The life story of Daria Saltykova continues to be terrifying even today. She brutally killed several dozen serfs subject to her. The order to conduct a thorough investigation went on behalf of Empress Catherine II herself. But things progressed extremely slowly. Nevertheless, today this trial would be called indicative, which determined the most important landmarks of 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 pretty enough, while others have researched they call Saltychikha an ugly woman. The collection of the Museum of Fine Arts named after Pushkin contains a portrait of her namesake almost completely and a distant relative - Daria Petrovna Saltykova. By the way, her own sister, Natalya Petrovna (in the marriage of Golitsyn), many years later became the prototypes of the Queen of Spades Pushkin. The portrait was painted in Paris in the very year 1762, when an investigation was opened at Saltykova in Moscow.
Portraits of Saltychikha are often called images of this lady (photo below) in youth and adulthood. But this is not Daria Saltykova. On some portraits of the unknown landowner the order is visible, and the real Saltykova did not win any awards for 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 based on this case.
Origin and early years
What is the real story of Daria Saltykova? The Russian landowner, who went down in history as the murderer of dozens of serfs, was born in 1730 in a wealthy family of the nobleman Nikolai Avtonomovich Ivanov from his marriage to Anna Ioannovna Davydova. Grandfather Saltychikhi at one time was close to Peter the Great and accumulated a large inheritance for posterity. In a relationship with her were nobles with noble surnames - Musin-Pushkin, Tolstoy, Stroganov and Davydov. Nothing is known about the early childhood of Daria Ivanova.
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, Daria Nikolaevna became the widow and full owner of all her estates and peasants. At the same time, she begins to torment her slaves: she hits them with a rolling pin, a whip, an iron for imaginary duties in cleaning the rooms, she fights the victims with hair, burns their faces with curling irons. Mostly girls and women suffered, and sometimes men suffered. Victims were killed in the courtyard by footmen with bats, lashes and sticks. If she really drained 139 souls from the world, then this is the fourth part of the serfs belonging to her.
Six months after the death of her husband, Daria Slatykova begins to brutally beat the serfs. The torture began with the victim striking several blows with the first item that came to hand. Most often it was logged. Gradually, the severity of the wounds became stronger, and the beatings themselves became longer and more sophisticated. Daria Saltykova doused young girls and women with boiling water, beat their head 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 especially loved to kill brides who were soon to get married.
Subsequently, the investigation determined that 139 serfs could become possible victims of Saltychikha. According to official data, fifty people were considered dead from illness, sixteen - those who left or fled, seventy-two were absent, 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 Daria 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) had a long romantic relationship with her, but then decided to marry another girl. Then Saltychikha ordered the peasants to burn Tyutchev’s bride’s house, but people were afraid. Punishment awaited them either from the state or from the landowner. When Tyutchev married, he left with his wife in Oryol, and Saltykova again ordered her people to kill them. But instead, the peasants reported the threat to the landowner's most former lover. So the famous Russian poet Fedor Tyutchev could never have been born precisely because of the jealousy of Daria Salytkova to 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 tendency to assault. Moreover, she was a very pious woman, so one can only guess about the nature and general presence of a mental illness. One of the possible diagnoses is epileptic psychopathy.
Denunciations to Saltychikha
There were many complaints of ill-treatment of serfs back in the times of Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter III. However, the idle life of Daria Saltykova lasted a very long time. No one checked 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 skimp on gifts to emperors and empresses. The scammers were flogged with a whip and exiled to Siberia.
Saltykova had many influential relatives, she bribed officials, so at first the complaints only led to the punishment of the complainants themselves. However, the two peasants, Yermolay Ilyin and Savely Martynov, several of whose wives she terribly killed, still managed to convey the denunciation personally to Catherine II. The empress then only ascended the throne, so she wished to deal with the Moscow landowner. Catherine II used this case as a demonstration process to demonstrate to the nobility their readiness to fight corruption and abuse on the ground.
In total, the investigation in the Saltychikha case was conducted not even six, but eight years. Two years before the reign of Empress Catherine II, serfs tried to convey information about the landowner's atrocities to the authorities twenty-one times. But things did not start, so the story of Daria Salytkova is the story of bureaucracy and corruption. Specific surnames and positions of bribe takers have been preserved. The investigation was launched in October 1762 only at the highest command of Empress Catherine II.
Case investigation
On January 13, 1764, Empress Catherine II ordered the sixth department of the patronizing Senate to declare to the Moscow noblewoman Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova that if she continues to rest and does not admit to the crimes she has already committed, she will be brutally tortured. Saltykova was arrested and taken to the police. But they brought her not to the detective order, where they interrogated commoners, but to Rybny Lane, to the courtyard of Moscow police chief Ivan Ivanovich Yushkov.
In a special room in front of the arrested person, the famous criminal was ruthlessly tortured. At the end of the act of intimidation, a thirty-three-year-old widow with an arrogant smile said she did not know the blame for herself and did not intend to incriminate herself. So the investigation took place in a completely unprecedented case for the eighteenth century about the atrocities of the Moscow lady, Saltychikha. The lady lived and did her crimes in the center of Moscow, so there were enough witnesses.
Sentencing
According to the results 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. Senators did not pronounce a specific sentence, 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 1768, a final decision was made. Saltykov was sentenced to deprivation of his noble rank and surname, to serve a “reproachful sight” for an hour, and to life imprisonment in a monastery.
"A spectacular sight"
On the eve of execution, invitations were sent to all prominent Moscow nobles. They should have come and observed a shameful sight. From the execution of the sentence, the empress made a real performance. Typically, this method is used to intimidate and pacify the rebellious. This means that Catherine II knew - not all the nobility was on her side. Then she did not have much power. It was for the opponents of the empress, who for all was just the German wife of the German emperor, an indicative case was arranged.
In October 1768, Daria Salytkova was tied to a post on Red Square. Above her head was read the inscription "the murderer and tormentor." After the “reproachful sight” Saltychikha was taken to the John the Baptist Convent for life in prison in an underground cell without daylight and human communication. The hard regime lasted eleven years, then the convict was transferred to an extension to the temple.
Conclusion in the monastery
Despite all the external severity, the punishment was not so serious: she was not only not executed, but not expelled from Moscow. A couple of years before Saltychikha, her elderly grandmother lived in the monastery and donated large sums of money. The monks rather indulgently treated the prisoner. Otherwise, how could she have lived eleven years in an underground dungeon, and then another twenty-two years in a specially arranged 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 (Saltychikhi) ended in the seventy-second year of life. She died in her cell in 1801. After the death of the prisoner, the extension was adapted for the 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 together with all her relatives. Near the grave of the same year - in 1801, the eldest son of Saltychikha died. The tombstone has survived to this day.