The life story of Darya S altykova continues to terrify today. She brutally killed several dozen serfs subject to her. The order to conduct a thorough investigation came on behalf of Empress Catherine II herself. But things progressed very slowly. Nevertheless, today this trial would be called indicative, which determined the most important guidelines for the domestic policy of the Russian Empire at the end of the eighteenth century.
Biography of Daria S altykova
What kind of person was this - Daria Nikolaevna S altykova? In modern texts, there are completely different descriptions of her appearance and lifestyle. Some historians claim that she was quite beautiful, others called S altychikha an ugly woman. The collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts contains a portrait of her almost complete namesake and distant relative, Daria Petrovna S altykova. By the way, her own sister, Natalya Petrovna (in the marriage of Golitsyn), many years later became the prototype of Pushkin's Queen of Spades. The portrait was painted in Paris in the very year 1762, when an investigation was opened against S altykova in Moscow.
Portraits of S altychikha are often called images of this lady (photo below) in her youth and maturity. But this is not Daria S altykova. In some portraits of an unknown landowner, an order is visible, and the real S altykova has not won any awards in her life. Most of the information about S altychikha can be found in the materials of the investigation file, stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. In the nineteenth century, several articles by amateur historians were published on the materials of this case.
Origin and early years
What is the real story of Daria S altykova? The Russian landowner, who went down in history as the murderer of dozens of serfs, was born in 1730 into a we althy family of nobleman Nikolai Avtonomovich Ivanov from his marriage to Anna Ioanovna Davydova. S altychikha's grandfather at one time was a close associate of Peter the Great and accumulated a large inheritance for his descendants. In kinship with her were nobles with noble families - Musin-Pushkin, Tolstoy, Stroganov and Davydov. Nothing is known about Daria Ivanova's early childhood.
Victims of Daria S altychikha
A rich young lady married the captain of the Horse Regiment Gleb Alekseevich S altykov, who was sixteen years older than her. At twenty-five, Darya Nikolaevna became a widow and full owner of all her estates andpeasants. At the same time, she begins to torment her slaves: she beats them with a rolling pin, a whip, an iron for imaginary duties in cleaning rooms, burns the victims' hair, burns their faces with curling irons. Mostly girls and women suffered, sometimes men also got it. Victims were finished off in the yard by lackeys with batogs, whips and sticks. If she really wiped out 139 souls from the world, then this is the fourth part of the serfs that belonged to her.
Six months after the death of her husband, Daria Slatykova begins to brutally beat the serfs. Torture began with the infliction of several blows on the victim with the first object that came to hand. Most of the time it was a bummer. Gradually, the severity of the wounds became stronger, and the beatings themselves became longer and more sophisticated. Daria S altykova poured boiling water over young girls and women, beat their heads against the wall, grabbed the victim by the ears with hot hair tongs. Many of those killed had no hair on their heads, were starved to death or left naked in the cold. S altychikha was especially fond of killing brides who were soon to be married.
Later, the investigation determined that 139 serfs could become possible victims of S altychikha. According to official figures, fifty people were believed to have died from illness, sixteen were considered to have left or fled, seventy-two people were absent, and nothing was known about the rest. According to the testimony of the serfs themselves, S altykova killed 75 people.
Crimes against nobles
In the biography of Darya S altykova there is a place not only for the murders of serfs. She istook revenge on the nobles. Land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev (grandfather of the poet Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev) was in a romantic relationship with her for a long time, but then decided to marry another girl. Then S altychikha ordered the peasants to burn the house of Tyutchev's bride, but the people were frightened. They were punished either by the state or by the landowner. When Tyutchev got married, he left with his wife for Orel, and S altykova again ordered her people to kill them. But instead, the peasants reported the threat to the former lover of the landowner herself. So the famous Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev could never have been born precisely because of Daria Salytkova's jealousy for her former lover, who married another.
Mental illness
The biography of Darya S altykova (S altychikha) seems to be the story of a mentally ill person. There is a version that she suffered from a serious mental illness. But in the eighteenth century, there were simply no qualified ways to make an accurate diagnosis. During the life of her husband, S altychikha did not observe any inclination to assault. Moreover, she was a very pious woman, so the nature and general presence of a mental illness can only be guessed at. One possible diagnosis is epileptic psychopathy.
Denunciations against S altychikha
Complaints about the ill-treatment of serfs were many even in the time of Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter III. However, the idle life of Daria S altykova lasted a very long time. Nobody checked the complaints. The fact is that the woman belonged to a well-known noble family, a representativewho was the governor-general of Moscow in 1732-1740. All cases of cruelty were decided in her favor. In addition, Daria S altykova never skimped on gifts to emperors and empresses. Scammers were flogged with a whip and exiled to Siberia.
S altykova had many influential relatives, she bribed officials, so that at first complaints only led to the punishment of the complainants themselves. However, two peasants, Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov, several of whose wives she terribly killed, nevertheless managed to convey the denunciation personally to Catherine II. The Empress had just ascended the throne, so she wished to deal with the Moscow landowner. Catherine II used this case as a show trial to demonstrate to the nobility the readiness to fight corruption and abuses on the ground.
In total, the investigation into the S altychikha case lasted not even six, but eight years. Two years before the beginning of the reign of Empress Catherine II, the serfs twenty-one times tried to convey information about the atrocities of the landowner to the knowledge of the authorities. But they didn’t start business, so the story of Daria Salytkova is a story of bureaucracy and corruption. Specific names and positions of bribe-takers have been preserved. The investigation was launched in October 1762 only by the highest order of Empress Catherine II.
Case investigation
On January thirteenth, 1764, Empress Catherine II ordered the sixth department of the patronizing Senate to announce to the Moscow noblewoman Darya Nikolaevna S altykova that if shecontinues to resist and does not confess to the crimes she has committed (already proven), she will be subjected to severe torture. S altykova was arrested and taken to the police. But they brought her not to the detective department, where commoners were interrogated, but to Rybny Lane, to the courtyard of the Moscow police chief Ivan Ivanovich Yushkov.
In a special room, a well-known criminal was ruthlessly tortured in front of the arrested woman. At the end of the act of intimidation, the thirty-three-year-old widow with an arrogant smile said that she did not know her guilt and did not intend to slander herself. This is how the investigation proceeded in a completely unprecedented case for the eighteenth century about the fanaticism of the Moscow mistress S altychikha. The lady lived and committed her crimes in the center of Moscow, so there were enough witnesses.
Sentencing
According to the results of the investigation, it was found out that Daria S altykova (S altychikha) was guilty of the death of thirty-eight peasants and "left in suspicion" about the death of twenty-six more people. The senators did not issue a specific verdict, so the decision was made by Empress Catherine II herself. Catherine changed the sentence several times. There were at least four sketches of the Empress in total. In 1768 the final decision was made. S altykova was sentenced to deprivation of her noble rank and surname, serving a "reproachful spectacle" for an hour and life imprisonment in a monastery.
Reproachful spectacle
On the eve of the execution, invitations were sent to all prominent Moscow nobles. They shouldcome and watch the shameful spectacle. From the execution of the sentence, the empress made a real performance. Usually this method is used to intimidate and pacify the recalcitrant. This means that Catherine II knew that not all the nobility was on her side. She didn't have much power back then. It was for the opponents of the Empress, who for everyone was just the German wife of the German Emperor, that the demonstrative case was arranged.
In October 1768, Darya Salytkova was tied to a post on Red Square. Above her head was the inscription "murderer and tormentor." After the “reproachful spectacle,” S altychikha was taken to the John the Baptist convent for life imprisonment in an underground cell without daylight and human communication. The hard regime lasted eleven years, then the convict was transferred to an annex to the temple.
Detention in a monastery
For all the external severity, the punishment was not so serious: she was not only not executed, but also not expelled from Moscow. A couple of years before S altychikha, her elderly grandmother lived in the monastery, who donated large sums of money. The monks treated the prisoner rather condescendingly. Otherwise, how could she have lived eleven years in an underground dungeon, and then another twenty-two years in a specially built cell near the wall of the cathedral. There is information that she even had a child from the guard of the monastery.
Death of S altychikha
The biography of Darya S altykova (S altychikha) ended at the seventy-second year of her life. She died in her cell in 1801. After deaththe prisoner's annex was adapted as a sacristy. The room was dismantled along with the cathedral building in 1860. In total, Daria S altykova (her real story is really frightening) spent thirty-three years in prison. The landowner was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery along with all her relatives. Nearby is a grave of the same year - in 1801, the eldest son of S altychikha also died. The tombstone has survived to this day.
