Saltychikha: the story of the most terrible Russian woman. Daria Saltykova's terrible fun Video investigation of the Saltychikha case

In 1768, near the Execution Ground, near the pillory stood the landowner Daria Saltykova - the famous Saltychikha, who tortured at least 138 of her serfs to death. For a woman who is not a ruler, this is a kind of record, the largest number of victims in history ...

While the clerk read from the sheet the crimes she had committed, Saltychikha stood with her head uncovered, and a plaque with the inscription "Tormentor and Murderer" hung on her chest. After that, she was sent to eternal imprisonment in the Ivanovo Monastery.

Daria Nikolaeva Saltykova, nicknamed Saltychikha (1730-1801), is a Russian landowner who went down in history as the most sophisticated sadist and murderer of more than a hundred serfs subject to her. She was born in March 1730 into a family that belonged to the pillar Moscow nobility; relatives of Darya Nikolaevna's parents were the Davydovs, Musins-Pushkins, Stroganovs, Tolstoys and other eminent nobles. Aunt Saltykova was married to Lieutenant General Ivan Bibikov, and her older sister was married to Lieutenant General Afanasy Zhukov.

Marriage

Saltychikha's maiden name was Ivanova. She was the daughter of a nobleman who was related to the Davydovs, the Musin-Pushkins, the Stroganovs and the Tolstoys. She married the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov. They had two sons who were enrolled in the Guards regiments.

Surprisingly, she was still a flourishing and, moreover, a very pious woman. Daria herself married Gleb Saltykov, captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, but in 1756 she was widowed. Her mother and grandmother lived in a nunnery, so Darya Nikolaevna became the sole owner of a large fortune. The 26-year-old widow was left with two sons, enrolled in military service in the capital's guards regiments. Almost every year, Daria Saltykova took a trip on a pilgrimage to some Orthodox shrine. Sometimes she drove quite far, visited, for example, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; during such trips, Saltykova generously donated "to the Church" and distributed alms.

crimes

At twenty-six, Saltychikha became a widow and received into her full possession about six hundred peasants on estates located in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces. In seven years, she killed more than a quarter of her wards - 139 people, most of them women and girls! Most of the murders were carried out in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow.

The main reason for the punishment was dishonesty in mopping or laundry. The punishment began with the fact that she struck the guilty peasant woman with blows with an object that fell under her arm. The offender was then flogged by grooms and haiduks, sometimes to death. Saltychikha could douse the victim with boiling water or singe her hair on her head. Victims were starved and tied naked in the cold.

In one episode, Saltychikha also got a nobleman. The land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, was in a love relationship with her for a long time, but decided to marry another, for which Saltychikha almost killed him along with his wife.

Complaint to the Empress

The initial complaints of the peasants only led to the punishment of the complainants, since Saltychikha had an influential relationship and she managed to bribe officials with bribes. But still, two peasants, Savely Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin, whose wives she killed, in 1762 managed to convey a complaint to Catherine II, who had just ascended the throne.

At the beginning of the summer of 1762, two fugitive serfs appeared in St. Petersburg - Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov - who set themselves an almost impossible goal: they set out to bring a complaint to the Empress Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna against their mistress, a large landowner Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova. The fugitives had almost no chance of success: firstly, they were in an illegal position and could not verify their identity with passports; secondly, the Sovereign Empress, according to the rules of the then office work, considered documents submitted only by the ranks of the highest four levels of the Table of Ranks (that is, not lower than the Privy Councilor). Before the era of Emperor Paul the First, who fixed a special box on the wall of the Winter Palace for denunciations of "all persons, without distinction of rank", there were still almost four decades; and this meant that a simple person could not be heard by the Power, which did not honor him with audiences and did not accept his petitions. You can say this: the Higher Power simply did not notice their slaves.

However, Ilyin and Martynov had no way back. They could only appeal to the highest Authority in the Empire and move only forward in an attempt to realize their plans. The way back meant certain death for both. Surprisingly, both were able to successfully complete an almost hopeless enterprise.

If the fugitives acted according to the law and tried to file a complaint against their mistress at the place of residence, they would certainly have expected the saddest end. Such attempts have already been made by their predecessors, and they all ended for the daredevils in a very sad (and sometimes downright tragic) way. Therefore, Ilyin and Martynov chose a long and at first glance illogical path: at the end of April 1762, they fled from the Moscow house of their mistress, but did not move south, to the free Don steppes, but in the exact opposite direction, to the capital of the Empire. With all sorts of hardships and vicissitudes, the unpassported serfs reached St. Petersburg and hid there.

The fugitives were looking for approaches to the Winter Palace, more precisely, for such a person through whom they could convey a complaint to the Empress. It is not known how exactly such a person was found, it is not known at all who he was; most likely, not without a bribe. Be that as it may, in the first half of June, Catherine II received a "written assault" (as statements were called in those days) of Ilyin and Martynov.

Catherine II

In it, the serfs reported the following:
- They are known for their mistress Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova "deadly and not unimportant criminal cases" (as in the original);
- Daria Saltykova "from 1756 the soul with a hundred (...) her, the landowner, was destroyed";
- The authors asked the Empress of all serfs Saltykova "to protect from mortal destruction and merciless inhuman torment";
- Emphasizing the large number of people tortured by Darya Saltykova, the informers stated that only one of them, Yermolai Ilyin, had the landowner successively killed three wives, each of whom she tortured with her own hands;
- For themselves, the authors asked "not to give them, informers, and others into the possession of the landowner."

Lawlessness of the peasants

It should be noted that, in fact, the murders of peasants by landowners were very frequent; during the period under review, the Senate considered several dozen cases with one or more serf victims.

And how many cases did not reach the court, especially the Senate? However, before the Saltychikha case, even the Senate most often justified the landowners, especially if the victim did not die immediately after punishment, but after a while.

For example, a certain wife of Unterschichtmeister Gordeev, “having beaten her girl, drove her barefoot through the frost, so that she almost froze, and then kept her in a cold hallway, from which she died. However, due to Gordeeva’s denial that this stay in the cold happened on her orders, the Senate acquitted her.

Even during the consideration of the case of Saltychikha, her serf, who contributed to the disclosure of atrocities, the Senate was sentenced to the whip "for false denunciation" in view of the fact that he incorrectly named the name of one of the victims tortured by her.

But the Saltykova case became a landmark case that marked a new era of legality, where a high position did not automatically give the right to excesses. All were to be equal before the law.

The gentry of the Smolensk gentry Vysotsky, who killed the wife of his peasant, was, however, sentenced to a whip and exile to Nerchinsk. Having canceled the whip, Catherine 2 supplemented this punishment with some shameful penalties. The widow Maryina, who, together with her young son, found a serf, was sentenced to confinement in a monastery, and the empress also increased the punishment.

Borzenkov, who had flogged two serf girls to death, was sentenced (according to the decision of the Belgorod provincial office) to deprivation of rights, a whip, tearing of the nostrils and imprisonment in the Alexander Fortress. The empress replaced this punishment with life imprisonment in a monastery with deprivation of rights and maintenance for some time on bread and water. A similar punishment befell: Lieutenant Turbina; Solodilova; Bibikov; Milshin, who killed three serfs at once; Kulyabka.

Even high-ranking dignitaries could no longer disregard the law. The senate sentenced Prince Kantemir to "exile to work," despite the fact that Chertkov, the governor of Kharkov and Voronezh, strongly stood up for him. The Senate sentenced Prince Davydov to severe punishment, who killed his man with a cleaver, and again the Empress added to the exile laid down by the Senate, 4 weeks of maintenance on bread and water.

In all these cases, despite the high position of the murderers, the Senate recognized the murder and did not look for extenuating circumstances. In addition, for some time now, even if the landowner was not found guilty of murder, he was tried for arbitrariness, because the state, not the landowner, should punish the peasants for the offenses.

A certain von Ettinger was accused of torturing serfs, one of whom died as a result. From the Orenburg Provincial Chancellery, the case passed to the Senate, which imposed a very light punishment on the guilty person, namely: imprisonment for a month, church repentance and the withdrawal of a subscription, that henceforth she would not show such severity. However, on October 18, 1770, an imperial order was issued in this case, which indicated that Ettinger had tortured the serf for his escapes, that is, for cases “which are not subject to investigation by her, but are subject to city justice”, that the serf, in essence, , would be liable for escape to the state court, and that this abuse of power on the part of Ettinger by the senate was ignored.Revising its decision, the senate found that Ettinger had indeed appropriated the power of an official, and supplemented its first sentence with a decree for the confiscation of the Ettinger estate.

To the same punishment and for the same reasons was sentenced by the Senate to a prominent dignitary of that time, personally known to the empress, general-in-chief von Weymarn, who had beaten his servant Heidemann on suspicion of theft; this time the punishment was mitigated by the Empress, who ordered Weimarn to be reprimanded in the College of Justice and to recover 3,000 rubles from him. in favor of Heidemann.

Consequence

The Empress did not brush aside the paper, it was too painful for a large number of victims to be discussed there. Although Saltychikha belonged to a noble family, Catherine II used her case as a show trial that marked a new era of legality.

From the Office of Her Imperial Majesty, the denunciation of Ilyin and Martynov was submitted for consideration and decision to the Governing Senate. From there, he was transferred to the Moscow office of the Governing Senate, and then ended up in the College of Justice. There he was accepted into production (that is, they began to consider on the merits) on October 1, 1762. Although the Moscow Justice College was directly involved in detective cases in this case, the general management of the search was carried out from St. Petersburg by the Senate. It was this autonomy, which allowed the detectives not to obey the Moscow administration, as it will become clear from the subsequent course of events, that made it possible to bring the search to the end.

In the Moscow College of Justice, the case fell into the hands of the most “mongrel” (that is, ignoble, without family and business ties) official - Stepan Volkov. In every organization there are two categories of workers: those who pull the line, do the job and remain unnoticed by anyone, and those who do trifles, but manage to be in front of the authorities and receive all the thanks. Court adviser Volkov was from the first category. When a command came from the northern capital to accept the complaint against Daria Saltykova for investigation, all the officials immediately realized that the matter was risky: on the one hand, in St. because she has all of Moscow in her relatives. In short, wherever you throw it - everywhere is a wedge! Therefore, all of Volkov's more or less eminent colleagues managed to push this matter away from themselves, as they say.

The fact that it was the poorest and humblest investigator who took up this case may have predetermined the success of the entire investigation. In any case, it was thanks to him that the search, which lasted for several years, made it possible to stop the landowner who did not know any brakes. In submission to Volkov, a young court adviser, Prince Dmitry Tsitsianov, was appointed. Together, they actually "promoted" this case.

During the first year - until November 1763 - the investigators studied the account books arrested from Saltykova and interrogated witnesses. Numerous servants of the landowner, who lived in her Moscow house on Kuznetskaya Street, on Sretenka, were interviewed. Her servants from the estates in Troitsky (near Moscow) and in Vokshino were interrogated.

The study of account books allowed the investigators to quite accurately determine the circle of officials of the Moscow administration who were in warm relations with Daria Saltykova and received various kinds of presents from her. In addition, it was possible to trace the movement of serfs in the landowner's possessions: whom and to whom she sold, who went to work and crafts, who died, who signed up for the service staff.

Female mortality among serfs

A lot of interesting things have been revealed here. First of all, the percentage of officially deceased serfs seemed rather suspicious to the investigators, and the death rate among women far exceeded the death rate among men, which could not find any logical explanation. From the very beginning, the deaths of some people were presented as a consequence of a crime, which, however, no one thought to investigate. So, for example, in November 1759, the body of the deceased serf Saltykova Khrisanf Andreev with noticeable bodily injuries was presented to the Detective Order of Moscow. The investigation into his death was carried out by officials of the order with obvious and gross violations in the execution of documents, for example, documents dated early referred to later ones, which undoubtedly indicated forgery.

Saltychikha at work. Lubok picture of the 19th century

In addition, investigators from the College of Justice compiled a list of names of Saltykova's serfs, the circumstances of whose life or death, even according to the documents, seemed very suspicious. For example, a young, healthy, 20-lazy woman ended up in Saltykova's house as a domestic servant and died two weeks later. The deaths of Yermolai Ilyin's three wives were very suspicious, as the latter mentioned in a denunciation addressed to the Empress. Ilyin, by the way, held the position of Saltykova's "personal groom", that is, he was a person quite close to the landowner, in any case, who came into contact with her daily. Within three years, Yermolai Ilyin's three young wives died one by one. Saltykova, according to the records in her house books, let some of her servants go to her patrimonial villages, but for some reason they either died immediately or disappeared there, so much so that no one could really say where these people are now .

In total, court adviser Volkov counted 138 (!) Saltykova's serfs, who, in his opinion, became victims of the mistress's crimes.

Along the way, the archives of the office of the Moscow civil governor, the Investigative Order, and the Moscow police chief were checked. It turned out that in the period 1756-62. 21 (!) Complaints were filed against Darya Saltykova by her serfs. For those dark times, it was a kind of record. Each of the complaints cited specific examples of beatings and subsequent deaths of serfs. Formally, all the complaints filed were properly checked, but its bias was not in doubt. The fate of the complainants was painful: the police returned them to the landowner, where they were followed by a strict "recovery", or put on trial "for slander". In the latter case, the complainants were sent to hard labor in Siberia. Like many landowners of that era, Daria Saltykova had her own prisons with torture chambers, decks, shackles, "chairs". Some of the scammers once got there, remained in prison for years and were released only thanks to the investigation that arose.

Arrest

Quite quickly, investigators from the Moscow College of Justice became convinced that Saltykova was obstructing justice. As long as this woman remained at large and controlled the lives of her slaves, the investigators could not count on the complete frankness of the witnesses. A domineering and self-confident woman spread an aura of permissiveness around her. Saltykova's servants, seeing the complete futility of complaints against the hostess, directly told Volkov and Tsitsianov that "there could be no justice against her" and, on this basis, refused to help the investigation.

Therefore, in an extract from the case dated November 6, 1763 and sent to the Governing Senate (in St. Petersburg), it was proposed to allow the investigation to resort to radical measures that could help obtain the necessary information. First of all, the capital was asked for permission to torture Daria Saltykova. In addition, the Justice College asked the Governing Senate to appoint a property manager for Saltykova, and to remove the suspect from managing estates and funds in order to make it impossible to intimidate serfs and give bribes to officials. Also, as one of the measures that could help justice, the investigators named a "general search" on the estates of Saltykova with a total interrogation of all the serfs who lived there.

At this point it is necessary to make a small digression. By the middle of the 18th century, Russian legislators were becoming more and more convinced that the use of torture should be limited. In the draft of the new Judicial Code (the so-called Code of 1742), an attempt was made to legislate restrictions on the torture of women in childbirth and pregnant women, children under 12 years old and the elderly over 70 years old, as well as insane people. Subsequently, this project was supplemented by a restriction on torture against persons belonging to the first eight ranks of the "Table of Ranks", the minimum age of the tortured was raised to 15 years, a ban was introduced on torture of persons of the nobility, etc. Although these proposals did not officially come into effect (since the draft Code of 1742 itself was not adopted), however, the ideas of introducing various restrictions on torture were already in full swing in the air. By the beginning of the 60s of the 18th century, Russian senators openly discussed the possibility of introducing such norms restricting torture, such as, for example, "the severity of torture should not exceed the severity of the punishment imposed by the court" or "torture is unacceptable in a case where indisputable evidence of guilt has been obtained" etc. Emperor Peter the Third spoke out in favor of the prohibition of the use of torture to obtain evidence during the preliminary investigation; Empress Catherine II, who succeeded him on the throne, repeatedly spoke in the same spirit. That is why the Moscow Justice College appealed to the Governing Senate with a request to officially allow the torture of Daria Saltykova.

Such permission has not been obtained. In the “Saltykova case”, the Empress resorted to a directive repeatedly repeated subsequently to the investigators: torture should be used to intimidate the interrogated person, but it cannot be used. During her reign, this technique was repeated many times in a variety of (and important) investigations: in the "case of Vasily Mirovich", in the investigation of the conspiracy of Peter Khrushchev and Semyon Guryev, in the investigation of the "Pugachev case", etc. Some time will pass and November 8, 1774 d. The Empress will sign a secret Decree banning throughout the Empire torture during interrogation. This decree was not publicly announced with the aim that the townsfolk did not know about the ban that had appeared and continued to tremble at the threat of torture. One can argue about how moral it is to intimidate the interrogated with torture, but it should be recognized that since the 60s of the 18th century in Russia they stopped torturing suspects in dungeons (although the executioners, of course, survived: they carried out the sentences of the courts in terms of imposing bodily punishments).

Otherwise, the request of the Moscow investigators was satisfied: Daria Saltykova was removed from managing her property and money, which, from January 1764, Senator Saburov, who was appointed "guardian" (now he would be called "temporary manager"), began to dispose of. Investigators also received permission to conduct a "general search in the houses and estates" of the suspect, if such a need arises.

The same case of Saltychikha, stored in the state archive.

At the beginning of February 1764, court adviser Stepan Volkov officially informed Daria Saltykova about taking her "under guard" and the forthcoming torture. According to tradition, a priest was assigned to her, who was to prepare the woman for trial and possible death, and also to persuade Saltykova not to bring the investigation to extreme cruelty. The priest of the Moscow Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker Dmitry Vasiliev, by order of the Moscow mayor, spent exactly a month in the company of Darya Nikolaevna; during all this time, he persuaded the suspect to cleanse her soul with a sincere confession and repentance. Saltykova listened to the priest, indulged in general discussions about religion and morality, but she did not admit her guilt and claimed that she had been slandered by the servants. After a month - March 3, 1764 - the priest submitted a report to the College of Justice, in which he officially informed the investigators about the failure of his mission: Saltykova did not stop her denial and "was prepared by him for inevitable torture."

Meanwhile, the investigators did not have sanctions for torture. But in order not to reduce the degree of psychological pressure on the suspect, Stepan Volkov decided on a rather cruel hoax: on March 4, 1764, Daria Saltykova, under strict military guard, was taken to the mansion of the Moscow police chief, where the executioner and officials of the search unit were also brought. The suspect was told that she was "delivered to be tortured." However, that day it was not her who was tortured, but a certain robber, whose guilt was not in doubt. Saltykova was present during the torture from beginning to end; cruelty of execution e. b. scare Saltykova and break her stubbornness. However, other people's suffering did not make a special impression on Darya Nikolaevna, and after the end of the "interrogation with passion", which she witnessed, the suspect, smiling, repeated in Volkov's face that "she does not know her guilt and will not slander herself." That. the investigator's hopes of intimidating Saltykova and thereby obtaining a confession of guilt were not crowned with success.

Such fearlessness of Darya Nikolaevna, most likely, had no moral force under it, but a banal awareness of the powers of the investigation. In any case, such an assumption seems to be the most reliable; as the subsequent course of events showed, Saltykova had good friends in the police environment, always ready to come to her aid.

However, Stepan Volkov did not calm down. The collegiate adviser once again wrote to St. Petersburg, hoping to get a sanction for "interrogation with prejudice." It is not difficult to understand the investigator: the confession of the suspect was considered as the most valuable piece of evidence, and the theory of evidence within the framework of the law of that time was in its infancy. Volkov wanted to get official permission from the capital for the possibility of not only intimidating with torture, but also putting it into practice.

But on May 17, 1764, the 6th Department of the Governing Senate sent an order to Moscow to stop threatening Saltykova and witnesses in her case with torture: "(...) Her Imperial Majesty was ordered by decree not to repair either her (yard) people or torture ". The investigator had to reconcile himself and the question of the admissibility of torture was not raised in the investigation of the Saltykova case.

However, Volkov still had one more very effective instrument of inquiry in reserve: a general search.

General search on Sretenka

This investigative technique (quite common at that time) can be put in line with modern “cleansings”. In practice, a general search was carried out as follows: a large police team (soldiers of the garrison could be attached to it) blocked a settlement or a city block, and it was possible to get inside the cordon from the outside, but to get out - no, hence the saying: the entrance is a ruble, the exit - two). The police brigade interrogated without exception everyone who fell into the cordon, and, if necessary, conducted searches of any premises without any additional sanctions.

"General searches" stretched out for several days and were sometimes accompanied by individual interrogation of hundreds of people, and the persons awaiting interrogation and those who underwent it were kept separately. The effectiveness of this method of inquiry should not be underestimated; this technique was successfully used in the fight against large gangs of robbers who relied on accomplices who legally lived in cities and villages. The psychological effect was also important: the townsfolk saw numerous armed guards and were involuntarily imbued with a consciousness of the seriousness of the authorities' intentions, and the fear of slander from the neighbors usually pushed even the most timid witnesses to give frank and detailed testimony. The demonstrative activity of the detective and the fear of being accused of failure to report unleashed tongues better than any promise.

In the first ten days of June 1764, simultaneous general searches were carried out both in Moscow, in the quarter where the house of Darya Saltykova was located, and in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow, where, allegedly, the landowner sent her delinquent household.

Given the piety of Saltychikha, she must have been there.
However, this building was also rebuilt after the fire of 1812.

In Moscow, on Sretenka, the search was led by Stepan Volkov himself. The scale of the event can be judged by the fact that more than 130 people were interrogated alone! A significant part of those interrogated reported the exact dates of the murders committed by Saltykova and even named the names of the dead.

Among the crimes, which were told by residents of neighboring houses and priests of the Vvedenskaya Church and the Church of John Belogradsky (both located in the immediate vicinity of Saltykova's house), in particular, were:
- the murder of a 12-year-old courtyard girl (presumably Praskovya Nikitina) through prolonged beatings;
- the murder as a result of prolonged torture of 19-year-old Fekla Gerasimova (whose body was officially handed over to the 1st police team, where the priests saw the deceased);
- keeping serfs in shackles and logs (this was reported independently by four people who lived next door to Daria Saltykova's house);
- long-term maintenance of barefoot serfs in the winter in the snow (testimonies were given by nine witnesses);
- prolonged corporal punishment of the servants, during which Saltykova personally commanded the torturers "beat more!" (five witnesses).

It should be noted that 94 people interrogated by Stepan Volkov during the general search on Sretenka stated that they knew nothing about the crimes of Daria Saltykova.

In addition to the testimonies of the neighbors, the stories of the yard servant of the suspect turned out to be very important for the investigation. From the very beginning of the investigation, the serfs did not make any contact with Volkov. Apparently, disbelief in the power of the law dominated the intimidated and downtrodden people. Now, when the arrested lady had lost the aura of personal immunity, the serfs gradually believed that the principled investigator would still be able to find justice for the presumptuous noblewoman.

An important result of the general search conducted in the Moscow house of Darya Saltykova was the discovery of a very remarkable ledger, filled in by the housekeeper Savely Martynov, which listed all the bribes distributed by Saltykova to officials of the Moscow administration. This highly curious document revealed the extreme degree of corruption and unscrupulous greed inherent in prominent officials, thanks to which the murders committed in the very center of Moscow year after year were ignored by officials responsible for maintaining law and order and legality.

Among the persons who received valuable gifts and money from Darya Nikolaevna were: the head of the police chief's office, real state councilor Andrey Ivanovich Molchanov, the prosecutor of the Investigative Department Fyodor Khvoshchinsky, those present at the Investigative Department, court advisers Lev Velyaminov-Zernov and Pyotr Mikhailovsky, secretary of the Secret Office Ivan Yarov, actuary of the Investigative Department Ivan Pafnutiev, etc. This explained why none of the complainants against Saltykova could find the truth in Moscow.

General search in Troitskoe

Simultaneously with the general search on Sretenka, a similar operation was carried out in the Trinity estate near Moscow and the village of the same name Saltykova, as well as the villages adjacent to it. In addition to Troitsky, some other settlements also got into the police cordon: the villages of Salarevo, Orlovo, Semenovskoye. The search was led by Prince Dmitry Tsitsianov, later (after the search in Moscow) Volkov came to his aid.

The Troitskoye estate (now the village of Mosrentgen) is now a very quiet and peaceful place. In the photo is the place where the manor house stood.

The number of people interrogated was in the hundreds. Only in the extract on the case, prepared in the following - 1765 - year, the testimony of almost 300 people interrogated by Tsitsianov during the general search is mentioned.

In general, the information obtained by the investigator related to the following criminal acts of Daria Saltykova:
- the murder in the summer of 1762 of the yard girl Fekla Gerasimova; information about this crime supplemented the information received by Volkov in Moscow. The elder of the village of Troitsky, Ivan Mikhailov, who directly transported the corpse of the tortured girl, gave incriminating testimony to Saltykov and named witnesses who could confirm the correctness of his words, in particular, police doctor Fyodor Smirnov, who examined the body of the murdered woman in the premises of the Moscow provincial office;
- beatings, torture by hunger and the subsequent deaths of the yard girls Afimya and Irina (which they reported in their deathbed confession to the priest of the Trinity Church Stepan Petrov);
- the facts of Saltykova's repeated and cruel mockery of her serfs were confirmed by a significant number of peasants in neighboring villages (80 people). However, it should be noted that none of them was a direct witness to the beatings and gave their testimony from hearsay;
- a significant number of Saltykova's serfs (22 people) told the investigation that they had heard from the servants of the mistress that she had committed repeated murders of people, but they themselves were not witnesses of such.

In general, the searches of Volkov and Tsitsianov made it possible to move the investigation forward sharply. Now the detectives had at their disposal a significant number of witnesses, on the basis of whose testimony it was possible to fairly accurately reconstruct both the circumstances of the life of Saltykova herself and her servants. Recall that Volkov had a list of serfs in his hands, consisting of 138 names, the fate of which should be clarified, because they were all potential victims of their mistress. Of this list, 50 people were officially considered "dead from illnesses", 72 people were "missing without a trace", 16 were considered "left to her husband" or "gone on the run."

The serfs of Daria Saltykova accused their mistress of the death of 75 people. However, not all of the cases of murders alleged by Saltykova had witnesses or accomplices; a significant proportion of the applicants' statements were made with reference to missing or deceased persons, and therefore such statements required careful verification. In addition, some of the yard servants were involved in the crimes of the hostess (following her orders to beat people) and therefore, recognizing some events, these people categorically refused to recognize others. The latter circumstance noticeably confused the investigation, since it caused contradictions among the witnesses on a large number of facts.

Nevertheless, the investigators managed to separate the "wheat from the chaff" and, through a scrupulous comparison of a huge number of details, to restore the bloody path of Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova that had stretched for years. It makes sense to dwell on some of the most egregious (and at the same time characteristic) crimes of this landowner.

Three wives of Yermolai

First of all, the investigation was interested in the question of whether the three wives of Yermolai Ilyin (one of the two authors of the petition addressed to the Empress) were really tortured by Saltykova? In other words, had the informer misled the Empress?

It turned out that in March 1762, among the domestic servants of Saltykova, who permanently lived in her Moscow house, a kind of conspiracy was formed. The conspirators - the brothers Shavkunov, Tarnokhin, Nekrasov and Ugryumov - decided to inform the Moscow authorities about the atrocities of the lady.

It must be said that this was far from the first attempt by the servants to inform the authorities about Saltykova's crimes, but for the first time not one, not two, but five people at once decided to make an agreed statement. Knowing that Darya Nikolaevna has excellent personal relations with the ranks of the Moscow police, five daredevils decided to file a complaint with the Senate office (that is, the branch of the Governing Senate in Moscow).

The serfs hid from the house of the landowner at night, but she missed the fugitives and sent a chase after them. Five servants, fearing reprisals on the spot, turned to the night police guard for help. The fugitives were detained, taken to the neighborhood, then escorted to the police chief's office. They were kept there for two weeks, during which they repeatedly announced the numerous murders of people committed by Saltykova, mentioning, among other things, the murder of Yermolai Ilyin's three wives.

The police tried to return the five servants to the mistress, but the people refused to go to her house, for which they were beaten by the police right on the street. In the end, all five were taken to the Senate office, where the applicants were officially interrogated and ... returned to Daria Saltykova. There, the fugitives were flogged and sent to Siberia. It was the unfortunate outcome of the escape of the brothers Shavkunov, Tarnokhin, Nekrasov and Ugryumov that led Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov to the idea of ​​seeking the truth in St. Petersburg.

So, Stepan Volkov found out that denunciations about the murder of Ilyin's three wives had already been submitted before both to the police and to the Senate office. This, of course, increased the credibility of Yermolai Ilyin's statement. But besides this, the investigator for the first time learned the names of people who were direct witnesses to the murders of the mentioned wives. These were Mikhail Martyanov, Pyotr Ulyanov, Vasilisa Matveeva and Aksinya Stepanova. In addition, a significant number of people were able to confirm the presence on the bodies of dead women of obvious and, moreover, very significant bodily injuries (scab on open wounds, torn hair, traces of scalding with boiling water, burned ears, bruises, etc.; however, about the methods of killing Saltykova people will be discussed later). That. the investigation, thanks to a general search, was able to find confirmation that the three wives of Yermolai Ivanov were indeed killed by the landowner.

The story of Yermolai Ivanov's three wives, restored by the investigation, turned out to be in general terms as follows: the first wife of the coachman lady was the "yard girl" Katerina Semenova, whose duty was to wash the floors in the master's house (she did this along with other servants). Having caused the displeasure of the hostess with poor washing of the floors, Semenova was flogged with batogs and whips, after which she died. This happened in 1759. Moscow priest Ivan Ivanov was invited to the dying woman, who was content with the "deaf confession" of the dying woman (the woman could no longer speak) and allowed the body to be buried in the cemetery at the temple in which he served. Saltykova quickly married her coachman, because she did not want him to "languish without a woman." It can be assumed that Ivanov was in good standing with his mistress, in any case, she clearly did not want a young, well-informed peasant to walk in bachelors.

The second wife of Yermolai was the young Fedosya Artamonova, who was settled in the Moscow house of Saltykova and assigned various household chores. Very soon, Fedosya aroused the displeasure of the hostess and, like Katerina Semenova, was subjected to the most severe flogging. As a result, in the spring of 1761, Fedosya died, and Saltykova again called her good friend, priest Ivanov. He, however, was embarrassed by the obvious traces of violence visible on the face and body of the murdered woman and said that he would not allow her to be buried as an ordinary dead woman: they say, let Saltykova present the body to the police and receive official permission for burial. Darya Nikolaevna, of course, did not trouble herself; she ordered the corpse of Fedosya Artamonova to be taken to Troitskoye, so that the local priest Stepan Petrov would bury it without delay. And so it was done.

Less than six months later, Yermolai Ivanov, at the behest of the mistress, was married for the third time. The last wife - pretty and quiet Aksinya Yakovleva - was very fond of him. However, the age of Aksinya, like her predecessors, turned out to be very short-lived, she was killed at the end of February 1762. None of the witnesses could remember the reason for the anger of Daria Saltykova: the landowner suddenly attacked the maid and began to beat her with her own hands. After several blows with her hands, Saltykova armed herself with a rolling pin, then, considering it not a serious enough tool, she grabbed a log. Witnesses Mikhail Martynov and Pyotr Ulyanov watched the murder scene from beginning to end, and a little later they were joined by Matveyeva and Stepanova. Saltykova called the last ones herself, so that they would give the beaten wine to drink and prepare for communion. The landowner ordered to call the priest, so that he would commune the dying woman and allow her to be buried in Moscow.

However, it was not possible to revive Aksinya Yakovlev. The woman died without regaining consciousness. Priest Ivanov, seeing a corpse with black bruises on the face and hands and jets of blood from the nose and ears, refused to bury Yakovlev. Saltykova ordered to take the murdered woman to Troitskoye and instruct the priest Petrov to bury Yakovlev. The order of the landowner was carried out by Aksinya Stepanova and the coachman Roman Ivanov (the latter was Saltykova's confidant and took part in many of her crimes). They handed over the body to the headman of the village, Ivan Mikhailov.

It is noteworthy that the murder of Aksinya Yakovleva caused a nervous breakdown Yermolai Ilyin, the husband of the deceased. The coachman cried and shouted, fearlessly threatened revenge on the fierce landowner, and his fury frightened her in earnest. Saltykova ordered to put him in her prison under guard. Yermolaya was guarded by two "haiduks" (guards) of the landowner, and he had to demonstrate feigned humility and ask for forgiveness from the mistress in order to get out of custody.

It should be noted that the investigation did not insist on Saltykova's guilt in the murder of Yermolai Ilyin's first two wives. Although a number of considerations incriminated the landowner, nevertheless, direct evidence and testimonies did not exist. In general, the investigation interpreted all doubts in favor of the suspect, recognizing only indisputable facts, firmly confirmed by several witnesses. Therefore, in the end, Saltykova was accused only of killing the third wife of her coachman, Aksinya Yakovleva.

Last victim

One of the most scandalous crimes of Daria Saltykova was the murder of Fekla Gerasimova. This courtyard girl turned out to be the last victim of the landowner, she died in July 1762, at the very time when the question of initiating an investigation against Saltykova was already being decided in St. Petersburg.

Card. From the painting thin V. N. Pchelina. "Saltychikha". 20s of the 20th century

The woman, beaten in the Moscow house of Saltykova, was taken to the village of Troitskoye for burial. The headman was instructed to organize the funeral of Gerasimova, although the woman was still alive. There was no doubt that Gerasimova was subjected to the most severe beating; according to the elder Ivan Mikhailov, "and her hair was torn out, and her head was broken, and her back was rotten." Mikhailov, who until that time unquestioningly covered up the hostess's black deeds and repeatedly put his signature as a witness under falsified entries in the church book (these entries certified the supposedly natural nature of the death of the buried), this time was indignant. It is difficult to say what prompted the headman to show integrity - either the rumors about the escape of Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov, or the March escape of 5 serfs to the Moscow Senate - but Mikhailov suddenly announced that he would not bury Gerasimova. He took the body of the woman who died in his arms back to Moscow, and tried to draw the attention of as many people as possible to this. The corpse of Thekla, disfigured by beatings, was seen not only by the villagers of Troitsky, but also by residents of other villages.

Mikhailov presented the corpse of a tortured woman in the office of the Moscow civil governor. The case was rather scandalous, none of the officials wanted to pretend that nothing was happening, and therefore they had to call doctors and inform the police about what had happened. Dr. Fyodor Smirnov officially examined the body and recorded numerous traces of bodily injuries in writing, his act was transferred to the detective police. The body of Gerasimova was also sent there. There, the body was received, examined, and after some time ... returned back to Troitskoye with an order to carry out the burial.

The plot of crimes

The investigation absolutely accurately established the time of the beginning of Saltykova's murders and tortures of her domestics. Until the death of her husband in 1756, no one noticed a particular tendency to assault Darya Nikolaevna. But about six months after the death of her husband, she began to increasingly resort to such a strange way of admonishing her servants as beating with a log. In the Moscow houses of that time, heated by stoves and fireplaces, firewood lay in almost every room; Darya Nikolaevna grabbed the first chock that came to hand and began to beat people with it. Gradually, the severity of the wounds inflicted in this way became stronger, and the beatings themselves became longer and more sophisticated. Saltykova began to use hot curling tongs for torment (then they were called "cooking tongs"): with them she grabbed the offender by the ears. Daria Nikolaevna fell in love with "hair pulling", this procedure was accompanied by hitting a person's head against the wall and sometimes lasted for a quarter of an hour. Many people killed by her, according to the stories of witnesses, had almost no hair on their heads; Saltykova learned to tear her hair in strands (this is quite difficult and requires a lot of strength in the fingers).

Tired of the beatings, the serf-owner instructed her "haiduks" to continue the beatings. Her lackeys (read - guards) flogged the guilty with whips and sticks. Usually two or three "haiduks" took part in the beatings; the coachman Yermolai Ilyin, one of the denunciators of the Empress Saltykov, was among the trusted servants and regularly beat the guilty.

As early as 1757, systematic murders of people began in Saltykova's house. In December, the pregnant Anisya Grigorieva was beaten to death. During her section with batogs (this was done by the groom Bogomolov and the above-mentioned Yeromlai Ilyin on the orders of Saltykova), the woman had a miscarriage. Saltykova ordered Ilyin's wife (the same Katerina Semenova, who later herself died at the hands of the landowner) to bury the discarded fetus at the Vvedenskaya Church in Moscow; Semyonova at night, secretly fulfilled this order. Grigorieva died without receiving communion, and a visiting priest, Ivan Ivanov, refused to bury the body without official permission.

Police doctor Nikolai Telezhkin officially testified to the presence of numerous marks of beatings and open wounds on the body. Apparently, Anisya Grigorieva was dying for several days from blood poisoning, because the act signed by Telezhkin indicated putrefactive changes in the skin in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe wounds; the text of his conclusion leaves no doubt as to the violent cause of the woman's death.

The husband of the deceased stated directly in the office of the police chief that his wife had died from the beatings of the landowner. Chronologically, this was the first official denunciation of the atrocities of Daria Saltykova. However, there was no reaction from the authorities to the message received: the body of Grigorieva was returned to the serf with official permission to carry out the burial, and the informer, Trofim Stepanov, was given to Saltykova for punishment. It was officially stated that the husband of the deceased had escaped, and therefore his denunciation was dictated by the desire to avoid punishment for his own crime. Stepanov was severely flogged and exiled to the distant estate of Saltykova, where he soon died.

The ease with which the landowner got out of a dangerous situation for her clearly turned her head. In subsequent years, beatings and murders took on a phantasmagoric character.

three men

Not only women died at the hands of Saltykova (although, mostly they did!), But also men, for example, in November 1759, during a torture that lasted almost a day, a young servant Khrisanf Andreev was killed, and in September 1761 Saltykova personally killed the boy Lukyana Mikheeva.

The mockery of Andreev was especially sophisticated: at the behest of Saltykova, he was stripped naked and subjected to whipping. Khrisanf was flogged by his own uncle, groom Fedot Bogomolov. No one counted the number of blows received by Andreev, it is only known that after the beating stopped, the young man could not stand on his feet. He was left for the night in the yard "in the snow", a guard was posted nearby. The next morning Chrysanthos was still alive; Saltykova ordered him to be brought to her office and for some time beat him with a stick with her own hands. Then, with hot curling irons, she began to drag Chrysanthos by the ears, after that she poured boiling water from the kettle on his head, and then beat him again with a stick. In the end, Saltykova began to beat the unconscious body with her feet. Tired, she ordered Andreev to be carried away. The unconscious servant from Saltykova's office was carried out in his arms by the "haiduk" Leontiev. It remains to be added that the whole fault of Khrisanf Andreev, who died two hours later, consisted in "bad supervision of washing the floors"; Andreev was supposed to supervise the maids, and, according to the landowner, he did not cope well with this assignment.

Saltychikha. Illustration of the work of P.V. Kurdyumov to the encyclopedic edition "The Great Reform" - the anniversary encyclopedic edition of 1911, dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the implementation of the Peasant reform in Russia.
The artist Kurdyumov, when creating the picture, used the text of V.I. Semevsky:
Saltychikha beat her people with a rolling pin, a roller, a stick, logs, an iron, a whip, a whip, set fire to the hair on her head, took her ears with red-hot tongs, poured boiling water on her face, beat her head against the wall. By her order, the grooms punished the yard with butts from rods, batogs, lashes, and whips. She shaved her people's heads, put on stocks and in this form ordered them to work; in winter, after punishment, she exposed barefoot people to frost; starved. (See "Peasants in the reign of Catherine II", vol. 1, p. 224)

It should be noted that the murder of Khrisanf Andreev was a kind of exception: Saltykova did not torture men like that anymore. Lukyan Mikheev, apparently, was killed by her through negligence - the landowner hit him several times with his head against the wall, after which the death of the boy followed. Most likely, Saltykova did not expect to kill him at all. The investigation established that, at the behest of the landowner, another man died - Nikifor Grigoriev - but the reprisal against him had an indirect character, Grigoriev was beaten by "haiduks", while Saltykova herself did not touch him with a finger.

The list of men killed by Saltykova was exhausted by the three persons mentioned above. The bias towards female servants was obvious, although for some reason the investigation was not interested in the reason for such a strange preference (although this should have been done). In general, the investigator Volkov came to the conclusion that Darya Saltykova was "undoubtedly guilty" of the death of 38 people and "left in suspicion" regarding the guilt in the death of another 26 people. Regarding the guilt in the death of 11 people, the suspect was acquitted (or no charges were brought against Saltykova at all in their murder). The investigation considered that some of Saltykova's serfs wanted to slander the landowner and slandered her. Among such slanders, one can mention the testimony of a certain Vasily Antonov about the execution by order of the landowner of the village sorceress Irina Alekseeva, as well as the statement of Rodion Timofeev about the torture and subsequent murder of six "yard girls". It must be admitted that the investigation of the Justice College was carried out objectively and exactingly, without an obvious accusatory bias; all doubts about the veracity of the witnesses, all inconsistencies in their testimony were interpreted in favor of the suspect. The more valuable and more reliable the result!

Three questions

In particular, the investigation focused on three important issues that were not directly related to the murders of people committed by Saltykova, but that worried people and required clarification.

Lubok picture of the 19th century. Saltychikha atrocities

First, starting in 1764 and in subsequent years, rumors began to spread in Moscow, and then in other cities of Russia, that Saltykova not only killed people, but also ate human meat. Ignorant townsfolk explained precisely the culinary preferences of Daria Nikolaevna by her choice of women as victims (people believed that female meat should be more tender than male meat, and preliminary flogging of a person led to the separation of meat from bones, enabling the cannibal to get a high-quality tenderloin).

The investigation established with absolute certainty that all talk on this topic is groundless - Daria Saltykova never ate human meat and never gave orders to dismember the bodies of the people she killed. The accusation of cannibalism was never brought against her due to the lack of any grounds for this.

Secondly, the indictment specifically emphasized the fact that, in addition to the dead, a significant number of domestic servants systematically endured the most severe bullying and beatings from their mistress. Sometimes only a miracle saved the punished from seemingly inevitable death. So, for example, the oldest maid Agrafena Agafonova, taken to the Saltykovs' house by the late master Gleb Alekseevich in 1750, after the death of the latter, began to be subjected to systematic cavils from Darya Nikolaevna. At the end of 1756, on the orders of Saltykova, Agafonova was severely beaten by "haiduks" and her arms and legs were broken in several places. The woman turned into an invalid was sent to a distant estate, thanks to which she remained alive.

Many other servants of the landowner endured the cruelest bullying: Ekaterina Ustinova, the wife of the groom Shavkunov, was beaten with an iron, Akulina Maksimova burned all the hair on Saltykov’s head with her own hand with a torch, etc. The lady actually established a regime of permanent terror in her house and the periodic murders of servants were only its extremes, extreme manifestations; the terror itself did not actually stop. The objects of persecution of Darya Saltykova were not only the wives of the groom Yermolai Ilyin, who were killed by her, but also the wives of other servants - Shavkunov and Yudin. The list of persons who suffered from Daria Saltykova, presented by the Justice College, included 75 people (we repeat, only 38 of them were unconditionally recognized as dead as a result of beatings).

Thirdly, the investigators specifically investigated the issue of Saltykova's preparation for the murder of the nobleman Nikolai Andreevich Tyutchev. This captain, who worked in the provincial committee of lands and destinies, was engaged in surveying, that is, drawing boundaries on the ground between the lands of various owners. The position is very important, taking into account the fact that all the nobility of that time fed from land plots.

Tyutchev - unsuccessful love, failed last victim

The young captain, who in 1760 was engaged in reconciling the borders of Saltykova's estates near Moscow with entries in the land cadastre, became the lover of a young widow (Daria Nikolaevna was then 30 years old). Everything was fine at first, but in January 1762 Tyutchev was about to marry another.

Saltykova decided to destroy the unfaithful lover, and to do it in the most literal sense. The groom Savelyev bought 2 kg of gunpowder in two steps, which, after adding sulfur and tinder, was wrapped in flammable hemp. It turned out to be a powerful bomb.

By order of Saltykova, two attempts were made to plant this bomb under the Moscow house in which Captain Tyutchev and his bride lived. Both attempts failed because of the fear of the sent serfs before retribution. Timid grooms - Ivanov and Savelyev - were brutally whipped, but unsuccessful attempts to blow up the house forced Saltykova to reconsider the plan.

She decided to organize an ambush on the captain's route to Tambov, where he was supposed to go on business in April 1762. In an ambush, b. 10-12 men from Saltykova's estates near Moscow will participate.

The matter turned out to be serious: an attack on a nobleman when he was fulfilling a state task was no longer drawn to robbery, but to a conspiracy! This threatened the peasants not even with hard labor, but with beheading. The serfs, who knew about the successful escape of the peasants with a complaint about the saltychikha, were again afraid and threw an anonymous letter to the captain, in which they warned him about the impending assassination attempt on him.

Tyutchev officially notified the authorities of a possible attack and received 12 soldiers as guards during the journey to Tambov. Saltykova, having learned about the captain's protection, canceled the attack at the last moment.

The investigators of the Justice College, having studied the information about the preparation of the assassination attempt on Tyutchev, considered it reliable and admitted that Saltykova really bought gunpowder and prepared an ambush for the captain. Therefore, the suspect was found guilty of "malicious intentions against the life of Captain Tyutchev."

Mutual responsibility

Investigators could not help but dwell on the concealment of Saltykova's crimes by officials of the Moscow administration. Now such an interaction between law enforcement officers and a criminal would be called "corruption", but in those days they did not use such a term, they said differently: mutual responsibility. The officials covered by such were, by order of Saltykova, entered in a special notebook; in the same place, records were made about the sums of money and various goods transferred to officials in the form of gratitude (hay, firewood, honey, pig carcasses, geese, etc.). The presence of such a notebook, on the one hand, greatly facilitated the task of the investigation, and on the other hand, put Volkov in an extremely delicate position: Saltykova's friends were too high.

In January 1765, the Justice College circulated among the officials of the city administration, the police and the spiritual department a demand to declare the bribes received from Saltykova. The detectives hoped that the corrupt officials would turn themselves in and denounce themselves, thus saving the investigators from having to prove anything. The calculation was not justified: not a single official announced that he had received any gifts from Saltykova.

The position of corrupt officials improved markedly after the death in October 1764 of the Moscow priest Ivan Ivanov, who buried the people killed by Saltykova without confession and communion. The priest's papers were in great disarray: no documents were found in Ivanov's archive, obtained from the police chief's office, on the basis of which the priest was allowed to bury corpses with obvious bodily injuries. These documents would make it possible to name the official who covered up the crimes of Daria Saltykova, however, the disappearance of these papers did not allow this. It is difficult to say when and by whom the dangerous documents were destroyed - whether Ivanov himself did it, or one of the policemen after his death - this remained unclear.

Even more, the situation of those suspected of bribery improved after the court councilor Peter Mikhailovsky died unexpectedly in February 1765. This man worked in the Investigative Department and often helped Saltykova "to hide the ends in the water." Mikhailovsky liked to drink, and on this basis he could be considered a weak link in the chain of bribe takers.

But even after the deaths of Ivanov and Mikhailovsky, the investigation had a real opportunity to bring the criminals to clean water. However, this did not happen. All the officials interrogated in the Saltykova case - state councilor Molchanov, prosecutor Khvoshchinsky, court councilor Velyaminov-Zernov, actuary Pafnutiev - denied their involvement in concealing the crimes and swore an oath on the Holy Scriptures.

The suspects were greatly helped by the mistakes made in the testimony of Saltykova's serfs. So, for example, the groom Roman Ivanov, who took food to the house of Velyaminov-Zernov, claimed that the court adviser lived on Ordynka Street; in fact, Velyaminov-Zernov's house was located on Kuznetskaya Street. And the clerk Savely Martynov, who personally filled out a notebook with a list of bribes, erroneously stated that Saltykova had presented the actuary Pafnutiev with the serf Gavril Andreev. A check, according to the lists of the Moscow serf office (property rights to serfs were registered there), showed that Saltykova sold Andreev in 1761 for 10 rubles to a certain Agafya Leontyeva. The latter, in turn, gave Gavrila Andreev to her friend Anisya Smirnova, who was the great-aunt of Pafnutev's wife. It was in this way that the mentioned serf appeared in Pafnutev's house. The investigators failed to interrogate Gavril himself: in March 1765, he fled from his mistress, stealing 200 rubles from her.

There were other inconsistencies in the testimony of the serfs. By and large, they did not at all refute the striking facts of corruption among the Moscow bureaucracy, but the investigation clearly did not want to demonstrate an accusatory bias in this direction. Based on formal inconsistencies in the testimonies of the Justice College, Saltykova's accomplices were released from criminal prosecution, recognizing them as "formally cleared of suspicion." It is impossible not to recognize the obvious tension of this wording: we recall that in five and a half years, Saltykova's serfs filed 21 (!) Official complaints (or denunciations) against her and none of these appeals was properly considered by the authorities. The unwillingness of the Moscow police and officials of the city administration to consider the appeals of the serfs on the merits cannot be explained by anything other than the bribery of Saltykova.

Sentence

In the spring of 1765, the investigation in the Moscow Justice College was formally completed and sent for further consideration to the 6th Department of the Governing Senate. The supreme body of the judicial power of the Russian Empire at that time functioned quite differently from the current courts. There was no competitiveness of the court in the modern sense: the parties and witnesses were not invited to participate in the meetings, respectively, there were no interrogations and debates. The senators studied the investigative proceedings on the "extract", a brief note compiled from fragments of documents essential for understanding the case. If something in the extract seemed incomprehensible or doubtful, the senator could refer to the original source document, but this was the exception rather than the rule: senators usually did not work with the investigative file itself. But solicitors worked with him, preparing a report on the case for a meeting of the Senate Department and various information on the case. Much depended on the solicitors, they could focus on some circumstances and retouch others, so there were frequent attempts to bribe Senate officials by interested parties. If a senator - a nobleman and a very rich man - was very problematic to bribe (and this was the guarantee of the objectivity of the Senate court), then it was incomparably easier to give a bribe to the solicitor.

The latter circumstance, back in tsarist times, led to the appearance of a considerable number of accusatory and satirical maxims, which since the time of Herzen were not stingy with the enemies of the Autocracy. But by and large, there is no reason to consider the Senate court more inert or more corrupt than the highest courts in other European countries; one can say that he was quite in keeping with the spirit of his time.

It was unlikely that anyone could doubt that the court verdict would be guilty: the evidence presented by the investigation was too eloquent and convincing, and the spirit of Catherine hovered over the senators invisibly, not allowing their sense of class solidarity to triumph over common sense. For more than three years, the consideration of the "case of the murderer Saltykova" in the sixth department of the Senate dragged on; in the end, the judges found the defendant guilty of murdering and torturing courtyard people "without leniency." The wise senators did not issue a specific verdict, but sent a report to the Highest name, shifting the burden of making a decision on the monarch's shoulders. Such self-elimination of judges was quite legal: the Monarch was the source of law and, in principle, could make any decisions on court cases of any subordination. Since Catherine the Second stood at the origins of this case, it was up to her to finish it - so, apparently, the judges judged.

During the second half of September 1768, the Empress returned several times to the question of the final sentence for Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova. At least four rough drafts of the sentence are known, made by the Empress herself. Apparently, this question was extremely interested in Catherine II, who found herself in a very difficult dilemma: on the one hand, guided by the letter of the law, Saltykov should have been executed, and on the other, this should not have been done, since the Empress worked hard to create her own image in the eyes of her contemporaries as " humane and child-loving" ruler.

Finally, on October 2, 1768, Empress Catherine II sent a decree to the Governing Senate, in which she described in detail both the punishment imposed on Saltykov and the procedure for its administration. This decree is textually reproduced in volume 125 of the "Archive of the Governing Senate" and in view of its rather large size it does not make sense to bring it here, those who are interested can read it and. But we can dwell on the main points of this very curious document.

Daria Saltykova was referred to in it with the most derogatory epithets, such as: "an inhuman widow", "a freak of the human race", "a completely God-accessible soul", "a tormentor and a murderer", etc. father or husband, including in court (that is, Saltykova was forbidden to indicate her noble origin and family ties with other noble families); serving for an hour a special "reproachful spectacle", during which Saltykova had to stand on a scaffold chained to a pole with the inscription "torturer and murderer" above her head (this punishment can be considered a prototype of a civil execution); to life imprisonment in an underground prison without light and human communication (light was allowed only during meals, and conversation was only with the head of the guard and a female nun). Interestingly, by the decree of Catherine of June 12, 1768, Saltychikha was deprived not only of all rights and all property, but also decided to continue to "call this monster a man."

In addition, by her decree of October 2, 1768, the Empress decided to return to her two sons all the property of the mother, which until then had been in the guardianship, and to punish Daria Saltykova's accomplices. These were the priest of the village of Troitsky Stepan Petrov, as well as one of the "gaiduks" and grooms of the landowner (unfortunately, these people were not named in the decree, and therefore it is not entirely clear which servants were in question, perhaps they were footman Leontiev and groom Ivanov who participated in so many massacres of Saltykova).

Punishment

The punishment of the condemned landowner was carried out on October 17, 1768, on Red Square in Moscow. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, already a few days before this date, the ancient capital of Russia began to seethe in anticipation of reprisals. Both the public announcement of the upcoming event (in the form of publications in leaflets read out by officers in all crowded squares and intersections of Moscow) and the distribution of special "tickets" that all Moscow nobles received contributed to the general excitement. On the day of the massacre, Red Square was completely filled, people crowded into the windows of the buildings overlooking the square and occupied all the roofs.

At 11 o'clock in the morning, Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova was taken to the square under the guard of mounted hussars; in a black wagon next to the former landowner were grenadiers with drawn swords. Saltykova was forced to climb a high scaffold, where the decree of Empress Catherine II dated October 2, 1768 was read out. After an hour, Saltykova was brought down from the scaffold and put into a black wagon, which, under a military guard, went to the Ivanovo Convent (on Kulishki). On the same scaffold on the same day, priest Petrov and two servants of the landowner convicted in the Saltykova case were subjected to flogging and branding. All three were sent to hard labor in Siberia.

In the monastery, where the convict arrived after the punishment on Red Square, a special cell was prepared for her, called "repentant". The height of the room dug in the ground did not exceed three arshins (i.e., 2.1 m), it was completely below the surface of the earth, which excluded any possibility of daylight getting inside. The prisoner was kept in complete darkness, only at the time of eating she was given a candle stub. Saltykova was not allowed to walk, she was forbidden to receive and transmit correspondence. On major church holidays, Saltykova was taken out of her prison and taken to a small window in the wall of the temple, through which she could listen to the liturgy. A special board fence, which closed the space between the exit from the cell and the window, did not allow outsiders to see Saltykova and thus prevented all communication with people.

For spiritual guidance, the abbess of the monastery was allowed to Saltykova. Unfortunately, we do not know anything about whether the prisoner repented of anything, whether she asked for communion, whether she found any justification for her actions, etc. There are no documents about Saltykova’s behavior in captivity and her conversations with the abbess of the monastery in the synodal archive not preserved.

It remains to be added that Saltykova's detention regime symbolized "burial alive." For all its severity, such a regime was not something exceptional for that time, many prisoners
Solovetsky monastery, for example, were kept in similar or more difficult conditions.

Daria Saltykova was kept in the underground prison until 1779, that is, 11 years. Then there was a noticeable relaxation in the regime of her detention: Daria Saltykova was transferred to a stone annex to the cathedral church of the Ivanovo Monastery (in the figure - a small annex on the left), in which there was a barred window.

Cathedral Church of the Ivanovsky Monastery in Moscow. Saltychikha was imprisoned in a stone annex (on the left).

Visitors to the monastery were allowed to look through this window and even talk to the prisoner. The memoirs of contemporaries have been preserved that many residents of Moscow and visitors came to the Ivanovo Monastery themselves and brought their children with them specifically to look at the famous "Saltychikha".

According to the historian G.I. Studenkin, at the same time she:
"swearing, spitting and sticking a stick through the bars into an open, in the summer, window, thereby revealing her inveterate brutality, which did not extinguish in her either remorse for atrocities, or the languor of a long-term imprisonment in a gloomy rivet. Who saw the saltychikha at the end of the last century is now deceased State Councilor Rudin told P. G. Kicheev that she was full of herself and was already in advanced years, and from her movements it seemed that she was not completely sane ... "

To annoy her, the children allegedly even came up with a song:
Saltychikha-boltychikha, and high deacon!
Vlasyevna Dmitrovna Savivsha, old lady!...

Already after 1779, Saltykova gave birth to a child from a guard soldier; however, the reliability of this information is not great, since by this time the convict should have already been about 50 years old.

After death

It is impossible not to note the hypocrisy of the empress, who pursued the criminal, but wished not to notice the vile tricks of her patrons. By and large, the story of Saltykova can tell us about our ancestors no less than the works of Fonvizin and Karamzin, although, of course, this story will turn out to be completely unromantic.

After her death, the chamber in the church was adapted as a sacristy. Unfortunately, the historical church has not survived to the present day: it was dismantled in 1861.

Saltychikha's grave at the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow

Her grave is located in the fourth section of the cemetery at the Donskoy Monastery. There, still in the wild, she bought a plot, and there she was buried in a double grave with her eldest son, who died at the same time in the same 1801. There is even an inscription visible from the side of the collapsed sarcophagus (her eldest son).

From the story of G.I. Studenkin, "Saltychikha". Journal "Russian Antiquity" 1874 volume 10:
The evil memory of her was preserved among the people. The decree of Catherine II, dated October 2, 1768, went from hand to hand in printed copies and in many handwritten lists. The personification of her shameful kazpi passed even to popular prints. The word "Saltychikha" turned into a curse.

Indeed, for many decades, Daria Saltykova remained in the memory of the people as an example of the most inhuman sadism. Rumor accused the hated "Saltychikha" even of such crimes that she did not actually commit (for example, cannibalism).

Psychiatry

Although the general plot of the investigation of Saltykova's crimes is quite simple and does not raise any special questions, one cannot but admit that the motivation for the actions of the landowner remained unclear. The investigation did not establish what caused Saltykova's uncontrollable aggressiveness, to be more precise, the investigation did not ask this question at all. For some time now they began to look at Darya Nikolaevna as if she were crazy; meanwhile, such a view is hardly justified.

It is known that Saltykova was a woman who was not very intellectually developed. She did not know how to write, and all documents that required her signature were signed by her eldest son. At the same time, illiteracy did not prevent the development of a strong religious feeling in Saltykova’s soul: she strictly monitored the observance of external Orthodox rituals, went on pilgrimages to Moscow monasteries, and even made a rather lengthy pilgrimage to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. It is known that the criminal was a generous donor for churches and monasteries. There is no reason to suspect that Saltykova's religiosity was ostentatious and insincere; her power and influence were such that there was no need for her to break the comedy and do what she did not want to.

The fact that a sincerely believing person committed those monstrous atrocities in which Saltykova is guilty objectively testifies to the existence of a serious psychiatric anomaly in him. Most likely, Saltykova was an epileptoid psychopath, since it is this category of patients that is most prone to unmotivated and extremely brutal murders. Epileptoid psychopaths commit their attacks in a state of dysphoria (from the Greek "disphoria" - irritation), an unmotivated viciously gloomy mood, the tension of which cannot be removed without conflict. In many features of his pathological personality, this person resembles an epileptic (this explains the use of the word "epileptoid"), although such a psychopath is not an epileptic. This category of people demonstrates a number of specific behavioral traits that distinguish them from other psychopaths, for example: a) an unreasonably gloomy and dreary mood, intensifying over several days; b) sadism, manifested in relation to both animals and people; c) the inability to quickly extinguish anger even after the external cause of its occurrence has been eliminated (in psychiatry, such stability of an emotion or experience is called "rigidity"); d) inability to control anger even in cases where the development of the conflict poses a danger to the psychopath himself; e) relatively low sexual activity, aggravated by an abnormal attraction (the latter is understood as jealousy, which has reached extreme forms of expression); f) a tendency to hoarding, prudent spending of material assets and funds.

All of the above features of an epileptoid psychopath can be seen in the behavior of Daria Saltykova. She was a gloomy, unsmiling woman, always in a bad mood. The sadistic inclinations of this woman are very fully described in the investigative proceedings, and this essay gives an idea of ​​​​how exactly Saltykova mocked the "guilty" people in her understanding. The beatings of the serfs sometimes dragged on for many hours and even days (here it is - the rigidity of emotions!) And the quick murder of the boy Lukyan Mikheev was not the rule of Saltykova, but just the same exception to the rule. The fact that Saltykova poorly controlled her anger was especially well manifested in the assassination attempts on Captain Tyutchev. Unsuccessful attempts to blow up the house did not stop the criminal, and only giving Tyutchev military protection forced Saltykov to finally abandon her plan. The history of relations with Captain Tyutchev confirms the thesis about Saltykova's low sexual activity; in fact, this was the only man in the life of a young widow for six years. At the same time, the landowner was insanely jealous of her chosen one and could not forgive him for choosing another woman.

It can be assumed that the assumption of Saltykova's epileptoid psychopathy describes well the individual features of her behavior, but the lack of information about the childhood period of development does not allow us to unequivocally state that such an assumption is certainly true. The Russian psychiatrist P. B. Gannushkin, who first formulated the very concept of "psychopathy" as an anomaly of character, pointed to the stability of the manifestation of pathological traits that are already noted at an early age. With regard to Saltykova, there are no such observations left; the investigators of the College of Justice, for obvious reasons, were not interested in the childhood and youth of the criminal.

Of course, Saltykova's choice of another victim was influenced by her gender and age. Of the nearly four dozen people tortured by her (and this is only the proven number of deaths!) Only two were men and one boy, the rest were young women and girls. The choice of objects of encroachment testifies to the latent homosexuality of Saltykova. During the investigation, no one ever accused her of inclinations towards same-sex sex, moreover, Saltykova herself would most likely reject such suspicions with indignation. Meanwhile, if the assumption about the epileptoid psychopathy of this criminal is correct, then her homosexuality does not in the least contradict the described features of the manifestation of this behavioral pathology. Many epileptoids demonstrate homosexuality, and unlike other psychopaths, they always play an active role in sex. Epileptoids tend to humiliate and beat a person who is sexually interesting to them, and in such cases they always act extremely rudely. You can say this: refined sadistic tricks are not for them. The fact that Saltykova pursued young girls and women indirectly indicates her sexual interest in them.

Of course, all of the above has a subjunctive mood. No one conducted a psychiatric examination of Daria Saltykova, since the science of psychiatry itself did not exist in those days. But those defects in her behavior and character, which made an indelible impression on her contemporaries, from the point of view of modern scientific ideas about counting, find fairly simple explanations and do not at all seem mysterious.

It must be emphasized that Saltykova was by no means a crazy woman. She was fully aware of the criminality of her own behavior, this is clearly seen from the stubbornness with which she denied even the most obvious evidence and convincing accusations. Considering herself a sincere Christian, she did not even think that pilgrimage trips and generous donations by no means cancel the Christian attitude towards living people. But the inability to understand this, in general, simple, thought does not stem from Saltykova's mental retardation, but rather is a defect in her upbringing. The bitterness of the situation lies in the fact that in the conditions of serfdom, callous, arrogant, unscrupulous people received the right to dispose of the lives of their serfs simply by virtue of their noble origin.

This happens quite rarely.

Saltychikha is not a unique phenomenon in world history. We know the names of no less terrible criminals. For example, Gilles de Re - "Bluebeard" - killed more than 600 children in the 15th century, and for example, a hundred years before Saltychikha, there lived a "bloody countess" in Hungary ...

Elizabeth Bathory of Eched(1560 - 1614), also called Chakhtitskaya pani or Blood Countess - a Hungarian countess from the famous Bathory family, infamous for the serial murders of young girls. The exact number of her victims is unknown. The Countess and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls between 1585 and 1610. The largest number of victims named during the trial of Bathory, 650 people.

However, this number comes from a statement by a woman named Shushanna, who allegedly found a list of the countess's victims in one of Báthory's private books and reported this to the participant in the trial of the countess, Jacob Silvasi. However, the book was never found and was not mentioned again in Silvasi's testimony. Despite all the evidence against Elizabeth, her family's influence kept the Blood Countess from being brought to justice.

The history of serial murders and brutality of Bathory is proven by the testimony of more than 300 witnesses and victims, as well as physical evidence and the presence of horribly mutilated bodies of already dead, dying and imprisoned girls found during the detention of the Countess.

In December 1610, Báthory was imprisoned in the Hungarian castle of Ceyte, where the countess was immured in a room until her death four years later.

"Second Saltychikha" the people called the wife of the landowner Koshkarov, who lived in the 40s of the 19th century in the Tambov province. She found particular pleasure in tyranny over defenseless peasants. Koshkarova had a standard for torture, from the limits of which she went only in extreme cases. Men were supposed to give 100 blows with a whip, women - 80 each. All these executions were carried out by the landowner personally.

The pretexts for torture were most often various omissions in the household, sometimes very insignificant. So, the cook Karp Orlov Koshkarova was whipped with a whip for the fact that there were few onions in the soup.

Another "Saltychikha" found in Chuvashia. In September 1842, the landowner Vera Sokolova beat to death the courtyard girl Nastasya, whose father said that the mistress often punished her serfs "by flaying their hair, and sometimes forced them to flog with rods and whips." And another maid complained that “the mistress broke her nose with her fist, and from punishment with a whip on her thigh there was a scar, and in winter she was locked in a latrine in one shirt, because of which she froze her legs” ...

Video lecture about Saltychikha

Video investigation of the Saltychikha case

Myths, fakes and portraits of namesakes

For some reason, very often the narrow-minded authors of articles about the Saltychikha think that if they found a portrait of Daria Saltykova, then this is exactly her, the Saltychikha. This is not true.

In fact, there were no lifetime portraits left of Saltychikha, there are only popular prints and fantasy paintings painted much later than her death.
But since the surname was noble, there are a lot of branches in it, there are portraits of "other" Saltykovs, whom for some reason, not very smart people, without any checks, rank as portraits of the Saltychikha.

For example, Daria Petrovna Saltykova from the portrait on the left has nothing to do with Saltychikha, but everyone stubbornly sticks her portrait into their pseudo-articles and under-reports.

This is NOT a saltychiha! Let's see who this stately lady really is:
Daria PETROVNA Chernysheva-Saltykova (1739-1802). Lady of State, Cavalier Lady of the Order of St. Catherine, 1st Class, sister of Princess N. P. Golitsyna, wife of Field Marshal Count I. P. Saltykov.

François Hubert Drouet the Younger. Portrait of Countess D.P. Chernysheva-Saltykova. 1762

The eldest daughter of the diplomat Count Pyotr Grigoryevich Chernyshev, the godson of Peter the Great, who was considered by many to be his son. Her mother, Countess Ekaterina Andreevna, was the daughter of the well-known head of the secret office under Biron, Count Andrei Ivanovich Ushakov.

Darya Petrovna spent her childhood and young years abroad, where her father was for many years an envoy to the Danish, Berlin and English courts and an ambassador to Paris. There she received that brilliant upbringing, which put her, as well as her sister, Princess Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna, known as "Princesse Moustache", among the most educated Russian women of the late 18th century. They possessed refined manners, secular gloss, were fluent in four languages, but did not know Russian well. Returning with her parents to Russia in 1765, Daria was granted Catherine II as a lady-in-waiting.

She lived during the crimes of the Saltychikha at court, in St. Petersburg.

The creators of the historical series "Catherine. Rise" generally directly call Saltychikha a countess! Well, which of the widows of the captain is the countess ?! Apparently they spent the budget on something more necessary than a historical consultant. Indeed, why is it needed for a historical series ;-)

She is in a more advanced age in the figure on the right.

Ritt, Augustine Christian - Portrait of Countess D.P. Saltykova, 1794

I also came across a myth in fairly serious literature that supposedly Napoleon, having taken Moscow, wished to see this "curiosity". This is a fiction even based on the fact that Saltychikha died 11 years before Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Most likely, the information about the child allegedly born by her in prison is also not true. At the age of more than 50 years, in the conditions of modern medicine and living in prison, such a pregnancy is simply unbelievable, and if it happened, the birth would most likely end sadly for both the mother and the child.

Saltychikha also has a "folk" tombstone - the one in which it is buried according to "secret folk knowledge", passed down from generation to generation. Some strange personalities draw flowers on it, put lamps on it ... The infantry general buried under it in fact, in the next world, could be pleased with such attention! Well, unless, of course, you count the felt-tip graffiti applied to the tombstone with the name of Saltychikha instead of the fallen off plate with the name of the real owner ...

This is NOT Saltychikha's grave!

B. Akunin in his "Cemetery Stories" also followed the lead of "secret knowledge" and suggested that Saltychikha's grave in the cemetery at the Donskoy Monastery was there (see left).

While the husband of Darya Saltykova was alive, her insane, bestial cruelty did not manifest itself. Neighbors even considered her a pious woman. But at the age of 25, she remained a widow, and it was as if a demon had inhabited her soul. It usually started like this: Daria saw that the serf girl did not wash the floors well, grabbed a log and began to beat her with all her dope. It was usually the girls who got it, although both men and children.

Over time, Saltychikha's sadism only progressed, and the torture became more sophisticated.

She could seize red-hot tongs and burn the serf's ear with them. I could splash boiling water in my face. She pulled her hair and beat her head against the wall - some of the peasants whom Daria killed did not have hair on their heads.

She was a young and rich widow, but none of the neighbors were in a hurry to woo her - rumors about the atrocities of the "bloody lady" were spread throughout Russia. But still she met a man whom she fell in love with. True, the love of the landowner was as sick and ugly as her soul.

Meeting on the hunt

Daria was hunting on her property when she heard gunshots. Someone was hunting in her forest! From indignation, the landowner was speechless. She was used to being feared or at least shunned.

— Catch and bring back! Saltychikha ordered her peasants.

The hunter turned out to be her young neighbor, engineer Nikolai Tyutchev. He was not rich, and did not succeed in his career - the young nobleman was engaged in land surveying, topographic surveying. But he was educated, funny, knew how to please people. Nikolai was sure that he would smile at the young neighbor, apologize that he had driven into her lands in a hunting fervor, they would exchange pleasantries and go home.

When they grabbed him, tied him up and dragged him to Saltychikha's home, he could not believe that this was really happening.

For several days, Tyutchev was kept in the cellar of Saltychikha, without giving him food. Then they brought me to the lady's chambers.

Daria attacked him with abuse, attacked him with beatings. Tyutchev gave her a reciprocal slap in the face. Daria suddenly calmed down. Thus began this crazy romance.

The escape

Tyutchev often came to a neighbor, and she was always waiting for him. At this time, she was not as fierce over her serfs as before. Saltychikha dreamed that she and Tyutchev would get married. She, a very rich landowner, would be happy to share her fortune with a poor nobleman. But he was told from all sides about her atrocities. It was scary to see such a person next to me, hugging, whispering tender words. Tyutchev wanted to end this relationship, but realizing that Saltychikha would not let him go so easily, he decided to slowly move away from her sick passion.

Saltychikha found out about his plans. My heart hurt from humiliation and resentment.

Saltychikha ordered her peasants to seize Tyutev and imprison him in the basement. He spent several days there without food or water. Then a compassionate peasant woman released him furtively. Saltychikha raged, took out her anger on the serfs, but she could no longer do anything.

A few months later, Tyutchev got married to another neighbor, Pelageya Panyutina. She was not rich, but soft, reasonable and very kind. Next to her, Nikolai gradually came to his senses and forgot the "bloody lady." When Saltychikha found out that her beloved had married another, it seemed to her that the sky had fallen to the ground. Some kind of fire blazed inside her, irrepressible, burning, not allowing her to sleep, eat, live ...

This gray mouse with some twenty serfs was preferred to her, a rich and omnipotent landowner! But he himself is as naked as a falcon!

Only blood could soothe this inner fire. Saltychikha sent her groom to blow up her rival's house. She gave him an improvised explosive device, told him to put it under the fence and set it on fire. Don't you need my love? Die with your bride!

The groom could not take sin, not a soul, did not begin to destroy innocent people. Saltychikha punished him with all cruelty, but she could not stop. She knew: Nikolai and his bride should pass by her lands, and sent peasants with guns and clubs into an ambush. Fortunately, Tyutchev was warned about the ambush. Just in case, he and his fiancée went away from Moscow.

Torturer and slayer

Saltychikha was furious. She beat the serfs, starved them, threw them into icy water. The peasants tried to escape, wrote complaints, but Saltychikha's money helped her to hush up any noise: she paid huge bribes to officials, and the serfs were returned to her. But once the peasants were able to hand over the petition personally to Empress Catherine, who decided to arrange a show trial as a warning to all landowners. In 1762, a long trial began, which went on for several years. The investigation found that 139 peasants died at the hands of the bloody lady. Saltychikha was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment. The Empress deprived her of her fortune, all titles and privileges, including the main one: the right to be called a woman.

According to the royal decree, now it was necessary to call "this monster a man."

After the civil execution, when Saltychikha was tied to a pillory with the inscription "tormentor and murderer", she was taken to the dungeon of the Ivanovsky Monastery.

Nikolai Tyutchev married his fiancee. The marriage was successful. For 25 years, enterprising spouses have increased their fortune by 15 times. They bought neighboring lands, including those that belonged to Saltychikha, built a beautiful house, laid out a beautiful park, and made beautiful ponds.

And Saltychikha spent 33 years in prison until her death. And she never saw the sunlight.

Ivanova is the maiden name of Saltychikha. Her father, Nikolai Avtonomovich Ivanov, was a pillar nobleman, and her grandfather once held a high post under Peter I. Darya Saltykova's husband, Gleb Alekseevich, served as a captain of the Life Guards Horse Regiment. The Saltykovs had two sons, Fedor and Nikolai.

It is noteworthy that Saltychikha, whom Empress Catherine II eventually imprisoned in a monastery dungeon for life for her atrocities, eventually outlived all members of her family - both her husband and both sons.

Many historians believe that, most likely, it was after the funeral of her husband that the 26-year-old widow "went crazy", and she began to beat the servants to death.

Where and what did she do?

Saltychikha had a house in Moscow on the corner of Bolshaya Lubyanka and Kuznetsky Most, ironically, now there are buildings under the jurisdiction of the FSB. Plus, after the death of her husband, the landowner inherited estates in a number of Russian provinces, Saltychikha owned a total of almost six hundred serfs.

On the site of the estate, where the sadist most often tormented her victims, Trinity Park is now located, this is not far from the Moscow Ring Road, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bTeply Stan.

Before the gentleman Gleb Alekseevich died, Daria Saltykova controlled herself and was not noticed in a particular propensity for assault. Moreover, Saltychikha was distinguished by piety.

According to the testimony of the serfs, Saltychikha’s “phase shift” occurred about six months after her husband’s funeral - she began to beat, most often with a log, her peasants (mostly women and young girls) for the slightest infractions, finding fault with every little thing. Then, on the orders of the sadistic mistress, the offender was flogged, often to death. Gradually, Saltychikha's torture became more and more sophisticated - possessing remarkable strength, she tore out her victims' hair, burned their ears with hair tongs, poured boiling water over them ...

I wanted to kill the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev

The grandfather of the famous Russian poet surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev was the lover of this shrew. And then he decided to get rid of her and marry the girl he liked. Saltychikha ordered her serfs to set fire to the girl's house, but they did not do it out of fear. Then the sadist sent peasant "killers" to kill the young Tyutchev couple. But instead of taking a sin on the soul, the serfs warned Tyutchev himself about the intentions of his former mistress.

In June 1762, Empress Catherine II received a complaint from two serfs, which reported that the landowner Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova "tortured to death" more than a hundred souls of serfs. The investigation into the case of the landowner Saltykova lasted about three years. Catherine herself passed the verdict on Saltychikha and her accomplices, since none of the judges dared to take responsibility for deciding the fate of the eminent noblewoman.
Dossier on the defendant

Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova was born in March 1730 in a family of high-ranking Moscow nobles. Relatives of her parents were the Davydovs, Musins-Pushkins, Stroganovs, Tolstoys and other eminent nobles.

As a girl, Daria Nikolaevna bore the surname Ivanova. Later, she married the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov, they had two sons. In her youth, the future sophisticated sadist was an extremely beautiful and at the same time a pious woman. She was widowed in 1756.

At twenty-six, she received a fabulous fortune, previously owned by her mother, grandmother and husband. Daria Saltykova was the owner of estates located in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces.

She generously donated money for church needs and distributed alms, in addition, every year she went on a pilgrimage to some shrine. Saltychikha had about 600 serfs at her disposal, 138 of them were tortured to death. The list of Saltykova's victims included mostly women.

Serfs Saltykova in the period from 1756 to 1762. filed twenty-one complaints against their mistress. All complaints filed were checked, but Daria Nikolaevna was a woman with great connections in the right circles, so the fate of the complaining serfs was predetermined from the very beginning. As soon as Saltykova heard rumors that one of her peasants was denunciating, she immediately took "educational measures" against the disobedient.

Saltykova's punishment was terrible: she beat some to death, sent others to hard labor. It was thanks to her connections that the cruel landowner could escape punishment every time. None of the twenty-one complaints against the landowner Saltykova reached the Empress.
Lucky case

On October 1, 1762, the criminal case of the landowner Saltykova was accepted for consideration by the Moscow Justice Collegium. This was facilitated by a complaint personally handed over to the Empress from two fugitive serfs, Savely Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin.

At the end of April 1762, the peasants Savely Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin decided on a desperate step - the serfs set out to personally convey the complaint to the empress, they both lost their wives through the fault of Saltychikha. Catherine received a statement from the peasants in the first half of June of that year, in which the serfs Ilyin and Martynov asked the Empress Mother to intercede for the peasants under the rule of Saltykova.

At the end of the "written assault" the peasants begged the mother empress not to extradite them to the landowner. Catherine took pity on the serfs, on October 1, 1762, the case was accepted for consideration in the Moscow Justice College. The leadership of the investigation was entrusted to an official of humble origin, who has no family or business ties - Stepan Volkov. For higher-ranking officials, investigating a case was a dangerous undertaking. Especially when you consider that, on the one hand, Saltychikha in Moscow had very serious family ties, on the other, the empress herself was familiarized with the complaint, which meant that at least some result had to be presented to St. Petersburg. Volkov was subordinate to the young prince Dmitry Tsitsianov, who had the rank of court adviser.
Consequence

Only in November 1763 was it possible to establish that most of the serfs of the landowner did not die a natural death. This secret was revealed to the investigation thanks to the entries in the arrested account books of Saltykova. It was from them that it was possible to determine the number of dead peasants and establish the circle of influential persons involved in the landowner's case.

From these records, it immediately became clear that most of the peasants died a violent death and under strange circumstances.

So, on several occasions, girls of twenty years old, who died in two weeks, acted as maids to the landowner. In 1759, the body of serf Saltykova Khrisanf Andreev was presented to the Investigative Order of Moscow with numerous bodily injuries. The investigation into the circumstances of the death of the peasant took place with gross violations in the preparation of documents.

Based on the documents of the landowner, the most suspicious were the deaths of the three wives of Yermolai Ilyin, the same serf who denounced his mistress. According to entries in Saltykova's house books, many of the peasants were released to patrimonial villages, but they all died upon arrival or went missing. According to investigators, 138 peasants became victims of Saltykova.

Checking the archives of several offices, including the offices of the chief of police, the governor and other important persons of the Moscow province, showed that in the period 1756-62. 21 complaints were filed against Darya Saltykova by her serfs. All complaints cited examples of beatings that resulted in several deaths. All those who denounced were either sent into exile or they perished.

During the investigation, officials Volkov and Tsitsianov more than once came to the conclusion that Saltykova, being at large, hinders the course of the investigation: the peasants, who were dependent on the landowner, were afraid of her and rarely spoke during interrogations on the merits.

On November 6, 1763, an extract from the case was sent to the Governing Senate in St. Petersburg, in which it was proposed to use torture against Saltykova. In addition, it was reported that it was necessary to appoint a property manager for the suspect, and it was also proposed to remove the landowner from managing estates and funds in order to deprive her of the opportunity to put pressure on witnesses and give new bribes to officials. The investigators did not limit themselves to these requests and decided to resort to the last resort - to conduct a "general" search, during which they would interrogate all the peasants living in the area.

Permission to torture Saltykova was not obtained, but the other requests of the investigators were granted. The landowner Saltykova was removed from managing her own property, appointing a manager in the person of Senator Saburov.

In early February 1764, the landowner Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova was officially announced about the arrest and the forthcoming torture. A priest was assigned to her, who was supposed to prepare the arrested woman for a difficult and painful test and possible death. The duties of the priest also included persuading Saltykov to help the investigation in order to remove sin from the soul. The minister of the Moscow Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Dmitry Vasilyev, had conversations with Saltykova for a whole month, but he failed to persuade her to make a sincere confession.

On March 3, 1764, Dmitry Vasiliev submitted a report to the College of Justice, in which he informed the investigators that Saltykova "was prepared by him for inevitable torture."

Since the investigators did not have a sanction for torture, they found another way to increase the pressure on the suspect. On March 4, 1764, Daria Saltykova was taken to the mansion of the Moscow police chief, accompanied by guards. The executioner was brought to the same mansion, Saltykova was informed that she had been brought to be tortured. But it was not the landowner who was tortured, but a completely different person, in front of Saltykova's eyes. The investigators expected that this performance would impress her, but they were mistaken, Saltykova did not react in any way to the torment of the tortured. After the next interrogation, Darya Nikolaevna, smiling broadly, answered the investigators that "she does not know her guilt and will not slander herself."

Stepan Volkov, trying to prove Saltykova’s guilt, decided to once again ask permission to torture her, but on May 17, 1764 he received a final ban: “Her Imperial Majesty was ordered by decree not to repair either her (yard) people or torture her.”

In the first ten days of June 1764 "general searches" were carried out in several places at the same time. Searches were carried out in Moscow on Sretenka, where Saltykova's house was located, and in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow. The total number of those interrogated during the search at Sretenka was 130 people. To the surprise of the investigators, most of those questioned were able to give the exact dates of the murders and the names of the dead.

During the interrogation of the yard peasants of Saltykova, it turned out that in March 1762, a conspiracy of five people formed among Saltykova's household servants: the Shavkunov brothers, Tarnokhin, Nekrasov and Ugryumov. They went to inform the Moscow authorities about the crimes of the landowner. The serfs-conspirators knew that the landowner had excellent relations with the highest ranks of the Moscow police, and decided to file a complaint with the Senate office. At night they ran out of the house, but Saltykova missed them and sent a chase after them. All five fugitives were detained, later in the office they talked about all the murders of people committed by Saltykova, two weeks later they were taken to the Senate office, where they were interrogated and returned back to the landowner. Those who fled were flogged and sent to Siberia. In addition to this incident, the investigators managed to find out the names of people who witnessed the murders of Yermolai Ilyin's three wives. A large number of people were able to confirm the presence of obvious injuries on the bodies of the deceased women.

The general search in Troitskoye also brought unexpected results. The number of respondents exceeded three hundred people. The investigation became aware of some crimes and accomplices of the landowner.

In the summer of 1762, the yard girl Fekla Gerasimova was killed. Ivan Mikhailov, headman of the village of Troitsky, who was transporting the corpse of a tortured girl, testified and named witnesses who could confirm his words, including police doctor Fyodor Smirnov, who examined the body of the murdered woman in the premises of the Moscow provincial chancellery.

The investigation was to shed light on the deaths of 138 people, of which 50 were officially considered "dead from illnesses", 72 people were missing, 16 were considered "left to her husband" or "gone on the run." The serfs themselves accused their landowner of killing 75 people. But not all the crimes accused by Saltykova had witnesses and exhaustive evidence.

The investigators concluded that the landowner was guilty of the death of 38 people and was suspected of killing 26 more. Saltykova was acquitted of the death of 11 people, the investigation considered that the serfs wanted to slander their mistress. In the general list, formed and submitted to the Justice College, 75 people were victims of Saltykova, only 38 of them were recognized as dead as a result of bodily injuries - beatings. The most important issue that occupied the investigators at that time was the preparation for the murder of the nobleman Nikolai Andreevich Tyutchev.

Tyutchev was in a love relationship with Saltykova for a long time, but preferred to marry another. The offended woman attempted three times on his life and the life of his wife. Having prepared a makeshift bomb with the help of serfs, Saltykova ordered to lay it under the house in which Tyutchev and his wife lived, but the attempt failed twice, as the peasants were afraid to commit the murder of a nobleman.

Saltykova knew that the unfaithful lover should soon leave for Tambov on official business, and decided not to miss this opportunity. She sent over a dozen serfs into an ambush to kill Tyutchev. But one of the peasants sent the nobleman an anonymous letter in which he warned Tyutchev. Surveyor decided to go under guard. When the landowner was convinced that the guards were traveling with Tyutchev, she decided to postpone her plans and no longer remembered it. The investigators considered the information about the attempt on Tyutchev to be reliable, the landowner was found guilty of "maliciousness on the life of Captain Tyutchev."

In the spring of 1765, the investigation in the Moscow Justice College was completed and sent for further consideration to the 6th department of the Governing Senate.

The judges found the landowner guilty, but did not pass the verdict, believing that the empress should make a decision on this issue. Throughout the second half of September 1768, the Empress repeatedly returned to the question of Saltykova's final verdict.
Kill Tech

Saltykova Daria Nikolaevna was an extremely bloodthirsty and ruthless killer. The tortures she carried out against the serfs were prolonged and perverted. Saltychikha could torment her victims throughout the day. If the mistress got tired of injuring, she ordered her peasants to continue torturing the victim for her, stepped aside and watched the bloody spectacle. Under fear of punishment, the serfs carried out any will of their mistress.

The murders of Yermolai Ilyin's wives by Saltychikha are called the most egregious. The first wife of the landowner's groom was Katerina Semenova, the duty of the "yard girl" was to wash the floors. Katerina caused an attack of aggression in the hostess by poor performance of duties. Saltykova flogged her with batogs and whips, as a result of which Semenova died. This happened in 1759.

The second wife of Ilyin did homework, it was Fedosya Artomonova. Her fate was not much different from her predecessor, Saltykova again did not like the work of the girl, after which the standard punishment followed. In the spring of 1761, the girl died.

At the end of February 1762, Yermolai's third wife was killed. Aksinya Yakovleva was distinguished by a quiet disposition and good looks. This time, the cause of the anger remained unknown. According to witnesses, the landowner attacked the girl and began to beat her with her own hands, first with her hands, then with a rolling pin, then with a log. The girl died without regaining consciousness.

The last victim of the landowner in 1762 was Fekla Gerasimova. After the standard beating procedure, the girl was buried alive. On the body of the victim there were numerous hematomas, abrasions, on the head in places the hair was torn out by the roots.

Daria Nikolaevna was a great inventor. After being beaten with a log, she liked to put hot curling irons on the ears of the offenders and drag them along in this way. According to witnesses, almost all the people beaten to death had no hair on their heads. Murders in the Saltykova house entered the system around 1757. In December of that year, a pregnant serf was beaten to death.

Among the victims of Saltykova, men appeared twice: in November 1759, Khrisanf Andreev died during a daily torture, and in September 1761, Saltychikha beat the boy Lukyan Mikheev to death.
Judgment and execution

The Empress herself made the decision in the Saltychikha case. Eight drafts of the verdict are known, drawn up by Catherine II. Saltychikha was sentenced to death, and then this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in the underground cell of the Ivanovo Monastery. The landowner was deprived of her title of nobility, forbidding even in court to use the name of her father or husband, all her funds and estates were transferred to her children. Saltykova was forbidden to communicate with people and send correspondence, the light in the cell was allowed only during meals.

In 1768, on October 2, Catherine II sent a decree to the Governing Senate, which described the punishment imposed on Saltykov and the procedure for its implementation. In the decree of the Empress, Daria Saltykova was called by the most derogatory words: "an inhuman widow", "a freak of the human race", "a completely apostate soul", "a tormentor and a murderer".

Saltykova was sentenced to deprivation of the title of nobility and a life ban on being named after her father or husband. She was also sentenced to one hour of a special "reproachful spectacle" - the landowner stood chained to a pole on the scaffold, and the inscription "tormentor and murderer" hung over her head. After her, Saltychikha was sentenced to life imprisonment in an underground prison without light and human communication.

The presence of light was allowed only during meals, and the conversation was exclusively with the head of the guard and a woman nun. Also, by her decree of October 2, 1768, Catherine decided to return all the property of the mother to the two sons of the condemned woman and punish Daria Saltykova's accomplices. In addition to Saltykova, the following were recognized as guilty: a church minister, the priest of the village of Troitskoye Stepan Petrov, as well as one of the “haiduks” and grooms of the landowner, unfortunately, the names of these people did not appear in the decree. The sentence was carried out on October 17, 1768 on Red Square in Moscow.

In the monastery, a special chamber was prepared for Saltychikha, which was called "repentant", its height did not exceed 2.1 m, the room was underground, there were no windows in it, the light could not penetrate there. The prisoner was not allowed to walk, she was taken out of the dungeon only on major church holidays, to the small window of the temple, so that she could hear the bell ringing and watch the service from afar. Not a single document has survived to our times that would indicate the repentance of Saltychikha.

She was in the dungeon of the Saltykov monastery for 11 years, after which she was transferred to a stone annex of the temple, in which there was a small window and a lattice. Visitors to the monastery were allowed not only to look at the convict, but also to talk to her. There are rumors that after 1779 Saltykova gave birth to a child from a guard soldier. The former landowner was kept in the stone annex of the temple until her death. She died on November 27, 1801.
Versions about Saltykova's mental disorder and her latent homosexuality

Version one

Forensic scientists and historians agree on one thing: in the case of Saltykova, there is a serious mental disorder. It is believed that she was an epileptoid psychopath. It is in people with such a diagnosis that outbreaks of unmotivated aggression often occur, which lead to the most cruel and sophisticated murders. Epileptoid psychopaths attack people in a state of extreme irritation. This category of persons has the following features: an unreasonable gloomy mood that intensifies over a long time, sadism, which can manifest itself both in relation to animals and in relation to people, inability to control anger even in cases where it poses a danger to the life of the psychopath himself, low sexual activity, a tendency to hoarding, jealousy, reaching extreme forms.

Saltykov fits this description perfectly. According to contemporaries, she was a gloomy woman with an eternally bad mood, who was in extreme anguish. Her sadistic tendencies were highlighted during the investigation.

The assassination attempt on Captain Tyutchev serves as further evidence in favor of this version: Saltykova was unable to control her jealousy, which reached its extreme forms.

Version two

Of the huge number of people tortured by Saltykova, the majority were women, mostly young and pretty. There is a version that encroachments on the lives of women testify to the latent homosexuality of Saltykova. Many epileptoid psychopaths demonstrate their homosexuality through humiliation and beating of sexually interesting objects.

The landowner Saltykova, before attacking her victim and subjecting her to the most sophisticated tortures, watched the girls wash the floor for a long time. Saltychikha attacked her victims from the back and unexpectedly.

Daria Nikolaeva Saltykova, nicknamed Saltychikha (1730-1801), was a Russian landowner who went down in history as the most sophisticated sadist and murderer of more than a hundred serfs subject to her. She was born in March 1730 into a family that belonged to the pillar Moscow nobility; relatives of Darya Nikolaevna's parents were the Davydovs, Musins-Pushkins, Stroganovs, Tolstoys and other eminent nobles. Aunt Saltykova was married to Lieutenant General Ivan Bibikov, and her older sister was married to Lieutenant General Afanasy Zhukov.

About the Russian Empire today, as a rule, they prefer to remember only the front side of "Russia, which we have lost."

“Balls, beauties, lackeys, junkers…” waltzes and the notorious crunch of French rolls undoubtedly took place. But this bread crunch, pleasant to the ear, was accompanied by another one - the crunch of the bones of Russian serfs, who provided this whole idyll with their labor.

And it's not just about back-breaking work - the serfs, who were in the complete power of the landowners, very often became victims of tyranny, bullying, and violence.

The rape by gentlemen of courtyard girls, of course, was not considered a crime. The master wanted it - the master took it, that's the whole story.

Of course, there have been murders. Well, the master got excited in anger, beat the negligent servant, and he take it, give up his breath - who pays attention to this.

However, even against the backdrop of the realities of the 18th century, the story of the landowner Daria Saltykova, better known as Saltychikha, looked monstrous. So monstrous that it came to trial and sentence.

At twenty-six, Saltychikha became a widow and received into her full possession about six hundred peasants on estates located in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces. In seven years, she killed more than a quarter of her wards - 139 people, most of them women and girls! Most of the murders were carried out in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow.

In her youth, a girl from a prominent noble family was known as the first beauty, and besides this, she stood out for her extreme piety.

Daria married the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov. The Saltykov family was even more noble than the Ivanov family - Gleb Saltykov's nephew Nikolai Saltykov would become the Most Serene Prince, Field Marshal and would be a prominent courtier in the era of Catherine the Great, Paul I and Alexander I.

Left a widow, the landowner has changed a lot.

Surprisingly, she was still a flourishing and, moreover, a very pious woman. Daria herself married Gleb Saltykov, captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, but in 1756 she was widowed. Her mother and grandmother lived in a nunnery, so Darya Nikolaevna became the sole owner of a large fortune. The 26-year-old widow was left with two sons, enrolled in military service in the capital's guards regiments. Almost every year, Daria Saltykova took a trip on a pilgrimage to some Orthodox shrine. Sometimes she drove quite far, visited, for example, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; during such trips, Saltykova generously donated "to the Church" and distributed alms.

As a rule, it all started with claims to the servants - Daria did not like how the floor was washed or the clothes were washed. The angry hostess began to beat the negligent maid, and her favorite weapon was a log. In the absence of such, an iron was used, a rolling pin - everything that was at hand. The offender was then flogged by grooms and haiduks, sometimes to death. Saltychikha could douse the victim with boiling water or singe her hair on her head. Victims were starved and tied naked in the cold.

At first, the serfs of Darya Saltykova were not particularly alarmed by this - this kind of thing happened everywhere. The first murders did not scare either - it happens that the lady got excited.

But since 1757, the killings have become systematic. Moreover, they began to wear especially cruel, sadistic. The lady clearly began to enjoy what was happening.

In one episode, Saltychikha also got a nobleman. The land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, was in a love relationship with her for a long time, but decided to marry another, for which Saltychikha almost killed him along with his wife. Tyutchev officially notified the authorities of a possible attack and received 12 soldiers as guards during the journey to Tambov. Saltykova, having learned about the captain's protection, canceled the attack at the last moment.

At the beginning of the summer of 1762, two fugitive serfs appeared in St. Petersburg - Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov - who set themselves an almost impossible goal: they set out to bring a complaint to the Empress Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna against their mistress, a large landowner Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova. The fugitives had almost no chance of success. Before the era of Emperor Paul the First, who mounted a special box on the wall of the Winter Palace for denunciations of "all persons, without distinction of rank", there were still almost four decades. And this meant that an ordinary person could not be heard by the Power, which did not honor him with audiences and did not accept his petitions. You can say this: the Higher Power simply did not notice their slaves.

Surprisingly, both were able to successfully complete an almost hopeless enterprise.

The peasants had nothing to lose - their wives died at the hands of Saltychikha. The story of Yermolai Ilyin is completely terrible: the landowner killed three of his wives in turn. In 1759, the first wife, Katerina Semyonova, was beaten with batogs. In the spring of 1761, her second wife, Fedosya Artamonova, repeated her fate. In February 1762, Saltychikha beat Yermolai's third wife, the quiet and meek Aksinya Yakovleva, with logs.

The fugitives were looking for approaches to the Winter Palace, more precisely, for such a person through whom they could convey a complaint to the Empress. It is not known exactly how such a person was found, it is not known at all who he was. Be that as it may, in the first half of June, Catherine II received a "written assault" (as statements were called in those days) of Ilyin and Martynov.

In it, the serfs reported the following:

- They are known for their mistress Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova "deadly and not unimportant criminal cases"(sic in the original);

- Daria Saltykova "from 1756, the soul with a hundred (...) she, the landowner, was destroyed";

- Emphasizing the large number of people tortured by Darya Saltykova, the informers stated that only one of them, Yermolai Ilyin, had the landowner successively killed three wives, each of whom she tortured with her own hands;

The empress did not feel much desire to quarrel with the nobility because of the mob. However, the scale and cruelty of the crimes of Daria Saltykova made Catherine II horrified. The Empress did not brush aside the paper, it was too painful for a large number of victims to be discussed there. Although Saltychikha belonged to a noble family, Catherine II used her case as a show trial that marked a new era of legality.

The investigation was very difficult. High-ranking relatives of Saltychikha hoped that the empress's interest in the case would disappear and he could be hushed up. The investigators were offered bribes and interfered in every possible way in collecting evidence.

Daria Saltykova herself did not admit her guilt and did not repent, even when she was threatened with torture. True, they did not apply them to a well-born noblewoman.

But in order not to reduce the degree of psychological pressure on the suspect, the investigator Stepan Volkov decided on a rather cruel hoax: on March 4, 1764, Daria Saltykova, under strict military guard, was taken to the mansion of the Moscow police chief, where the executioner and officials of the search unit were also brought. The suspect was told that she was "delivered to be tortured."

However, that day it was not her who was tortured, but a certain robber, whose guilt was not in doubt. Saltykova was present during the torture from beginning to end. The cruelty of the execution was supposed to frighten Saltykova and break her stubbornness.

But the suffering of others did not make a special impression on Darya Nikolaevna, and after the end of the "interrogation with passion", which she witnessed, the suspect, smiling, repeated in Volkov's face that "she does not know her guilt and will not slander herself." Thus, the hopes of the investigator to intimidate Saltykova and thereby achieve a confession of guilt were not crowned with success.

Nevertheless, the investigation found that in the period 1757 to 1762, 138 serfs died under suspicious circumstances at the landowner Darya Saltykova, of which 50 were officially considered “dead from illnesses”, 72 people went missing, 16 were considered “left to her husband” or “ gone on the run."

Investigators managed to collect evidence that allowed Daria Saltykova to be accused of killing 75 people.

The Moscow Justice College considered that in 11 cases the serfs slandered Daria Saltykova. Of the remaining 64 murders, 26 cases were labeled “keep suspect”—that is, the evidence was deemed insufficient.

Nevertheless, 38 brutal murders committed by Daria Saltykova were fully proven.

The case of the landowner was transferred to the Senate, which ruled on the guilt of Saltychikha. However, the senators did not make a decision on punishment, leaving it to Catherine II.

The archive of the empress contains eight drafts of the verdict - Catherine painfully thought about how to punish a non-human in a woman's guise, who is also a well-born noblewoman. Finally, on October 2, 1768, Empress Catherine II sent a decree to the Governing Senate, in which she described in detail both the punishment imposed on Saltykov and the procedure for its administration.

The punishment of the condemned landowner was carried out on October 17, 1768, on Red Square in Moscow. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, already a few days before this date, the ancient capital of Russia began to seethe in anticipation of reprisals. Both the public announcement of the upcoming event (in the form of publications in leaflets read out by officers in all crowded squares and intersections of Moscow) and the distribution of special "tickets" that all Moscow nobles received contributed to the general excitement. On the day of the massacre, Red Square was completely filled, people crowded into the windows of the buildings overlooking the square and occupied all the roofs.

At 11 o'clock in the morning, Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova was taken to the square under the guard of mounted hussars; in a black wagon next to the former landowner were grenadiers with drawn swords. Saltykova was forced to climb a high scaffold, where the decree of Empress Catherine II dated October 2, 1768 was read out. After an hour, Saltykova was brought down from the scaffold and put into a black wagon, which, under a military guard, went to the Ivanovo Convent (on Kulishki).

On the same scaffold on the same day, priest Petrov and two servants of the landowner convicted in the Saltykova case were subjected to flogging and branding. All three were sent to hard labor in Siberia.

Daria Saltykova's "repentance chamber" was an underground room a little more than two meters high, which did not receive any light at all. The only thing that was allowed was to light a candle while eating. The prisoner was not allowed to walk, she was taken out of the dungeon only on major church holidays to the small window of the temple, so that she could hear the bell ringing and watch the service from afar.

Visitors to the monastery were allowed to look through this window and even talk to the prisoner. The memoirs of contemporaries have been preserved that many residents of Moscow and visitors came to the Ivanovo Monastery themselves and brought their children with them specifically to look at the famous "Saltychikha".

To annoy her, the children allegedly even came up with a song:

Saltychikha-boltychikha, and high deacon!

Vlasyevna Dmitrovna Savivsha, old lady!...

Saltychikha died on November 27, 1801 at the age of 71, having spent more than 30 years in prison. There is not a single evidence that Daria Saltykova repented of her deed.

Modern criminologists and historians suggest that Saltychikha suffered from a mental disorder - epileptoid psychopathy. Some even believe that she was a latent homosexual.

It is not possible to establish this reliably today. The story of Saltychikha became unique because the case of the atrocities of this landowner ended with the punishment of the criminal. The names of some of the victims of Daria Saltykova are known to us, in contrast to the names of millions of people tortured by Russian landlords during the existence of the serfdom in Russia.

BY THE WAY:

Saltychikha is not a unique phenomenon in world history. We know the names of no less terrible criminals. For example, Gilles de Re - "Bluebeard" - killed more than 600 children in the 15th century, and for example, a hundred years before Saltychikha, there lived a "bloody countess" in Hungary ...

Elizabeth Bathory of Eched (1560 - 1614), also called the Chakhtitskaya Pani or the Bloody Countess - a Hungarian countess from the famous Bathory family, infamous for the serial murders of young girls. The exact number of her victims is unknown. The Countess and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls between 1585 and 1610. The largest number of victims named during the trial of Bathory, 650 people.

"Second Saltychikha" the people called the wife of the landowner Koshkarov, who lived in the 40s of the 19th century in the Tambov province. She found particular pleasure in tyranny over defenseless peasants. Koshkarova had a standard for torture, from the limits of which she went only in extreme cases. Men were supposed to give 100 blows with a whip, women - 80 each. All these executions were carried out by the landowner personally.

The pretexts for torture were most often various omissions in the household, sometimes very insignificant. So, the cook Karp Orlov Koshkarova was whipped with a whip for the fact that there were few onions in the soup.

Another "Saltychikha" found in Chuvashia. In September 1842, the landowner Vera Sokolova beat to death the courtyard girl Nastasya, whose father said that the mistress often punished her serfs "by flaying their hair, and sometimes forced them to flog with rods and whips." And another maid complained that “the mistress broke her nose with her fist, and from punishment with a whip on her thigh there was a scar, and in winter she was locked in a latrine in one shirt, because of which she froze her legs” ...

I cannot but add that the portrait of this beautiful and stately lady is often passed off as "Saltychikha". In fact, this is Daria PETROVNA Chernysheva-Saltykova (1739-1802). Lady of State, Cavalier Lady of the Order of St. Catherine, 1st Class, sister of Princess N. P. Golitsyna, wife of Field Marshal Count I. P. Saltykov. The eldest daughter of the diplomat Count Pyotr Grigoryevich Chernyshev, the godson of Peter the Great, who was considered by many to be his son. Her mother, Countess Ekaterina Andreevna, was the daughter of the well-known head of the secret office under Biron, Count Andrei Ivanovich Ushakov.