Russia's Legal Fictions

1. The Theater of Sukhovo-Kobylin

Chapter 1 The Theater of Sukhovo-Kobylin V sudakh chema nepravdoi chemoi I igom rabstva kleimena; Bezbozhnoi lesti, lzhi tletvomoi, I leni mertvoi i pozomoi, I vsiakoi merzosti polna! In the courts you are black with black injustice And branded with the yoke of slavery; Full of shameless flattery, foul lies, Laziness deathly and disgraceful, Replete with every vileness! -A. Khomiakov, "Russia," 1854 On November 9,1850, in the Presnenskii district of Moscow, the police officer Il'inskii reported to his chief, the ober-politsmeister of Moscow, that "outside the Presnenskii gate on Khodynskoe field the dead body of a woman of unknown identity had been found."1 The police report made on the basis af an inspection of the corpse at the place of its discovery included the following points.2 The woman was about thirtyfive years old. The body was found face down, with the arms bent under it. When the body was turned over, "it appeared that the woman had her throat cut." Her braid was undone, and her hair was twisted around her throat near the wound. The body was frozen. The woman was clothed in a dress of green checked material, under which were a white calico skirt; another skirt, quilted, covered in "drap-de-dames" of 1. "List dela 2," quoted in Viktor Grossman, Dela Sukhava-Kabylina (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1936), 7. 2. I have combined here excerpts from the police report as quoted by Grossman, Dela Sukhava-Kabylina, in the body of his text and in the appendix, N. V. Popov, "Sudebnomeditsinskaia ekspertiza po delu A. V. Sukhovo-Kobylina," 295-331. 15 16 RUSSIA'S LEGAL FICTIONS a dark color; and a third skirt of cotton. Her drawers, of white calico, were down around her shins. On her legs were white silk stockings and warm black velvet half boots. She had a blue satin hat and wore a tortoiseshell comb missing one tooth. There was no cross on her neck. Gold earrings with jewels adorned her ears. On the middle finger of her left hand were two gold rings, one "sprinkled with roses," both with jewels; on the middle finger of her right hand she wore a gold ring. In her pocket was a set of keys. The cursory medical examination, also made on the spot, showed that the woman had been of a "fairly strong constitution." The cut to the throat was below the larynx and was about five inches long. The arteries were completely cut. There was a small quantity of blood on the snow just under the throat. On the upper part of the neck there was a scar approximately the size of a little finger. The left eye was swollen shut, surrounded by a bruise the size of a hand. The left side of the body was of a dark red color, with multiple spots of various sizes. The left arm was bruised from the shoulder to the elbow. Bruises were also found on the waist. An autopsy performed on the eleventh of November showed that four ribs were broken. The medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was the wound to the throat, and that the death did not occur where the body was found. The next day the body was identified as that of Elizabeth Louisa Simon-Demanche, the mistress of the future playwright, Aleksandr Vasil'evich Sukhovo-Kobylin, a wealthy and brilliant aristocrat, who at the time held the rank of retired titular counselor. The Case Over the next seven years Sukhovo-Kobylin and the house serfs in his employ who served Simon-Demanche were prosecuted for the murder. The house serfs were the cook, Efim Egorov; the coachman, Galaktion Koz'min; and two maids, Pelageia Alekseeva and Agrafena Kashkina. At their first interrogation, the servants denied all knowledge of their mistress's death. On November 17, 1850, Kobylin himself and his orderly were arrested. Traces of blood found in his apartment, a suspicious love letter, and the fact that Kobylin himself had reported Demanche's disappearance all played a role in the arrest. The military governor general of Moscow, Count A. A. Zakrevskii, whose house was very near Simon-Demanche's apartment, ordered on November 18 that THE THEATER OF SUKHOVO-KOBYLIN 17 the "very strictest measures" be used to uncover the guilty party) On November 19, the investigating commission, noting "something troubling the conscience" of the cook Egorov...