Punishment for cheating on a wife: how unfaithful women were punished in Rus'
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“Woman was created for man, and not man for woman” - this was the postulate propagated by the Russian Orthodox Church. This gave rise to distrust of both sexes towards each other, so marriages were concluded not out of love, but according to the will of the parents. In such families, spouses treated each other with hostility and did not value each other - therefore, betrayal often accompanied such relationships, despite the censure of society
Ancient Rus'
The earliest document that mentions adultery is the Charter of Prince Yaroslav the Wise. It says that a man was considered an adulterer if he had not only a mistress, but also children from her. For cheating on his wife, a man had to pay a fine to the church, and the amount of the fine was determined by the prince. There is a record in the chronicle that Mstislav Vladimirovich (son of Vladimir Monomakh) “visited his wives not sparingly, and she (the princess), knowing that, was not in the least offended... Nowadays,” he continued (according to the chronicle), “the princess as a young person , wants to have fun, and may even do something obscene, it’s already inconvenient for me to guard against it, but it’s enough when no one knows about it and doesn’t talk about it.”
Any relationship between a woman and a stranger was considered adultery. Her husband needed to punish his wife's frivolity. If he forgave the traitor and continued to live with her, then he was entitled to punishment. To avoid punishment, a man had to divorce his unfaithful wife, and not delay this moment: “If a wife left her husband with someone else, the husband is to blame for letting her in...”
17th and 18th centuries
In the 17th and 18th centuries, adultery was a reason for divorce. In pre-Petrine times, a husband could get away with a year of penance and a fine; a woman always suffered a more severe punishment than a man. If a woman was convicted of adultery, then after a divorce she had to join the spinning yard, and she was forbidden to remarry. To prove his wife's infidelity, the husband had to bring witnesses. This is reflected in the saying of Vladimir Dahl: “not caught - not a thief, not raised - no fucking thing.”
The nobles were tolerant of betrayal. The peasants treated treason much more harshly and condemned it. However, punishments did not become an obstacle to adultery. This is reflected in the sayings: “When a girl falls in love with a matchmaker, it’s no one’s fault,” “It wasn’t her mother who ordered it, she wanted it,” and especially: “Someone else’s husband is sweet, but it’s not a shame to live with him, but it’s your hate to hang around with him.”
There were many cases when the husband “did not seek a divorce” from the cheater. Often the husband agreed to punish his wife - with lashes, whips or correctional labor. A wife who was caught cheating was forbidden to use her husband's surname. Penance for wives lasted for many years (up to 15 years), or she was sent to a monastery.
The husbands' requests to divorce him from the “unfaithful” were always satisfied. This led to the fact that if a man “no longer needed a wife,” then this was a convenient excuse to get a divorce and start a new family. However, there were many cases when they divorced at the request of their wife.
If a husband was “caught” cheating, then his punishment consisted of a shameful conversation with his “spiritual father.”
XIX - early XX centuries
In the 19th century, as in previous centuries, a wife’s infidelity was treated more strictly than a husband’s infidelity. The man was subject to moral punishment. There was a nuance: in society, a divorced man was unspokenly subject to restrictions on promotion and might not be given the desired position. This situation is described by Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. The common people used “shameful punishments.” Women treated adultery strictly: “Such women sin doubly - they violate purity, and they corrupt the law... they are philanderers, non-observers.”
Men used their wife’s “betrayal” as a reason to divorce her, which is why there are hundreds of petitions of this kind in the archives. In this case, the volost courts imposed a formal punishment on the female “traitor” – arrest, community service.
The husband could punish his wife on his own - drive her out of the house, taking away her dowry.
Wives could not divorce their husbands. The men did not consent to the divorce, “and they won’t give her a passport without her husband’s consent.” But a woman could take revenge on a homewrecker for the humiliation she suffered - in the Yaroslavl province, for example, wives could break windows, smear the house with soot and the gates with tar.
In the Yaroslavl province and in the Volga region, a husband could beat his adulterous wife, and in the Volga region it was considered correct to beat her “in public.” In the Russian North, in the Tver and Kostroma provinces, they preferred to “not wash dirty linen in public,” and there old men acted as judges of unfaithful wives and husbands. A common form of female punishment was “harnessing” her to a cart. The husband forced her to carry him, and he beat her with a whip.
In the 20th century, punishments for treason were transformed. Divorces became difficult, and the Soviet government pursued a policy of “strengthening the family.” A person’s private life has ceased to be private, personal relationships and intimate connections have become part of party and Komsomol meetings. Throughout the existence of the USSR, the tradition of discussing family crises at meetings was maintained, and the state policy of a “strong Soviet family” was actively implanted in the minds of citizens.