Siberian punishment
In the 1660s the Russian government under Czar Alexis I had begun the practice of punishing common criminals and political offenders by exiling them to Siberia. During the last two centuries of Russian imperial rule, punishment varied significantly from czar to czar. Different styles of interrogation and justice were prevalent with each successive ruler. Autocracy allowed for what seems to be a harsh system of imperial punishment. In actuality, the practice of capital punishment and torture were commonplace throughout European rulers. Though labeled by the west as barbaric at times, Russia had no striking trends in outrageous punishment from Peter the Great to Nicholas II. What does differ between Europe and Russia in terms of punishment were the crimes committed. Europe saw much religious persecution and punishment of vagrants and peasants. Russia saw more peasant revolts and responded with oppression. Perhaps also alarming is the number of formerly powerful government officials of the Russian court sent to exile in Siberia. It becomes clear that czars were not overly cruel to the citizens of imperial Russia. However, at the same time, the gentry and peasants did know that the czar held the power, and the czar would
Siberia remains virtually unknown to Europeans and Americans except as the land of Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago," an ice-bound prison of forced labor and death. As the czars' jail, Siberia has been synonymous with suffering--suffering on a megahuman scale when the gulag ruled. Given the bloodspread in France, the outrageous crime in England, and harsh policing in Germany, Russian exile and execution were merely styles of a general European system of harsher punishment than we have today, but which were commonplace in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Duffy, James P. Ricci, Vincent L. Czars: Russia’s Rulers for More Than One Thousand Years. New York: Facts On File, 1995. Practices in Russia were little better during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Serfs or peasants could be sent to hard labor at any time, and Peter specifically employed forced labor in the building of St. Petersburg. Throughout the two centuries in question, Russia cannot be singled out as a particularly oppressive state. Peter the Great was the most ruthless, and it can be argued that he was one of the greatest Russian rulers of all time. Other czars were far less oppressive, striving to deal with the problems of serfdom, and backwardness and less with the problems of maintaining power, exiling and killing political prisoners. As the practice of execution lessened, exiles to Siberia saw more intelligentsia in the region, as well as runaway serfs and peasants trying to escape the harsh conditions of serfdom, preferring the harsh climactic conditions of Siberia. let them know what happened to traitors.
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Europe Russia, Ottoman Empire, Ivan IV, Anna Elizabeth, Don Cossack, Czar Alexis, Petersburg Throughout, Peter Miloslavskii, Eudoxia Streltsy, Nicholas II, capital punishment, imperial russia, hard labor, political exile, eighteenth nineteenth centuries, serfs peasants, rule peter, overly cruel, nineteenth centuries, sent hard, increased capital, sent hard labor, late imperial russia,
Approximate Word count = 1646
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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