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232 8 TheBestInterestsoftheChild Late in the spring of 1914, the wife of a well-to-do Moscow businessman appeared in the office of Vasilii I. Mamantov, director of the Imperial Chancellery for Receipt of Petitions. Relating a heartbreaking story of abuse at her husband’s hands, the woman pleaded for assistance. Her marriage had become a nightmare. Her husband had taken to drinking and carousing and running around with other women, all the while “tyrannizing” his wife. Most recently , he had become involved with a well-known operetta singer, with whom he set up housekeeping in St. Petersburg, using up the remains of his once-substantial fortune. To supplement his diminished resources, he demanded that his wife transfer to him her own wealth, some 150,000 rubles, threatening to take custody of their ten-year-old son if she refused. When she nevertheless resisted, he carried out his threat, kidnapping their son. He then settled the child in the apartment he shared with the singer, forcing the child to be an involuntary witness to the orgies he conducted there, or so his wife alleged, to force her to surrender her assets. In utter despair , the unhappy mother resolved to seek the tsar’s protection.1 But Mamantov confessed himself unable to help her. However sympathetic he felt—and his heart went out to her—it was his duty to tell her that the chancellery was no longer in a position to involve itself in custody arrangements. On March 12, 1914, the passport law had been revised so as to grant a wife the right to obtain her own passport simply by requesting the document from the appropriate authorities. The revision was accompanied by the deceptively titled “certain changes in the Laws concerning the personal and property rights of married women and the relations between husbands and wives and parents and children,” which constituted a substantial revision of marital and family law. Incorporating previous decisions by the State Senate, portions of the draft code governing marital separation that had been drawn up by the Editorial Commission of the Civil Cassation Department of the Senate over a decade earlier but never promulgated, and 1. V. I. Mamantov, Na gosudarevoi sluzhbe. Vospominaniia (Tallin: Tallina Eesti Kirjastus, 1926), 194–95. The Best Interests of the Child : : : 233 other piecemeal revisions of marital law devised by other administrative bodies over the years, it set forth principles for resolving the legal issues arising from marital separation —child custody, child support, alimony, and so on.2 Thesechangesbroughtanendtothechancellery’srole.Thereafter,alllegalquestions arising from marital breakdown belonged in the jurisdiction of the courts, including the custody of her child that had brought the distraught mother to Mamantov. Pursuing the case in court, Mamantov informed her, was the only means for her to regain her “maternal rights.” She had already explored this option, she told him, and learned to her dismay that child custody suits might drag on for years. By the time a court resolved the case, even if in her favor, her son would have become “utterly debauched” as a result of living with his father. “Touched by the petitioner’s genuine grief,” as Mamantov remembered it later, he met with the chief justice of the St. Petersburg circuit court to ascertain whether the court had the authority to remove the child from his father’s custody while the case was still pending. The answer was no. Yet how could he fail to act in such compelling circumstances? Mamantov declared himself torn between respect for the law and his own higher sense of justice: “The new law...deprived me of the right to become involved in the petitioner’s affairs, but simple humanity kept me from reconciling myself to that situation.” His higher sense of justice prevailed. First, Mamantov dispatched members of the special corps of gendarmes , who conducted a secret investigation that confirmed her story. Then, having assured himself that the mother was telling the truth, he took action. Mamantov summoned a staff officer of the special corps of gendarmes and instructed him to assist the petitioner in kidnapping her own son, “of course, without using any force,” and to ensure that no one learned of the chancellery’s role. The kidnapping took place within a matter of days. Once she had regained custody of her child, the chancellery was able to satisfy the mother’s appeal for protection while her custody suit made its way through the courts.3 This episode, illustrating with unusual clarity both...

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