Saltychikha and her grave. Scarier than a horror movie. Saltychikha - the bloodiest landowner in the history of Russia Daria Saltychikha

Of course, I came there not only to look at it, I wanted to see the necropolis as a whole, the high reliefs in particular, but that's later, I'll post again a lot of photos ..

I once read Akunin's Cemetery Stories. One chapter is devoted to the Donskoy cemetery. Postponed that it would be necessary to go in case. Suddenly, the event finally happened. I would like to rummage in more detail on the net in advance for the tombstone of Saltychikha (Saltykova Daria Nikolaevna), and so ..
I remembered the photo in his book, and came to that "stone stake", but in vain, although I remembered that this was only an artistic assumption. I went through the info after, I chose what to me seemed closer to...
It is alleged, and not in one source, that her grave is lower, in the center that the inscription is even visible there, from the other side it seems that it closed the sarcophagus that had collapsed nearby not so long ago. In the video under the post, the monk said that this is the tombstone of her eldest son, who died the same year.
If I had found it in advance, I would have climbed in to look, or try to feel the inscription)
Quotes from various sources:
"I have previously seen pictures of this particular grave, but then the monument was not yet fallen and the inscription was visible."
"Those whose relatives are in prison or under investigation come to the grave of Saltychikha. It is believed (by someone) that Saltychikha is the protector of prisoners."

Quote incl. - art critic M. Yu. Korobko, Russian historian, writer, archivist, Moscow historian, toponymist, publicist, journalist. Below is a link to his LiveJournal.
"However, Saltychikha also has a folk tombstone, the one under which she is buried according to secret folk knowledge passed down from generation to generation! The touching flowers and the inscription made with a felt-tip pen are touching, in it Saltychikha is mistakenly called Catherine."

landmark from here- a real tombstone of Saltychikha with a tombstone collapsed nearby, on the territory of the monastery (entrance with a large bell tower) - from the entrance - to the right wall of the monastery. In the photo - in the background near the tower, a little further than the white cross, there is also a sculpture of a girl with a flowerpot. Although .. I still didn’t look at the inscription myself, I’ll climb on occasion)

I forgot the inscriptions on the stone in front and on the right .. it seemed to be on the left too .. or not .. I don’t remember ..
And in the list of those buried in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery - the Baskakovs:
Baskakov Vasily Vasilyevich (1765-1794) - second major
Baskakov Ivan Yegorovich (1753-1798) - court adviser, grandfather of the poet N. P. Ogarev
Baskakova (ur. Khitrovo) Vera Petrovna (1743-1827) - his wife
Baskakov Petr Vasilyevich (sk. 1794) - lieutenant
Baskakov Alexey (b. 1761)
Baskakova Anna Filippovna (1817-1889) - girl

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Daria Nikolaevna Saltykov 1730 - 1801.
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About the cuts. More often she is confused with Daria Petrovna Saltykova Yes, me at first..

The portrait is completely different. representative of the ramified Saltykov family. Moreover, nee Chernysheva, Daria Petrovna, sister of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna. Daria Petrovna was married to Field Marshal Ivan Petrovich Saltykov, the son of the hero of the Seven Years' War, Pyotr Semenovich Saltykov. So she is Saltykova not by birth, but through her husband. To the "same" Saltychikha, these Saltykovs, close to the court, had a very distant relationship, the seventh water on jelly. And this portrait is a miniature by A.Kh. Ritt, 1790s, from the Hermitage. There is a paired portrait of her husband. But the images of Saltychikha are still unknown, alas. So we can only fantasize about her villainous appearance. Darya Petrovna in her youth. In Paris, her portrait was painted by Francois Drouet, he is in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. So this Saltykova was good and not outrageous. Just in case, you can trust me, I already wrote a book on these Chernyshevs.
(quote from av4)

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So portraits. Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova was not preserved and a lot of posts...
"..Daria Saltykova died dozens of her peasants. Almost all of them were young women - among the victims were only two men and five girls aged 11-15..."
"... the maid Praskovya Larionova - at first the sadist beat her herself, and then gave her to the haiduks, shouting at the same time: "Beat to death! I myself am responsible and I'm not afraid of anyone!" Praskovya, beaten to death, was taken to Troitskoye, throwing her baby into the sleigh, who froze along the way. Katerina Ivanova was taken along the same road, whose groom Davyd "saw swollen legs from the battle and blood flowed from the seat" ...
etc.

For example, one of the posts...

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Landowner Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova. Killer woman
In 1768, near the Execution Ground, near the pillory stood the landowner Daria Saltykova - the famous Saltychikha, who tortured at least 138 of her serfs to death. While the clerk read from the sheet the crimes she had committed, Saltychikha stood with her head uncovered, and a plaque with the inscription "Tormentor and Murderer" hung on her chest. After that, she was sent to eternal imprisonment in the Ivanovo Monastery ...

Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova (nee Ivanova), daughter of a Duma clerk close to Peter I, who was related to the Davydovs, Musin-Pushkins, Stroganovs and Tolstoy. She was born in 1730 in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow (now the village of the Mosrentgen plant, adjacent to Moscow in the Tyoply Stan area). Her grandfather, Avton Ivanov, was a prominent figure in the times of Princess Sophia and Peter I. She married the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov (d. circa 1755), uncle Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov, the future Most Serene Prince. They had two sons, Fedor (1750-1801) and Nikolai (d. 1775), who were enrolled in the Guards regiments.

Having been widowed at the age of twenty-six, she received in her full possession about six hundred peasants on estates located in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces. The investigator in the case of the widow of Saltykova, court adviser Volkov, based on the data of the house books of the most suspect, compiled a list of 138 surnames of serfs, whose fate was to be ascertained. According to official records, 50 people were considered “dead from diseases”, 72 people were “missing without a trace”, 16 were considered “left to her husband” or “gone on the run”. According to the testimonies of the serfs, received during the "general searches" in the estate and villages of the landowner, 75 people were killed by Saltykova, mostly women and girls.

edition of the island "Friends of Children" ..

Before the death of her husband, Saltychikha did not show any particular propensity for violence. But about six months after being widowed, she began regularly beating the servants. The main reasons for punishment were dishonesty in mopping or laundry. The torture began with the fact that she struck the guilty peasant woman with blows with an object that fell under her arm (most often it was a log). The offender was then flogged by grooms and haiduks, sometimes to death. Saltychikha could douse the victim with boiling water or singe her hair on her head. Saltychikha also used hot curling irons for torture, with which she grabbed the victim by the ears. She often dragged people by the hair and at the same time banged their heads against the wall for a long time. Many of those killed by her, according to witnesses, did not have hair on their heads, Saltychikha tore her hair with her fingers, which indicates her considerable physical strength. Victims were starved and tied naked in the cold. Saltychikha did not love and broke up couples in love who were about to get married.
In one episode, the nobleman Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, got it from Saltychikha. The young captain, who in 1760 was engaged in reconciling the borders of Saltykova's estates near Moscow with entries in the land cadastre, became the lover of a young widow. Everything was fine at first, but in January 1762 Tyutchev was going to marry the girl Panyutina.

(Saltykova was then 32, he was 42, and somewhere it is mentioned that he is allegedly younger than her)

Saltykova decided to destroy the unfaithful lover, and to do it in the most literal sense. Groom Savelyev gained 2 kg in two steps. gunpowder, which, after adding sulfur and tinder, was wrapped in flammable hemp. It turned out to be a powerful bomb.
By order of Saltykova, two attempts were made to plant this bomb under the Moscow house in which Captain Tyutchev and his bride lived. Both attempts failed because of the fear of the sent serfs before retribution failed. Timid grooms - Ivanov and Savelyev - were brutally whipped, but unsuccessful attempts to blow up the house forced Saltykova to reconsider the plan. She decided to organize an ambush on the captain's route to Tambov, where he was supposed to go on business in April 1762. 10-12 men from Saltykova's estates near Moscow were to participate in the ambush. The matter turned out to be serious: an attack on a nobleman when he was fulfilling a state task was no longer drawn to robbery, but to a conspiracy! This threatened the peasants not even with hard labor, but with beheading. The serfs of Saltykova threw the captain an "anonymous letter" (anonymous), in which they warned him about the impending assassination attempt on him. Tyutchev officially notified the authorities of a possible attack and received 12 soldiers as guards during the journey to Tambov. Saltykova, having learned about the captain's protection, canceled the attack at the last moment.

Complaint to the Empress
There were always many complaints about the cruel landowner both under Elizabeth Petrovna and under Peter III, but all cases of cruelty were resolved in her favor. Scammers were punished with a whip and exiled to Siberia. She did not skimp on gifts to the authorities, but, on the other hand, the surname was respected.

At the same time, Saltychikha led an outwardly pious lifestyle. She made donations to the church and made annual pilgrimages to Orthodox shrines such as the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
The initial complaints of the peasants only led to the punishment of the complainants, since Saltychikha had many influential relatives, and she was able to bribe officials. But two peasants, Savely Martynov and Ermolai Ilyin, whose wives she killed, in 1762 still managed to convey the complaint to Catherine II, who had just ascended the throne.

Consequence
Although Saltychikha belonged to a noble family, Catherine II used her case as a show trial that would mark a new era of legality.
The Moscow Justice College carried out an investigation that lasted six years. The investigation was carried out by a rootless official Stepan Volkov and his assistant court adviser Prince Dmitry Tsitsianov. They analyzed Saltychikha's account books, which made it possible to establish the circle of bribed officials. Investigators also studied the records of the movement of serfs, which noted which peasants were sold, who was sent to work and who died.

Many suspicious death records have been identified. So, for example, a twenty-year-old girl could go to work as a servant and die in a few weeks. According to the records, Yermolai Ilyin (one of the complainants who served as a groom) had three wives died in a row. Some peasant women were allegedly released to their native villages, after which they immediately died or disappeared without a trace.
A study of the archives of the office of the Moscow civil governor, the Moscow police chief and the Detective Order revealed 21 complaints filed against Saltychikha by her serfs. All the complainants were returned to the landowner, who carried out her own trial on them.

Saltychikha was taken into custody. During interrogations, the threat of torture was used (permission for torture was not obtained), but she did not confess to anything. The torture of a well-known robber in the presence of Saltychikha with a notice that she would be next turned out to be ineffective. It is possible that she was aware that torture would not be applied to her. The persuasion to repent of the priest of the Moscow church Nicholas the Wonderworker Dmitry Vasiliev did not work either.
Then a general search was carried out in the Moscow house of Saltychikha and in Troitsky, accompanied by a questioning of hundreds of witnesses. Accounting books containing information about bribes to officials of the Moscow administration were found, and those interviewed spoke about the murders, gave the dates and names of the victims.
The bribes were received by the head of the police office, Molchanov, the prosecutor of the Detective Department, Khvoshchinsky, those present at the Detective Order, Velyaminov-Zernov and Mikhailovsky, the secretary of the Secret Office, Yarov, and the actuary of the Detective Order, Pafnutiev.

Black and white illustration. Image of the massacre of the landowner of the Podolsk district D.N. Saltykova over the peasants. (Great Reform. T. 1 - M., 1911) (author P.V. Kurdyumov)

In the spring of 1765, the investigation in the Moscow Justice College was formally completed and sent for further consideration to the 6th Department of the Governing Senate.
As a result of the investigation, Volkov came to the conclusion that Daria Saltykova was “undoubtedly guilty” of the death of 38 people and “left in suspicion” regarding the guilt in the death of another 26 people.

Court and sentence
The litigation lasted over three years. In the end, the judges found the defendant "guilty without leniency" of thirty-eight proven murders and torture of courtyard people. However, the senators did not issue a specific verdict, shifting the burden of making a decision to the reigning monarch - Catherine II.
During September 1768, Catherine II rewrote the sentence several times. Four handwritten sketches of the empress's sentence have been preserved.
On October 2, 1768, Catherine II sent a decree to the Senate, in which she described in great detail both the punishment imposed on Saltykov and the procedure for its administration. On the margins of this decree, by the hand of Catherine, next to the word she is placed He. The Empress wanted to say that Saltykova was not worthy to be called a woman.

Saltykova Daria Nikolaevna was convicted:
1. to the deprivation of the title of nobility;
2. a life-long ban on being called the clan of the father or husband (it was forbidden to indicate one's noble origin and family ties with other noble families);
3. serving for an hour a special “reproachful spectacle”, during which the condemned woman had to stand on a scaffold chained to a pole with the inscription “tormentor and murderer” above her head;
4. to life imprisonment in an underground prison without light and human communication (light was allowed only during meals, and conversation was only with the head of the guard and a female nun).

In addition, the empress, by her decree of October 2, 1768, decided to return to her two sons all the property of the mother, which until then had been in the guardianship. It was also indicated to punish with reference to hard labor of accomplices of Daria Saltykova (priest of the village of Troitsky Stepan Petrov, one of the “gaiduks” and the groom of the landowner).

The punishment of the convicted Darya Nikolaeva was executed on October 17, 1768 on Red Square in Moscow. In the Moscow Ivanovo convent, where the convict arrived after being punished on Red Square, a special chamber was prepared for her, called “repentant”. The height of the room dug in the ground did not exceed three arshins (that is, 2.1 meters), it was completely below the surface of the earth, which excluded any possibility of daylight getting inside. The prisoner was kept in complete darkness, only for the time of eating she was given a candle stub. Saltychikha was not allowed to walk, she was forbidden to receive and transmit correspondence.
On major church holidays, she was taken out of her prison and taken to a small window in the wall of the temple, through which she could listen to the liturgy. The strict regime of detention lasted 11 years, after which it was weakened: the convict was transferred to a stone annex to the temple with a window. Visitors to the temple were allowed to look out the window and even talk to the prisoner. According to the historian, “Saltykova, when curious people used to gather at the window behind the iron bars of her dungeon, cursed, spat and stuck a stick through the window open in the summer.”

Cathedral Church in the former Ivanovsky Monastery.
"Saltychikha" was kept in custody in the left annex.

After the death of the prisoner, her cell was adapted as a sacristy. She spent thirty-three years in prison and died on November 27, 1801.
She was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, where all her relatives were buried.
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Interesting Facts

* Starting in 1764, in Moscow, and then throughout the empire, a rumor was spread that Saltykova not only killed peasants, but ate their meat. The investigation was able to reliably establish the absurdity of such accusations.
* According to some reports, in 1779 (at the age of almost 50) Daria Saltykova gave birth to a child in prison from a guard soldier.
* The city house of Saltychikha in Moscow was located on the corner of Bolshaya Lubyanka and Kuznetsky Most streets, that is, on the site where the buildings that now belonged to the FSB of Russia were later built. The estate, where, as a rule, she committed murders and tortures was located on the territory of the village of Mosrentgen (Trinity Park) near the Moscow Ring Road in the area of Teply Stan.
* Saltykova was nicknamed the Russian Marquis de Sade. Or just Saltychikha.
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There were many "Saltychikh" in Russia

The “Second Saltychikha” was popularly called the wife of the landowner Koshkarov, who lived in the 40s of the 19th century in the Tambov province. She found particular pleasure in tyranny over defenseless peasants. Koshkarova had a standard for torture, from the limits of which she went only in extreme cases. Men were supposed to give 100 blows with a whip, women - 80 each. All these executions were carried out by the landowner personally.

The pretexts for torture were most often various omissions in the household, sometimes very insignificant. So, the cook Karp Orlov Koshkarova was whipped with a whip for the fact that there were few onions in the soup.

Another "Saltychikha" was found in Chuvashia. In September 1842, the landowner Vera Sokolova beat to death the courtyard girl Nastasya, whose father said that the mistress often punished her serfs "by flaying their hair, and sometimes forced them to flog with rods and whips." And another maid complained that “the mistress broke her nose with her fist, and from punishment with a whip on her thigh there was a scar, and in winter she was locked in a latrine in one shirt, because of which she froze her legs” ...
Via
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Although the history of the pillar noblewoman Saltykova became known, but how many ruined souls remained hidden. Souls .. The account is not on people - the owners of souls, like the devil.
"she went to church and zealously atoned for sins." As it is now, and at all times.
There were cruel times, and there were times of the Inquisitions .., not to mention wars.

The life story of Daria Saltykova continues to terrify today. She brutally killed several dozen serfs subject to her. The order to conduct a thorough investigation came on behalf of Empress Catherine II herself. But things progressed very slowly. Nevertheless, today this trial would be called indicative, which determined the most important guidelines for the domestic policy of the Russian Empire at the end of the eighteenth century.

Biography of Daria Saltykova

What kind of person was this - Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova? In modern texts there are completely different descriptions of her appearance and lifestyle. Some historians claim that she was quite beautiful, others called Saltychikha an ugly woman. The collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts contains a portrait of her almost complete namesake and distant relative, Daria Petrovna Saltykova. By the way, her own sister, Natalya Petrovna (in the marriage of Golitsyn), many years later became the prototype of Pushkin's Queen of Spades. The portrait was painted in Paris in the very year 1762, when an investigation was opened against Saltykova in Moscow.

Portraits of Saltychikha are often called images of this lady (photo below) in her youth and maturity. But this is not Daria Saltykova. In some portraits of an unknown landowner, an order is visible, and the real Saltykova has not won any awards in her life. Most of the information about Saltychikha can be found in the materials of the investigation file, stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. In the nineteenth century, several articles by amateur historians were published on the materials of this case.

Origin and early years

What is the real story of Daria Saltykova? The Russian landowner, who went down in history as the killer of dozens of serfs, was born in 1730 into a wealthy family of nobleman Nikolai Avtonomovich Ivanov from his marriage to Anna Ioanovna Davydova. Saltychikha's grandfather at one time was a close associate of Peter the Great and accumulated a large inheritance for his descendants. In kinship with her were nobles with noble families - Musin-Pushkin, Tolstoy, Stroganov and Davydov. Nothing is known about Daria Ivanova's early childhood.

Victims of Daria Saltychikha

A rich young lady married the captain of the Horse Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov, who was sixteen years older than her. At twenty-five, Darya Nikolaevna became a widow and the full owner of all her estates and peasants. At the same time, she begins to torment her slaves: she beats them with a rolling pin, a whip, an iron for imaginary duties in cleaning rooms, burns the victims' hair, burns their faces with curling irons. Mostly girls and women suffered, sometimes men also got it. Victims were finished off in the yard by lackeys with batogs, whips and sticks. If she really wiped out 139 souls from the world, then this is the fourth part of the serfs who belonged to her.

Six months after the death of her husband, Daria Slatykova begins to brutally beat the serfs. Torture began with the infliction of several blows on the victim with the first object that came to hand. Most of the time it was a bummer. Gradually, the severity of the wounds became stronger, and the beatings themselves became longer and more sophisticated. Daria Saltykova poured boiling water over young girls and women, beat their heads against the wall, grabbed the victim by the ears with hot hair tongs. Many of those killed had no hair on their heads, were starved to death or left naked in the cold. Saltychikha was especially fond of killing brides who were soon to be married.

Subsequently, the investigation determined that 139 serfs could become possible victims of Saltychikha. According to official figures, fifty people were believed to have died of disease, sixteen had left or fled, seventy-two people were absent, and nothing was known about the rest. According to the testimony of the serfs themselves, Saltykova killed 75 people.

Crimes against nobles

In the biography of Darya Saltykova there is a place not only for the murders of serfs. She took revenge on the nobles. Land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev (grandfather of the poet Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev) was in a romantic relationship with her for a long time, but then decided to marry another girl. Then Saltychikha ordered the peasants to burn the house of Tyutchev's bride, but the people were frightened. They were punished either by the state or by the landowner. When Tyutchev got married, he left with his wife for Orel, and Saltykova again ordered her people to kill them. But instead, the peasants reported the threat to the former lover of the landowner herself. So the famous Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev could never have been born precisely because of the jealousy of Daria Salytkova for her former lover, who married another.

Mental illness

The biography of Daria Saltykova (Saltychikha) seems to be the story of a mentally ill person. There is a version that she suffered from a serious mental illness. But in the eighteenth century, there were simply no qualified ways to make an accurate diagnosis. During the life of her husband, Saltychikha did not observe any inclination to assault. Moreover, she was a very pious woman, so the nature and general presence of a mental illness can only be guessed at. One possible diagnosis is epileptic psychopathy.

Denunciations on Saltychikha

There were many complaints about the cruel treatment of serfs even in the time of Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter III. However, the idle life of Daria Saltykova lasted a very long time. Nobody checked the complaints. The fact is that the woman belonged to a well-known noble family, whose representative was the Governor-General of Moscow in 1732-1740. All cases of cruelty were decided in her favor. In addition, Daria Saltykova never skimped on gifts to emperors and empresses. Scammers were flogged with a whip and exiled to Siberia.

Saltykova had many influential relatives, she bribed officials, so that at first complaints only led to the punishment of the complainants themselves. However, two peasants, Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov, several of whose wives she terribly killed, still managed to convey the denunciation personally to Catherine II. The Empress had just ascended the throne, so she wished to deal with the Moscow landowner. Catherine II used this case as a show trial to demonstrate to the nobility the readiness to fight corruption and abuses on the ground.

In total, the investigation into the Saltychikha case lasted not even six, but eight years. Two years before the beginning of the reign of Empress Catherine II, the serfs twenty-one times tried to convey information about the atrocities of the landowner to the knowledge of the authorities. But they didn’t start business, so the story of Daria Salytkova is a story of bureaucracy and corruption. Specific names and positions of bribe-takers have been preserved. The investigation was launched in October 1762 only by the highest order of Empress Catherine II.

case investigation

On January 13, 1764, Empress Catherine II ordered the sixth department of the patronizing Senate to announce to the Moscow noblewoman Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova that if she continued to resist and did not confess to her (already proven) crimes, she would be severely tortured. Saltykova was arrested and taken to the police. But they brought her not to the detective order, where commoners were interrogated, but to Rybny Lane, to the courtyard of the Moscow police chief Ivan Ivanovich Yushkov.

In a special room, in front of the arrested woman, a well-known criminal was mercilessly tortured. At the end of the act of intimidation, the thirty-three-year-old widow with an arrogant smile said that she did not know her guilt and did not intend to slander herself. This is how the investigation proceeded in a completely unprecedented case for the eighteenth century about the fanaticism of the Moscow mistress Saltychikha. The lady lived and committed her crimes in the center of Moscow, so there were enough witnesses.

Sentencing

As a result of the investigation, it was possible to find out that Daria Saltykova (Saltychikha) was guilty of the death of thirty-eight peasants and "left in suspicion" about the death of another twenty-six people. The senators did not issue a specific verdict, so the decision was made by Empress Catherine II herself. Catherine changed the sentence several times. There were at least four sketches of the Empress in total. In 1768 the final decision was made. Saltykova was sentenced to deprivation of her noble rank and surname, serving a "reproachful spectacle" for an hour and life imprisonment in a monastery.

"A disgusting spectacle"

On the eve of the execution, invitations were sent to all prominent Moscow nobles. They should have come and watched the shameful spectacle. From the execution of the sentence, the empress made a real performance. Usually this method is used to intimidate and pacify the recalcitrant. This means that Catherine II knew that not all the nobility was on her side. She didn't have much power back then. It was for the opponents of the Empress, who for everyone was just the German wife of the German Emperor, that a demonstrative case was arranged.

In October 1768, Darya Salytkova was tied to a post on Red Square. Above her head was the inscription "murderer and tormentor." After the “reproachful spectacle,” Saltychikha was taken to the John the Baptist convent for life imprisonment in an underground cell without daylight and human communication. The hard regime lasted eleven years, then the convict was transferred to an annex to the temple.

Confinement in a monastery

For all the external severity, the punishment was not so serious: she was not only not executed, but also not expelled from Moscow. A couple of years before Saltychikha, her elderly grandmother lived in the monastery, who donated large sums of money. The monks treated the prisoner rather condescendingly. Otherwise, how could she have lived eleven years in an underground dungeon, and then another twenty-two years in a specially built cell near the wall of the cathedral. There is information that she even had a child from the guard of the monastery.

Death of Saltychikha

The biography of Daria Saltykova (Saltychikha) ended at the seventy-second year of her life. She died in her cell in 1801. After the death of the prisoner, the annex was adapted as a sacristy. The room was dismantled along with the cathedral building in 1860. In total, Daria Saltykova (her real story is really frightening) spent thirty-three years in prison. The landowner was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery along with all her relatives. Nearby is a grave of the same year - in 1801, the eldest son of Saltychikha also died. The headstone has survived to this day.

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The deeds of Daria Saltykova, who is better known as Saltychikha, are striking in their rigidity. Over the course of 5 years, she brutally killed more than 100 serfs and almost sent the grandfather of the great Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev to the next world.

About the Russian Empire in our time, usually, they prefer to remember only the front side of "Russia, which we have lost."

“Balls, beauties, lackeys, junkers…” waltzes and the notorious crunch of French bread, no doubt, all this was. But this bread crunch, pleasant to the ear, was also accompanied by the crunch of the bones of Russian serfs, who created this whole idyll with their labor.

And it's not just about back-breaking work - the serfs, who were in the complete power of the landlords, quite often turned out to be victims of tyranny, bullying, and violence.

The rape of the yard girls by the gentlemen, of course, was not a crime. The master wanted - the master took, that's the whole story.

Of course, there were also murders. Well, the master got excited in anger, beat the disobedient servant, and he take it, give up the spirit - who pays attention to this.

But even against the backdrop of the realities of the 18th century, the story of the landowner Daria Saltykova, better known as Saltychikha, looked terrible. To such an extent it is terrible that it came to trial and sentence.

On March 11, 1730, a girl was born in the family of the pillar nobleman Nikolai Ivanov, who was named Daria. Daria's grandfather, Avton Ivanov, was a well-known statesman of the era of Peter the Great and left a rich legacy to his descendants.

In her youth, a girl from a prominent noble family was known as the first beauty, and besides this, she stood out for her unprecedented piety.

Daria joined her life with the captain of the Life Guards Horse Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov and married him. The Saltykov family was even more famous than the Ivanov family - Gleb Saltykov's nephew Nikolai Saltykov would become the Most Serene Prince, Field Marshal and be a prominent courtier during the time of Catherine the Great, Paul I and Alexander I.

The life of the Saltykov spouses did not stand out in any way relative to the lives of other well-born families of that period. Daria gave birth to a wife of 2 sons - Fedor and Nikolai, who, as it was then expected, were immediately enrolled in the Guards regiments from birth.

The life of the landowner Saltykova changed when her husband died. She turned out to be a widow at the age of 26, becoming the owner of a large fortune. She was the owner of the estate in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces. Darya Saltykova had about 600 souls of serfs at her disposal.

The large town house of Saltychikha in Moscow was located in the area of Bolshaya Lubyanka and the Kuznetsk bridge. In addition, Daria Saltykova was the owner of the large Krasnoye estate on the banks of the Pakhra River. Another estate, the one where most of the murders would be committed, was located near the current Moscow Ring Road, where the village of Mosrentgen is currently located.

Until the history of her bloody deeds became known, Daria Saltykova was considered not just a high-born noblewoman, but a very respected member of society. She was respected for her piety, for her constant pilgrimage to shrines, she actively donated funds for church needs, and also distributed alms.

When the investigation into the Saltychikha case began, witnesses noted that during the life of her husband, Daria did not have a penchant for assault. Left without a husband, the landowner changed a lot.

Usually, it all started with complaints about the servants - Daria was unhappy with how the floor was washed or the clothes were washed. The enraged hostess began to beat the disobedient maid, and her favorite weapon was a log. In the absence of such, an iron was used, a rolling pin - everything that was at hand.

At first, the serfs of Darya Saltykova were not very worried about this - such things happened everywhere. The first murders did not scare either - it happens that the lady got excited.

However, from 1757, the killings began to occur systematically. In addition, they have become particularly cruel, sadistic. The lady clearly began to enjoy what was happening.

A real “conveyor of death” worked in Saltychikha’s house - when the hostess was exhausted, further torture of the victim was entrusted to especially close servants - “haiduks”. The groom and the yard girl were entrusted with the procedure for getting rid of the body of the deceased.

The main victims of Saltychikha were the girls who served her, but sometimes reprisals were also committed against men.

Most of the victims after the brutal beating by the mistress of the house were simply spotted to death in the stable. At the same time, Saltychikha was personally at the massacre, enjoying what was happening.

For some reason, many believe that the landowner repaired these cruel reprisals at an advanced age. In reality, Daria Saltykova was outrageous at the age of 27 to 32 - even for that time she was a very young woman.

By nature, Daria was quite strong - when the investigation began, the investigators almost did not find hair on their heads from the women who died from her hands. It turned out that Saltychikha simply pulled them out with her bare hands.

Killing the peasant woman Larionova, Saltychikha burned her hair on her head with a candle. When the woman was killed, the accomplices of the mistress put the coffin with the corpse in the cold, and a living baby of the deceased was placed on the body. The baby died from the cold.

In the month of November, the peasant woman Petrova was driven into a pond with a stick and kept standing in water up to her throat for a couple of hours, until the unfortunate woman died.

Saltychikha's other amusement was dragging her victims by the ears around the house with hot curling irons.

Among the victims of the landowner were several girls who planned to get married soon, pregnant women, 2 girls aged 12 years.

The serfs tried to send complaints to the authorities - from 1757 to 1762, 21 complaints were filed against Daria Saltykova. But thanks to her connections, as well as bribes, Saltychikha not only escaped punishment, but also ensured that the complainants themselves went to hard labor.

The last victim of Daria Saltykova in 1762 was a young girl Fyokla Gerasimova. After being beaten and having her hair pulled out, she was buried alive in the ground.

Talk about the atrocities of Saltychikha began even before the investigation began. In Moscow, it was said that she roasts and eats babies, drinks the blood of young girls. This, however, in reality was not, but what was, was more than enough.

It is sometimes said that a young woman went mad because of the absence of a man. This is true. Men, despite her piety, she had.

For a long time, the landowner Saltykova had an affair with the land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. However, Tyutchev preferred another, and the enraged Saltychikha ordered her faithful assistants to kill the ex-lover. There was a plan to blow it up with a homemade bomb in the house of a young wife. But he failed - the performers simply got scared. Killing ordinary people is all right, but for the massacre of a nobleman, rearing and quartering cannot be avoided.

Saltychikha prepared another plan, which involved an ambush attack on Tyutchev and his young wife. However, one of the alleged perpetrators notified Tyutchev of the impending attack in an anonymous letter, and the poet's grandfather escaped death.

Perhaps the deeds of Saltychikha would have remained a secret if, in 1762, two serfs, Savely Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin, had not broken through with a petition to Catherine II, who had just ascended the throne.

They had nothing to lose - their spouses died at the hands of Saltychikha. The story of Yermolai Ilyin is completely terrible: the landowner killed 3 of his spouses in turn. In 1759, the first wife, Katerina Semyonova, was beaten with batogs. In the spring of 1761, her second wife, Fedosya Artamonova, repeated her fate. In February 1762, Saltychikha killed Yermolai's third wife, the quiet and meek Aksinya Yakovleva, to death with a log.

The Empress did not particularly want to quarrel with the nobility because of the mob. But the scale and cruelty of the crimes of Daria Saltykova made Catherine II think. She decided to arrange a show trial.

The investigation progressed rather slowly. High-ranking relatives of Saltychikha thought that the empress's interest in the case would disappear and it could be hushed up. Bribes were offered to investigators, and they interfered in the collection of evidence by any means.

Daria Saltykova herself did not admit to what she had done and did not repent, even when she was threatened with torture. True, they did not apply them to a well-born noblewoman.

Despite this, the investigation found that in the period 1757 to 1762, 138 serfs died under suspicious circumstances at the landowner Darya Saltykova, of which 50 were officially considered “dead from diseases”, 72 people disappeared without a trace, 16 were considered “left to their spouse” or “gone on the run."

Investigators were able to collect evidence to accuse Daria Saltykova of killing 75 people.

The Moscow Justice College said that in 11 cases the serfs slandered Daria Saltykova. Of the remaining 64 homicides, 26 cases were labeled "keep in suspicion" - that is, it was considered that there was little evidence.

Despite this, 38 brutal murders committed by Daria Saltykova were fully proven.

The case of Saltychikha was sent to the Senate, which ruled on the guilt of the landowner. But the senators did not make a decision on punishment, leaving it to Catherine II.

The archive of the Empress contains 8 drafts of the verdict - Catherine for a long time could not figure out how to punish a non-human in a female guise, who is also a well-born noblewoman.

The verdict was approved on October 2 (October 13, according to the new style), 1768. In expressions, the Empress called everything by its proper name - Catherine called Daria Saltykova "an inhuman widow", "a freak of the human race", "a completely apostate soul", "a tormentor and a murderer".

Saltychikha was sentenced to deprivation of the title of nobility and a life ban on being named after her father or spouse. Also, the landowner was sentenced to one hour of a special "reproachful spectacle" - she stood chained to a pole on the scaffold, and above her head was the inscription: "Tormentor and murderer." Later, she was sent to a monastery for life, where she was to be in an underground chamber where no light enters, and with a ban on communication with people, in addition to the guard and the nun-guard.

Daria Saltykova's "repentance chamber" was an underground room a little more than 2 meters high, the light into which did not penetrate at all. The only thing that was possible was to light a candle during the meal. The prisoner was forbidden to walk, she was taken out of the dungeon only on major church holidays to the small window of the temple, so that she could hear the bell ringing and watch the service from afar.

The regime was softened after 11 years of imprisonment - Saltychikha was transferred to a stone annex of the temple, in which there was a small window and a lattice. Visitors to the monastery were allowed not only to look at the convict, but also to communicate with her. They went to look at the landowner as if she were a strange animal.

Daria Saltykova actually had excellent health. There is a legend that after 11 years underground, she had an affair with a security guard and even gave birth to a child from him.

Saltychikha died on November 27, 1801 at the age of 72, having spent more than 30 years in prison. There is not a single evidence that the landowner repented of her deed.

Modern criminologists and historians admit that Saltychikha had a mental disorder - epileptoid psychopathy. Some people are even sure that she was a latent homosexual.

To date, it is not possible to know for sure. The story of Saltychikha became unique due to the fact that the case of the deeds of this landowner ended with the punishment of the criminal. The names of some of the victims of Daria Saltykova are known to us, in contrast to the names of millions of people who were tortured to death by Russian landowners during the period of the serfdom in the Russian Federation.

Little is known about Saltykova's early life. She came from an old noble family. Her grandfather owned 16 thousand souls, that is, male serfs (no one counted women and children). He was one of the richest landowners of his time.

Darya herself, still quite young, was married to Gleb Saltykov, an officer of the Life Guards Horse Regiment, and soon they had two sons, Fedor and Nikolai. According to some reports, the marriage was unhappy. They say that Gleb in the circle of colleagues was considered a lover of plump and ruddy women, and they married him to a thin, pale and far from beautiful.

According to rumors, the captain reveled recklessly, and in 1756 he died of a fever. Whether his wife cried for him or, on the contrary, was only happy to get rid of the hardened revelers, one can only guess. One thing is known: being without a husband, Daria has changed dramatically.

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Beginning of the bloody path

At first, Daria was simply annoyed by the servants. At the time, this was not news. "Courtyard girls" - maids, seamstresses, laundresses - were considered something like talking furniture. Yelling or slapping them was commonplace. The gentlemen believed that servants were stupid and lazy from birth, so teaching them a lesson “like a parent” is only good.

Usually Daria whipped the servants with rods or beat her with whatever came to hand - a rolling pin, a log, or just her fists. She could splash boiling water in the girl's face or burn her with an iron, pull out her hair. Later, hair curlers were used - with them she grabbed the girls by the ears and dragged them around the room.

Her pity was not known to pregnant women, whom the hostess beat so hard in the stomach that they lost their children. Several cases have been recorded when the mother of the child died, and the baby was thrown on her chest and so was taken in a sleigh to the cemetery. The kid died on the way from the cold.

At the same time, among the landlord neighbors, Daria was considered well-behaved and pious: she donated a lot of money to the church, went on a pilgrimage ...

Three wives of Yermolai Ilyin

It is interesting that Saltykova treated men carefully, even with care. Ermolai Ilyin was the coachman of a sadistic landowner, and Saltychikha took care of his well-being with special care.

His first wife was Katerina Semenova, who washed the floors in the master's house. Daria accused her of not washing the floors well, beat her with batogs and whips, as a result of which the unfortunate woman died. Very quickly, Saltykova found Yermolai a second wife, Fedosya Artamonova, who also did housework. Less than a year later, Fedosya suffered the same fate.

The coachman became attached to his last wife Aksinya, but her landowner also beat her to death. The death of three wives affected the widower so much that he decided to take the last desperate step.

To the Empress Mother

In theory, every peasant had the opportunity to sue his landowner. In fact, there were very few such cases. No wonder - as a rule, the peasants themselves were punished for slander. Daria Saltykova had influential friends, she was in good standing in the world, and in order to go to court, she had to reach the last degree of despair.

For five years, the serfs filed 21 complaints against their tormentor. Of course, the denunciations were "hushed up" - they were reported to the landowner, and she paid off the investigation. How the life of the complainants ended is unknown.

Finally, two serfs, one of whom was the same Yemelyan Ilyin, managed to reach Empress Catherine II herself with a petition. The statement said that they knew "suicide cases" behind their mistress Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova. Outraged that someone other than her dared to dispose of human destinies, Catherine set the matter in motion.

Years of investigation flowed, during which Saltychikha did not admit her guilt and claimed that the servants had slandered her. How many people the landowner killed, remained unknown. According to some data, the number of its victims was 138 people, according to others, it ranged from 38 to 100.

Punishment

The proceedings lasted over three years. The punishment for the savagery was to be carried out by the Empress herself, who rewrote the text of the verdict several times - four outlines of the verdict have been preserved. In the final version, Saltykova was called "a tormentor and a murderer", "a freak of the human race."

Saltykova was sentenced to deprivation of the title of nobility, a life-long ban on being called the family of her father or husband, an hour of a special “reproachful spectacle”, during which she stood at the pillory, and to life imprisonment in a monastery prison.

Saltykova spent 11 years in a cramped dungeon, where complete darkness reigned. Then the regime was softened a little. They say that during her imprisonment she managed to give birth to a child from one of her jailers. Until the end of her days, Daria never admitted her guilt, and when people came to stare at the bloodthirsty landowner, she spat and poured dirty abuse on them.

Saltychikha died at the age of 71. She was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, on a plot that she had bought before her arrest.

It must be understood that Daria Saltykova was unique not because she beat and tortured her peasants. So did all the people of her class, who considered serfs to be their property. And it often happened that a peasant could be accidentally or deliberately beaten to death. This was perceived with regret - as if a cow had drowned in a river.

The only thing that distinguished Saltykova from other landowners was the scope of torture and murder. Nobody gets rid of hundreds of cows at once, it already smacks of madness. Perhaps that is why they tried to lock her up forever. Saltykova was a mirror in which her contemporary society saw itself - and turned away in horror.

Daria Nikolaeva Saltykova, nicknamed Saltychikha (1730-1801), was a Russian landowner who went down in history as the most sophisticated sadist and murderer of more than a hundred serfs subject to her. She was born in March 1730 into a family that belonged to the pillar Moscow nobility; relatives of Darya Nikolaevna's parents were the Davydovs, Musins-Pushkins, Stroganovs, Tolstoys and other eminent nobles. Aunt Saltykova was married to Lieutenant General Ivan Bibikov, and her older sister was married to Lieutenant General Afanasy Zhukov.

About the Russian Empire today, as a rule, they prefer to remember only the front side of "Russia, which we have lost."

“Balls, beauties, lackeys, junkers…” waltzes and the notorious crunch of French rolls undoubtedly took place. But this bread crunch, pleasant to the ear, was accompanied by another one - the crunch of the bones of Russian serfs, who provided this whole idyll with their labor.

And it's not just about back-breaking work - the serfs, who were in the complete power of the landowners, very often became victims of tyranny, bullying, and violence.

The rape by gentlemen of courtyard girls, of course, was not considered a crime. The master wanted it - the master took it, that's the whole story.

Of course, there have been murders. Well, the master got excited in anger, beat the negligent servant, and he take it, give up his breath - who pays attention to this.

However, even against the backdrop of the realities of the 18th century, the story of the landowner Daria Saltykova, better known as Saltychikha, looked monstrous. So monstrous that it came to trial and sentence.

At twenty-six, Saltychikha became a widow and received into her full possession about six hundred peasants on estates located in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces. In seven years, she killed more than a quarter of her wards - 139 people, most of them women and girls! Most of the murders were carried out in the village of Troitskoye near Moscow.

In her youth, a girl from a prominent noble family was known as the first beauty, and besides this, she stood out for her extreme piety.

Daria married the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov. The Saltykov family was even more noble than the Ivanov family - Gleb Saltykov's nephew Nikolai Saltykov would become the Most Serene Prince, Field Marshal and would be a prominent courtier in the era of Catherine the Great, Paul I and Alexander I.

Left a widow, the landowner has changed a lot.

Surprisingly, she was still a flourishing and, moreover, a very pious woman. Daria herself married Gleb Saltykov, captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, but in 1756 she was widowed. Her mother and grandmother lived in a nunnery, so Darya Nikolaevna became the sole owner of a large fortune. The 26-year-old widow was left with two sons, enrolled in military service in the capital's guards regiments. Almost every year, Daria Saltykova took a trip on a pilgrimage to some Orthodox shrine. Sometimes she drove quite far, visited, for example, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; during such trips, Saltykova generously donated "to the Church" and distributed alms.

As a rule, it all started with claims to the servants - Daria did not like how the floor was washed or the clothes were washed. The angry hostess began to beat the negligent maid, and her favorite weapon was a log. In the absence of such, an iron was used, a rolling pin - everything that was at hand. The offender was then flogged by grooms and haiduks, sometimes to death. Saltychikha could douse the victim with boiling water or singe her hair on her head. Victims were starved and tied naked in the cold.

At first, the serfs of Darya Saltykova were not particularly alarmed by this - this kind of thing happened everywhere. The first murders did not scare either - it happens that the lady got excited.

But since 1757, the killings have become systematic. Moreover, they began to wear especially cruel, sadistic. The lady clearly began to enjoy what was happening.

In one episode, Saltychikha also got a nobleman. The land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, was in a love relationship with her for a long time, but decided to marry another, for which Saltychikha almost killed him along with his wife. Tyutchev officially notified the authorities of a possible attack and received 12 soldiers as guards during the journey to Tambov. Saltykova, having learned about the captain's protection, canceled the attack at the last moment.

At the beginning of the summer of 1762, two fugitive serfs appeared in St. Petersburg - Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov - who set themselves an almost impossible goal: they set out to bring a complaint to the Empress Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna against their mistress, a large landowner Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova. The fugitives had almost no chance of success. Before the era of Emperor Paul the First, who mounted a special box on the wall of the Winter Palace for denunciations of "all persons, without distinction of rank", there were still almost four decades. And this meant that an ordinary person could not be heard by the Power, which did not honor him with audiences and did not accept his petitions. You can say this: the Higher Power simply did not notice their slaves.

Surprisingly, both were able to successfully complete an almost hopeless enterprise.

The peasants had nothing to lose - their wives died at the hands of Saltychikha. The story of Yermolai Ilyin is completely terrible: the landowner killed three of his wives in turn. In 1759, the first wife, Katerina Semyonova, was beaten with batogs. In the spring of 1761, her second wife, Fedosya Artamonova, repeated her fate. In February 1762, Saltychikha beat Yermolai's third wife, the quiet and meek Aksinya Yakovleva, with logs.

The fugitives were looking for approaches to the Winter Palace, more precisely, for such a person through whom they could convey a complaint to the Empress. It is not known exactly how such a person was found, it is not known at all who he was. Be that as it may, in the first half of June, Catherine II received a "written assault" (as statements were called in those days) of Ilyin and Martynov.

In it, the serfs reported the following:

- They are known for their mistress Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova "deadly and not unimportant criminal cases"(sic in the original);

- Daria Saltykova "from 1756, the soul with a hundred (...) she, the landowner, was destroyed";

- Emphasizing the large number of people tortured by Darya Saltykova, the informers stated that only one of them, Yermolai Ilyin, had the landowner successively killed three wives, each of whom she tortured with her own hands;

The empress did not feel much desire to quarrel with the nobility because of the mob. However, the scale and cruelty of the crimes of Daria Saltykova made Catherine II horrified. The Empress did not brush aside the paper, it was too painful for a large number of victims to be discussed there. Although Saltychikha belonged to a noble family, Catherine II used her case as a show trial that marked a new era of legality.

The investigation was very difficult. High-ranking relatives of Saltychikha hoped that the empress's interest in the case would disappear and he could be hushed up. The investigators were offered bribes and interfered in every possible way in collecting evidence.

Daria Saltykova herself did not admit her guilt and did not repent, even when she was threatened with torture. True, they did not apply them to a well-born noblewoman.

But in order not to reduce the degree of psychological pressure on the suspect, the investigator Stepan Volkov decided on a rather cruel hoax: on March 4, 1764, Daria Saltykova, under strict military guard, was taken to the mansion of the Moscow police chief, where the executioner and officials of the search unit were also brought. The suspect was told that she was "delivered to be tortured."

However, that day it was not her who was tortured, but a certain robber, whose guilt was not in doubt. Saltykova was present during the torture from beginning to end. The cruelty of the execution was supposed to frighten Saltykova and break her stubbornness.

But the suffering of others did not make a special impression on Darya Nikolaevna, and after the end of the "interrogation with passion", which she witnessed, the suspect, smiling, repeated in Volkov's face that "she does not know her guilt and will not slander herself." Thus, the hopes of the investigator to intimidate Saltykova and thereby achieve a confession of guilt were not crowned with success.

Nevertheless, the investigation found that in the period 1757 to 1762, 138 serfs died under suspicious circumstances at the landowner Darya Saltykova, of which 50 were officially considered “dead from illnesses”, 72 people went missing, 16 were considered “left to her husband” or “ gone on the run."

Investigators managed to collect evidence that allowed Daria Saltykova to be accused of killing 75 people.

The Moscow Justice College considered that in 11 cases the serfs slandered Daria Saltykova. Of the remaining 64 murders, 26 cases were labeled “keep suspect”—that is, the evidence was deemed insufficient.

Nevertheless, 38 brutal murders committed by Daria Saltykova were fully proven.

The case of the landowner was transferred to the Senate, which ruled on the guilt of Saltychikha. However, the senators did not make a decision on punishment, leaving it to Catherine II.

The archive of the empress contains eight drafts of the verdict - Catherine painfully thought about how to punish a non-human in a woman's guise, who is also a well-born noblewoman. Finally, on October 2, 1768, Empress Catherine II sent a decree to the Governing Senate, in which she described in detail both the punishment imposed on Saltykov and the procedure for its administration.

The punishment of the condemned landowner was carried out on October 17, 1768, on Red Square in Moscow. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, already a few days before this date, the ancient capital of Russia began to seethe in anticipation of reprisals. Both the public announcement of the upcoming event (in the form of publications in leaflets read by officers in all crowded squares and intersections of Moscow) and the distribution of special "tickets" that all Moscow nobles received contributed to the general excitement. On the day of the massacre, Red Square was completely filled, people crowded into the windows of the buildings overlooking the square and occupied all the roofs.

At 11 o'clock in the morning, Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova was taken to the square under the guard of mounted hussars; in a black wagon next to the former landowner were grenadiers with drawn swords. Saltykova was forced to climb a high scaffold, where the decree of Empress Catherine II dated October 2, 1768 was read out. After an hour, Saltykova was brought down from the scaffold and put into a black wagon, which, under a military guard, went to the Ivanovo Convent (on Kulishki).

On the same scaffold on the same day, priest Petrov and two servants of the landowner convicted in the Saltykova case were subjected to flogging and branding. All three were sent to hard labor in Siberia.

Daria Saltykova's "repentance chamber" was an underground room a little more than two meters high, which did not receive any light at all. The only thing that was allowed was to light a candle while eating. The prisoner was not allowed to walk, she was taken out of the dungeon only on major church holidays to the small window of the temple, so that she could hear the bell ringing and watch the service from afar.

Visitors to the monastery were allowed to look through this window and even talk to the prisoner. The memoirs of contemporaries have been preserved that many residents of Moscow and visitors came to the Ivanovo Monastery themselves and brought their children with them specifically to look at the famous "Saltychikha".

To annoy her, the children allegedly even came up with a song:

Saltychikha-boltychikha, and high deacon!

Vlasyevna Dmitrovna Savivsha, old lady!...

Saltychikha died on November 27, 1801 at the age of 71, having spent more than 30 years in prison. There is not a single evidence that Daria Saltykova repented of her deed.

Modern criminologists and historians suggest that Saltychikha suffered from a mental disorder - epileptoid psychopathy. Some even believe that she was a latent homosexual.

It is not possible to establish this reliably today. The story of Saltychikha became unique because the case of the atrocities of this landowner ended with the punishment of the criminal. The names of some of the victims of Daria Saltykova are known to us, in contrast to the names of millions of people tortured by Russian landlords during the existence of the serfdom in Russia.

BY THE WAY:

Saltychikha is not a unique phenomenon in world history. We know the names of no less terrible criminals. For example, Gilles de Re - "Bluebeard" - killed more than 600 children in the 15th century, and for example, a hundred years before Saltychikha, there lived a "bloody countess" in Hungary ...

Elizabeth Bathory of Eched (1560 - 1614), also called the Chakhtitskaya Pani or the Bloody Countess - a Hungarian countess from the famous Bathory family, infamous for the serial murders of young girls. The exact number of her victims is unknown. The Countess and four of her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls between 1585 and 1610. The largest number of victims named during the trial of Bathory, 650 people.

"Second Saltychikha" the people called the wife of the landowner Koshkarov, who lived in the 40s of the 19th century in the Tambov province. She found particular pleasure in tyranny over defenseless peasants. Koshkarova had a standard for torture, from the limits of which she went only in extreme cases. Men were supposed to give 100 blows with a whip, women - 80 each. All these executions were carried out by the landowner personally.

Another "Saltychikha" found in Chuvashia. In September 1842, the landowner Vera Sokolova beat to death the courtyard girl Nastasya, whose father said that the mistress often punished her serfs "by flaying their hair, and sometimes forced them to flog with rods and whips." And another maid complained that “the mistress broke her nose with her fist, and from punishment with a whip on her thigh there was a scar, and in winter she was locked in a latrine in one shirt, because of which she froze her legs” ...

I cannot but add that the portrait of this beautiful and stately lady is often passed off as "Saltychikha". In fact, this is Daria PETROVNA Chernysheva-Saltykova (1739-1802). Lady of State, Cavalier Lady of the Order of St. Catherine, 1st Class, sister of Princess N. P. Golitsyna, wife of Field Marshal Count I. P. Saltykov. The eldest daughter of the diplomat Count Pyotr Grigoryevich Chernyshev, the godson of Peter the Great, who was considered by many to be his son. Her mother, Countess Ekaterina Andreevna, was the daughter of the well-known head of the secret office under Biron, Count Andrei Ivanovich Ushakov.