Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia by Abby M. s> Schrader (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 559 truthand honesty, and her obsessionwith time (butI wonderwhetherthiswas a specifically'Protestant'trait,asthe authorsuggests,given thatPeterI, whose formative years were steeped in Orthodoxy, was similarly obsessed). The reader who picks up this book in the hope of a vicarious thrill will be disappointed, however. Any tingles of anticipation produced by a survey of the empress'slovers are quicklystaunched by a good dose of political theory and a briskdismissalof certainlegends of unnaturalsexualappetites.We learn most about what Catherine read and wrote. Dixon detects a number of motives for her own prolific (but mostly derivative)literary activity, notably the desire to raise the profile of writing as a profession. This aim he places firmlyin the context of a countrywhere only as many bookswere publishedin the whole eighteenth century as appeared in Germany in any three year period. This and other bleak facts, such as the virtual non-existence of a provincial press and the late advent (I783) of private publishing, make the author call into question the whole concept of Russian public opinion and a Russian public sphere and to conclude that the so-called public was 'tiny, elitist, male, urban and metropolitan' (p. 98), created by the state, starting with PeterI and continued by Catherine. In sum, this book offersa lucid, elegantly written synthesisof scholarship and a freshlook at old ideas. It is the firstfull-lengthstudyin Englishto draw on at least the beginnings of the post-Soviet rehabilitationof Catherine. The thematic approach does leave a few gaps in the narrative;for example, who was the Captain Passekmentioned on p. 28 whose arrestin I762 precipitated the coup that brought Catherine to power?Beginnerswill have to look up the identityof the 'assignedpeasants'who appearon p. 3I;but theywillget ample advice about what to consult in the excellent guide to furtherreading. One would have appreciatedsome picturesand a map, but it would be churlishto complainwhen thisslim-lookingvolume packsin considerablymore erudition than many a weightiertome. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies LINDSEY HUGHES University College London Schrader, Abby M. Languages of theLash. Corporal Punishment andIdentityin Imperial Russia.Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2002. xiii + 258 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. [33.50. IN this well researched, innovative, and fascinating study, Abby Schrader exploresthe historyof corporalpunishmentin Russia. Itschronologicalscope spans the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries,when Elizabeth I replaced the death penalty with public knouting and exile in I754, Catherine II exempted certain estate groups from corporal punishment in i 785, and corporal punishment was reformed in I863. This primary emphasis on the period before I855 iS one of the great virtues of this book; not only does it illuminate a period generally neglected in the historiography,but it also calls into question the assumptionof many historiansthat the reformera markeda fundamentalbreakor discontinuity.Indeed, Schraderdemonstratesboth the vitality of the early period rightfullycalling for a new assessment of the 560 SEER, 8i, 3, 2003 reign of Nicholas I in particular -and the continuities with subsequent developments. Further arguing that this history must be viewed within a European context, she opposes an essentialist approach to the Russia experience and draws numerous parallels between Russia and Europe. Though influenced by Foucault Schrader too opens her study with a descriptionof a spectacularcorporal(not capital)punishment she does not adopt his model uncriticallybut ratherdrawsinspirationfromseveralsources. Not humanitarianismor the civilizingprocess,she concludes,but 'socialfears' were the key factorin the evolution of penal policies. Punishmentdid notjust possessa retributivefunction in imperialRussia. It was also a tool with which to construct, represent, and even redefine social order. When approachedin thisway, penal policy can illuminatethe broader concerns of state officialsas well as the exercise of governmental power. In chapter one, Shraderexplores the legal historyculminating in the enactment of a new penal code in I845. Identifyingtwo contradictoryimpulses,the drive toward centralization and the perception of the empire as embodying fundamentaldifference,she concludes the chapterwith a fascinatinganalysis of estate (soslovie) and the languagesof punishment.By dividingthepopulation into two categories, those exempt from and those subject to corporal punishment, the state was in fact using punishment as a form of social engineering. Those exempt (and the list of exemptions was growing in this period, inpartdue to lobbyingfrombelow)were expected to have internalized a moral sense and personal dignity. Punishment for...