i.e. The position of serfs in this case resembled the position of slaves on plantations (in black earth provinces).

The beginning of the industrial revolution - the process of transition from manufacture based on manual labor to machine production - also has its own specific characteristics. These include the “lagging” nature of the industrial revolution in Russia, the huge role of the state, and the influence of railway construction on its progress.

It should also be noted that despite the beginning of the decomposition of the feudal-serf system, it was still quite viable, and subsistence farming still prevailed.

First stage domestic policy This period is characterized by attempts to carry out large-scale reforms. The reasons for the transition of the government of Alexander the First to reforms can be considered: the personal views of the emperor, brought up in the spirit of the ideals of the Enlightenment, as well as the circumstances of his rise to power - the desire of the participants in the conspiracy against Paul the First to limit autocratic power. Special attention It should be noted that there were no objective reasons for the reforms, such as the economic crisis, social uprisings, foreign policy complications, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so from the very beginning the positive outcome of the reforms was very problematic.

The reform activities of Alexander the First of this period include attempts at peasant reform (an attempt to issue a decree banning the sale of peasants without land in 1801, a decree on free cultivators in 1803, a ban on deporting peasants to Siberia in 1809), attempts to reform the state system (the beginning of the activities of the Secret Committee - a kind of “shadow government” - 1801, ministerial reform of 1802, Speransky’s constitutional project of 1809, which remained unrealized, the creation of the State Light), reforms in the field of education (the liberal University Charter was adopted, introducing the autonomy of universities, and Censorship regulations, according to which the censor had to interpret the works being checked in a sense favorable to the author).

Unfortunately, most of Alexander the First's reforms ended in failure, except for reforms in the field of education.

The second stage of domestic policy was marked by a rejection of reforms and a transition to the conservation of existing relations. The reasons can be considered the revolutionary wave in Europe in the 1820s and the emperor’s disappointment in the possibility of preventing revolution through reforms.

Returning to the topic of the essay, it is necessary to dwell in more detail on the issue concerning the brilliant victories and crushing defeats of Russia.

The list of Russian victories of this period includes:

the war with Persia, which ended with the Treaty of Gulistan (almost all of Azerbaijan went to Russia);

the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812, which ended with the Peace of Bucharest (Bessarabia went to Russia, Serbia received autonomy);

the war with Sweden of 1808-1809, which ended with the Treaty of Friedrichsgam (Russia annexed Finland);

The Patriotic War of 1812, which ended in the brilliant defeat of Napoleonic army;

foreign campaigns of the Russian army in 1813-1814.

The list of Russia's defeats during this period includes:

defeat at Austerlitz 1805;

participation in the fourth anti-French coalition, the battles of Preussisch-Eylau and Friedland. Negotiations with Napoleon and the signing of the Peace of Tilsit. (The division of spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe was in the interests of Russia, and joining the continental blockade of England was, on the contrary, extremely unprofitable for it;

Congress of Vienna 1814-1815

The results of the foreign policy of the first quarter of the nineteenth century can be considered the rejection of the policy of “constitutional diplomacy”, which could not prevent new revolutions, and the transition to an openly reactionary policy. Russia, along with Austria, is turning into the “gendarme of Europe.”

Along with the second stage of the reign of Alexander the First, the reign of Nicholas the First is considered conservative and reactionary. Characteristic The internal policy of Nicholas the First is conservatism, a course towards stabilization and conservation of existing relations in society. The reasons for this lie in the views of Nicholas I, as well as in the circumstances of his rise to power - he perceived the Decembrist uprising as a consequence of the excessive liberalism of Alexander the First.

Nicholas the First took a course towards strengthening the autocracy and centralizing control. He expressed himself in strengthening the influence of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, which actually replaced the official bodies of state power.

The results of this course are: strengthening the bureaucratic apparatus, encouraging blind obedience, strict adherence to instructions and directions from the center, police methods of managing society.

Along with this, Nicholas the First carried out fairly liberal reforms. An example of these are attempts to carry out peasant reform. Nicholas the First believed serfdom evil and possible reason the next rebellion, but, on the other hand, he was afraid of the discontent of the nobles, as well as the fact that the peasants would not be able to take advantage of the freedom granted due to their lack of education.

1837-1841 - reform of the state village of Kiseleva. A special Ministry of State Property and local government chambers were created, volost and rural self-government was introduced, corvée was abolished everywhere for state peasants, and their duties were determined based on the profitability of land.

1842 - decree on obligated peasants. Upon liberation, the peasant received a plot of land not for ownership, but for use, and for this he was obliged to bear various duties.

Despite the fact that Nicholas the First understood the harmfulness of serfdom, it was not abolished, since the majority of the nobles still opposed it.

The third area of ​​activity of Nicholas I can be considered the suppression of any forms of dissent. In support of this position, I would like to cite the following decrees and orders of the emperor:

"cast iron" Censorship Charter of 1826;

closure of a number of the most popular magazines (European, Moscow Telegraph, Telescope);

creation of a secret censorship committee headed by D. P. Buturlin. The apogee of persecution of the leading press, censorship terror.

The reign of Nicholas the First combined conservative police-bureaucratic methods with liberal ones, but in general the result of his reign can be summed up as follows: the establishment of a police-bureaucratic regime stabilized the internal political situation, but at the same time preserved Russia's lag behind the advanced countries of the West, as demonstrated by the Crimean War .

In continuation of the discussion about the policies of Nicholas the First, I would like to dwell on the foreign policy of this period.

The biggest defeat of Russia under Nicholas the First was the defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856, which resulted in the ban on Russia from having a navy and fortresses on the Black Sea, and also created the threat of Russia becoming a minor power.

Important victories of this period of time include:

The naval battle of Navarino, which resulted in the defeat of the Turkish fleet;

the war with Persia, which ended with the Peace of Turkmanchay - Eastern Armenia (Erivan and Nakhichevan khanates) went to Russia;

the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829, which ended with the Treaty of Andrianople. The mouth of the Danube, the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and the territories of Transcaucasia were transferred to Russia;

accession North Caucasus as a result of the Caucasian War of 1817-1864.

In support of the thesis about the contradictory essence of the nineteenth century, I would like to cite the reforms of Alexander the Second and the counter-reforms of Alexander the Third.

The reign of Alexander II is often called the era of great reforms, which is no coincidence.

The most important reform, in my opinion, is the peasant reform of 1861, during which serfdom was abolished. The manifesto of February 19, 1861 proclaimed the personal freedom of the peasants and a number of their civil rights, and each was allocated a land plot.

The next reforms of Alexander II were the Zemskaya and City reforms of 1864 and 1870, respectively. The essence of the reforms: zemstvos were introduced locally as all-class self-government bodies. Zemstvos elected executive bodies - zemstvo councils. Their main functions were fiscal and economic. The reform of city government was carried out according to the same principles. Estate-based bodies of city self-government were replaced by all-estate ones - the city duma and the city council. The functions of the new city government bodies did not go beyond administrative and economic ones.

The judicial reform of 1864 was quite progressive for that time. A single judicial system on the principles of universality, transparency of legal proceedings, competition, protection of the rights of defendants, independence of judges from the administration. Entirely new institutions for Russia were introduced - the jury, the bar and the prosecutor's office.

In the 1870s the government slowed down the progress of reforms, and the period since 1881 is counter-reform.

Counter-reforms of Alexander the Third in the field of education:

temporary rules on the press of 1882 - the administration received the right to close any printed organ without court approval;

the new University Charter of 1884 - according to it, the administration’s control over students was strengthened and the autonomy of universities was abolished;

The circular on "cook's children" of 1887 was adopted - access to gymnasiums was limited for people from the lower classes.

Audit of zemstvo and city reforms:

new Regulations on provincial and district zemstvo institutions of 1890 - for the city curia the property qualification was increased, for the nobility it was lowered;

new City Regulations of 1892 - the circle of voters is limited in favor of the wealthier strata. The element of class and administration interference in self-government affairs has been strengthened.

Audit of judicial reform:

court hearings on political affairs should have been carried out at behind closed doors(1887)

trial by jury was virtually abolished in 1889.

The results of Alexander III's domestic policy were contradictory. Suppression of the revolutionary movement, Russification of the outskirts, strengthening the role of the local nobility and at the same time stabilization in society, successful economic development. However, most of the problems facing the country were not resolved. Subsequently, they escalated even more and ultimately led to revolution.

The nineteenth century in the history of Russia is rich in events, very diverse and diverse. There are many judgments and assessments of this era. But the fact that this era is absolutely heterogeneous and contradictory is undeniable. In my essay, I tried to highlight the most important processes taking place in Russia in this period of time. Brilliant victories and crushing defeats, successful reforms from the point of view of the consequences and absolutely failures - everything has happened in the history of our state. But be that as it may, history does not have a subjunctive mood and it is not worth discussing what is good and what is bad, as well as the expediency of the actions of emperors. In my essay, I tried to describe in detail the events of the nineteenth century, indicate the causes and consequences of any events, be they reforms, victories or defeats, and give them an objective assessment.



1801.03.23-24
Murder of Paul I. Beginning of the reign of Alexander I.

1803
Decree on free cultivators in Russia.

1804.04
Petersburg Agreement on the alliance of Great Britain and Russia in the anti-French coalition.

1804.12.02
Coronation of Napoleon I.

1805.12.02
Defeat of the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz.

1805.21.10
Battle of Trafalgar. Defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet from the English. Death of the commander of the English fleet, Admiral Nelson.

1807.07.07
Peace of Tilsitz between Russia and France.

1808.09
Meeting of Napoleon with Alexander I in Erfurt.

1809.07.5-6
Napoleon's defeat of the Austrian army at Wagram.

1810 spring
Allied treaties of France with Prussia and Austria.

1811
Expulsion of the Mamluks from Egypt.

1812.06.12
Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

1812.08.26
Battle of Borodino.

1812.11.23
Napoleon's flight from the army to Paris.

1813.10.16-19
"Battle of the Nations" at Leipzig.

1814.03
Napoleon's abdication. Napoleon's exile to the island of Elba. Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in France.

1815
Hundred days of Napoleon (20.3.1815 - 22.6.1815).

1817
The beginning of the Caucasian War by Russia.

1820.06
The beginning of the revolution in Naples, Central Italy, Piedmont.

1820.10
Indignation of the Semenovsky regiment in St. Petersburg.

1821
Congress of the Union of Benevolence in Moscow.

1822.12.02
Proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine "America to Americans." Directed against the "Holy Alliance" in its struggle against the independence of Latin American countries. Later it was used for US intervention in the affairs of other states of the American continents.

1823
The beginning of the civil war in Greece (1823 -1824).

1825.09.27
Great Britain. The first railway in the world.

1825.12.14
Decembrist revolt.

1826
Beckendorf's initiative to create a corps of gendarmes and the Third Section.

1830.01.22
Proclamation of Greek independence (22.1.1830 - 3.2.1830).

1830.11.29
The beginning of the uprising in Poland.

1831
Massive cholera epidemic in Europe (1830 -1831).

1832
The US war against the Indians went down in history under the name "Black Falcon's War" named after the Indian leader.

1833.10.15
Berlin Convention between Russia, Austria and Prussia.

1834.04.09-13
Revolt of the Lyon weavers in France.

1837.10.30
Opening of the first railway in Russia, between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo, 26 km.

1838.08.05
The beginning of the Chartist movement.

1838
The beginning of the Anglo-Afghan war.

1840
Russia's rupture of the Unkyar-Iskelesi Treaty. The beginning of a breakdown in Russia's relations with France and Great Britain, which led to the Crimean War.

1844
"Circles of Petrashevites" in St. Petersburg.

1846-1848
War between Mexico and the USA.

1848.02.22-25
Revolution in France.

1848.02.27
The beginning of the "March Revolution" in Germany.

1848.03.15
The beginning of the national liberation revolution in Hungary. Hungary declared its independence. Adoption of democratic laws.

1848.03.18-20
The beginning of barricade battles in Berlin.

1848.03.26
(according to the Julian calendar - March 14) Tsar's manifesto on intervention in Europe.

1850
Taiping uprising in China.

1851.11.13
Direct railway connection Moscow - St. Petersburg.

1851.12.02
Coup d'etat in France, Louis Napaleon Bonoparte ordered the arrest of oppositionists and the dissolution of the National Assembly.

1853.10.16
Türkiye declared war on Russia.

1854.01.31
Treaty of Kanagawa between the United States and Japan regarding access to Japanese ports American merchant ships.

1854.04.08-09
Start Crimean War.

1854.09.14-18
Landing of troops in Crimea by the Anglo-French army near Evpatoria.

1855.03.02
Death of Nicholas I. Alexander II - Emperor of Russia.

1856.04
The beginning of reforms in Russia by Alexander II.

1857 - 1858
Sepoy Mutiny in India.

1859.05.06
Gold Rush in Colorado.

1860.05-09
Expedition "1000" D. Gpribaldi.

1861.02
The Southern States Confederacy was formed in the United States.

1861.03.03
Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom in Russia.

1861.04.12
The beginning of the American Civil War.

1862.02.29
Garibaldi and his detachment tried to capture the Papal States, but were defeated and captured.

1863.07.01-03
Battle of Gettysburg. Northern victory over the Confederacy.

1863-1864
Polish uprising.

1864.09.28
The First International is founded.

1865.04.15
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States (1860 - 65), who ended slavery in the country (2/12/1809 - 04/15/1865), was killed by a terrorist. E. Johnson became the new US President.

1867.03.30
The United States bought Alaska and the Aleutian Islands from Russia.

1870.07.19
France declares war on Prussia.

1870.09.02
Victory of the Prussian army over the French at Sedan. The emperor was captured and abdicated the throne. The end of the 2nd empire in France.

1871.03.18
The Paris Commune seized power in Paris.

1871.05.28
The final defeat of the Paris Commune.

1872.09.11
Union of the three emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.

1875
Ottoman Empire declared itself state bankrupt.

1877.04.24
Russia declared war on Turkey.

1877.06.27
Russian troops crossing the Danube.

1878.03.03
San Stefano Peace Treaty, Turkish recognition of the independence of Romania, Montenegro, Serbia. Formation of a new state - Great Bulgaria.

1881.03.13
Assassination of Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya. Alexander III became king.

1881.06.18
Union of three emperors: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia.

1881 - 1882
Industrial crisis in Russia.

1882.05.20
Creation of the “Triple Alliance” consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

1882
The beginning of the resettlement of Jews to Palestine after the Jewish pogroms in Russia.

1884-1885
Franco - Chinese war.

1885
Mass expulsion of 26,000 Poles from the German part of Poland.

1885.08.29
As a result of the Russian-Afghan conflict, an agreement between Russia and Great Britain on the borders between Afghanistan and Russia.

1886.05.01-04
General strike for an 8-hour working day in the USA. Shooting of a workers' demonstration in Chicago.

1887.02.12
Eastern Triple Alliance: Austria-Hungary, Italy and Great Britain. Maintaining the status quo in the Eastern Mediterranean.

1887.06.06
Treaty between Russia and Germany on neutrality.

1889.07.14-21
Creation of the Second International. First Congress in Paris.

1889
World Exhibition in Paris.

1894.11.01
Death Alexandra III. The throne passed to Nicholas II.

1894.12.11
The first world auto exhibition opened in Paris, in which 9 companies participated.

1895
Anglo-Russian agreement on the delimitation of spheres of influence in the Pamirs.

1896.04.06-15
The first modern Olympic Games in Greece.

1896.05.28
Treaty between Russia and Japan on the Korean issue.

1898.03.06
Germany has entered into a 99-year lease agreement with China on the Shandong Peninsula. lease by Great Britain of WeihaiWei, Russia for 25 years of Port Arthur and the Kwantung Peninsula, France of Canton (Guangzhou).

1898.04.13
Russian-Japanese agreement on the division of spheres of influence in Korea.

1898.12.10
The Spanish-American War ended with the peace treaty in Paris. Spain lost its colonial possessions in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean(Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines).

1899.05
Conference of countries on arms limitation.

1899
U.S. Proclamation of Secretary Hay's Doctrine" open doors" in China.

1900
The creation by Great Britain of a "concentration camp" during the Boer War for "non-combatants".

Historically, in Russia centuries are written in Roman numerals, although Lately You can increasingly see the use of Arabic numerals to indicate the century. This happens due to banal illiteracy and ignorance of how to correctly write a particular century in Roman numerals, and people are also increasingly asking questions, What century is this, the 19th century in numbers?

XIX what century is this

In order not to simply answer the question posed XIX is what century? and to get rid of such questions in the future, you need to understand how Roman numerals are read. In fact, there is nothing complicated here.
So, Roman numerals are designated as follows:
I – 1
II – 2
III – 3
IV – 4
V – 5
VI – 6
VII – 7
VIII – 8
IX – 9
X – 10
It turns out that only 5 Roman numerals have an individual style, the rest are obtained by substituting I. If I is in front of the main digit, this means minus 1, if after, then plus 1.
With this knowledge, you can easily answer the question - what century is the 19th century?

XIX what century is this

And yet, what century is this? Reading these simple numbers, many break them down into 3 values ​​- X, I, X and get some very strange century - 10 - 1 - 10, i.e. 10 thousand 110 century. Of course this is not the correct layout. The number XIX consists of 2 components - X and IX and is deciphered very simply - 1 and 9, i.e. it turns out 19.

Thus, the answer to the question, which century is the 19th century, will be the 19th century.

What will the remaining centuries look like written in Roman numerals?

XI – 11
XII – 12
XIII- 13
XIV – 14
XV – 15
XVI – 16
XVII – 17
XVIII – 18
XIX – 19
XX – 20

The century we live in now is referred to as XXI.

What century is this?

Many people wonder why in Russia they began to designate centuries with Roman numerals, because everyone knows that in the same English language centuries are indicated by familiar Arabic numerals, which are known and understood by everyone, so why complicate your life?

In fact, everything is quite simple, the fact is that Roman numerals are not used exclusively in Russia and not only to indicate the century. It is believed that Roman numerals are more solemn and significant than the banal Arabic ones, known to everyone. Thus, Roman numerals have been used for centuries to indicate particularly significant events or to give some solemnity and highlight.

You will be convinced that not only the century is indicated by Roman numerals quite simply, just look at the book edition of the works in several volumes, where the volumes are probably numbered with Roman numerals. In all countries, royalty was numbered with Roman numerals: Peter I, Elizabeth II, Louis XIV etc.

In some countries, Roman numerals even indicate years, which is much more difficult than learning what century it is in the 19th century, because when hundreds and thousands are added, Roman numerals also increase by several digits - L, C, V and M. Years marked with Roman numerals, unlike centuries, look really scary, so 1984 is written as MCMLXXXIV.

All Olympic Games are also designated by Roman numerals. Thus, in 2014 of the 21st century, the XXII Winter Olympic Games were held in Sochi.
Thus, we can say that without knowing what century the 19th century is, a person deprives himself of the opportunity to freely read about various events taking place in the world.

Most likely, in the near future centuries in Russia will still be designated by traditional Arabic numerals and questions like which century is the 19th century will disappear by themselves, because the nineteenth century will be written in a way that is understandable to everyone - the 19th century.

And yet, knowing at least the first hundred Roman numerals is simply necessary for a literate person, because not only centuries are designated by them.