Lady Darya Ivanova married at the age of 19 Gleb Saltykov, who was 16 years older than her. The landowner turned out to be an exemplary wife and caring mother of two children who were born soon after the wedding of Daria and Gleb. Everything was calm in the family nest until the head of the family caught a cold and, unable to overcome the infection, died. The widowed lady began to show symptoms of epileptoid psychopathy, which later became the cause of her cruel crimes.
Biography of the sons of Daria Saltykova: the fate of the children after the arrest of the landowner
In 1750, the first son was born to the Saltykovs, who was named Fedor. A year after Fedor, their second boy was born, named Nikolai. According to the customs of the nobility, both boys were immediately enrolled in the ranks of the guards regiments for military service. When a criminal case was initiated against their mother, nicknamed Saltychikha, her sons were 11-12 years old.
Biography of the sons of Daria Saltykova: guardians of the boys after the arrest of the bloodthirsty lady
After she was arrested, the governor-general of Yaroslavl, Alexei Melgunov, and the vice-president of the College of Justice, Ivan Tyutchev, became the guardians of her children. Melgunov was appointed guardian of the sons of Saltychikha due to family ties. His second wife, Natalya Saltykova, was the niece of the boys' father, Gleb.
Ivan Tyutchev is the second guardian of the boys. He was the husband of Agrafena, the elder sister of Saltychikha. Ivan's family not only participated in the upbringing of Nikolai and Fedor, but also had the right to dispose of their property. In this regard, in 1777, when they ran out of funds to pay government debts, Ivan Tyutchev sold the estate of Daria Saltykova, in which she committed her bloody crimes. The estate was bought by one of the boys' many relatives on their father's side. And a few years later he resold it to Nikolai Tyutchev. All the possessions of Saltykova, which were preserved at the time of the age of her children, were transferred to their personal disposal.
Biography of the sons of Daria Saltykova: adulthood
Information about Fyodor Saltykov has practically not been preserved by history. All that is known about him is that he died in 1801 and was buried in a sarcophagus on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery. It is known about the youngest son of Saltychikha, Nikolai, that he was married to Countess Anastasia Golovina. They had a daughter, Elizabeth, writes the website Wordyou. Nikolay held the rank of second lieutenant, and at the age of 24 he died suddenly.
Elizabeth, the granddaughter of Saltychikha, was married to the French count Gabriel Raymond-Modin, who was in charge of imperial hunting and celebrations at court. Elizabeth was also in good standing with the rulers and, thanks to her virtue, was granted the cavalry ladies of the Order of St. Catherine the Lesser Cross. According to one version, in the dungeon of the Ivanovo Monastery, Saltykova had an affair with the guard guarding her. As a result of the prison relationship, the murderer gave birth to a child, but neither the sex nor the further fate of this child is known.
Daria Saltykova, or as the people call her simply “Saltychikha”, entered the history of the country with a bloody trail. She became famous as a real sadist of noble blood, who did not spare the life and health of her serfs, mocking people for her own pleasure.
Society became zealously interested in the true history of Saltychikha thanks to the historical series presented by the Russia-1 channel. The history of the "Bloody Lady" on the screen is shown rather softly in comparison with what happened in the life of a famous woman.
The creators tried to convey in an artistic way the suffering of a woman who could not cope with her own outbursts of rage and explained the cruelty of the lady by her complete misfortune in her personal life. But how it really happened is not completely known, because they tried to destroy all existing documents and even portraits about her, considering her at one time “a shame of the human race.”
So, Daria Saltykova. Born March 11 (22), 1730 - died November 27 (December 9), 1801 in Moscow. A Russian landowner who killed dozens (according to other sources, almost one and a half hundred) serfs.
Father - pillar nobleman Nikolai Avtonomovich Ivanov.
Mother - Anna Ivanovna (nee Davydova).
Grandfather - Avton Ivanov - was a major figure in the times of Princess Sophia and Peter I.
She received a home education, at that time quite good. She spoke foreign languages, played musical instruments. She grew up in a pious family and in her youth she was distinguished by piety - about which many memories were left from those who knew her.
She was married to the captain of the Life Guards Horse Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov (died around 1755) - the uncle of the future Highness Prince Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov. His uncle - Semyon Andreevich Saltykov - in 1732-1740. was the governor-general of Moscow. Also in 1763-1771, the governor-general of Moscow was his cousin, Field Marshal Pyotr Semenovich Saltykov.
Two sons were born in the marriage: Fedor (01/19/1750 - 06/25/1801) and Nikolai (d. 07/27/1775), who were enlisted in the guards regiments.
Widowed at the age of 26.
It is known that during the life of her husband, Saltychikha did not notice a particular tendency to assault. She was a blooming, beautiful and at the same time a very pious woman. Thus, one can suspect the mental illness of Darya Saltykova, associated with the early loss of a spouse.
The wealthy landowner entered the history of the state as one of the most cruel housewives. In her estates and mansions, inherited from her husband, there was complete order, but he got the serfs at the cost of their lives.
Saltykova brutally beat her servants, tortured her to death for the slightest offense, and sometimes for no apparent reason. Saltykova's victims were young girls and married women - it is for this reason that many are sure that Saltykova really went crazy after her husband's death. Other information says that the woman went crazy after she was rejected by her lover, the grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev - she even organized an attempt on the nobleman, but later he was warned by the servants about the impending drama.
If we talk about the consequences, then Saltykova's victims, according to official figures, were fifty people. According to unofficial reports, she managed to torture more than a hundred serfs. People tried to complain about the mistress, but they were not heard, because outwardly she looked like a very worthy, God-fearing, educated lady.
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.
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. The victims of torture were subsequently killed and buried and buried - some disease was called the cause of death of a person, or he was put on the wanted list as an escaped serf.
Killing the peasant woman Larionova, Saltychikha burned her hair on her head with a candle. When the woman was killed, the mistress's accomplices put the coffin with the body in the cold, and a live infant was placed on the corpse. The baby froze to death.
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 several hours, until the unfortunate woman died.
Another entertainment of Saltychikha was dragging her victims by the ears around the house with red-hot curling irons.
She beat, not sparing, pulled out her hair, boiled in boiling water or burned with a red-hot iron. Tortured victims rarely survived - they were usually finished off or they died during the torture.
As a result, the servants could not stand such treatment and denounced the landowner to Empress Catherine II. Complaints to the local authorities and the priest did not give any result, and therefore two serfs fled from the mistress, not fearing death, and turned to the highest authorities in Russia.
The investigation has been going on for over six years. Catherine personally checked all the documents and could not believe that her noblewoman was capable of such acts. To prove, as already mentioned above, the murder of less than fifty people was successful. He left a few dozen more in the case as “suspected of murder”, Saltykova was acquitted on 11 episodes.
The empress personally chose the punishment for the noblewoman, the site reports. She did not dare to publicly execute a respected person, but she did not have the right to forgive the deeds of the widow. Saltykova was chained for an hour to a pillory with a sign "The Murderer". She was deprived of all noble titles and was even forbidden to be called a woman due to cruelty towards people.
Saltykova was sent to a monastery, where she was imprisoned in an underground cell - she did not see daylight at all, and she was allowed to light a candle only occasionally. Saltykova spent 11 years underground, after which she was transferred to a cell above ground. People were allowed to visit the prisoner, but neither sons nor friends came to her - only onlookers came to look at the sadist.
Saltykov spent more than thirty years in prison. She died at the age of 71, never repenting of her actions.
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. Often the nobles got away with bullying the serfs.
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In early February, the serial film "The Bloody Lady" was released on television, based on the story of the landowner Darya Saltykova, who tortured to death almost one and a half hundred of her peasants. Having established a regime of permanent terror on her estate, even two centuries ago and in the absence of the media, the lady managed to become famous almost throughout the country. the site tells about the cruel noblewoman Saltychikha, who is considered the first Russian maniac.
Daria Saltykova is called the most terrible woman in Russian history
In the already tragic history of Russia, Daria Saltykova left her bloody mark. With her own hands, she killed more than a hundred innocent serfs from the world and mocked them for her own pleasure. Interest in this controversial figure increased after the premiere of the serial film "The Bloody Lady", in which Yuliya Snigir played the role of Saltychikha. There is a lot of fiction in the multi-part film (its creators warn the viewer about this in the very first series). However, in our opinion, the history of the landowner did not need such a thing - it is already full of drama and blood.
Childhood, adolescence, youth
Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova was born in 1730 to the family of the duma clerk Nikolai Ivanov and Anna Davydova, close to Peter II. Her grandfather Avtonom Ivanov, during the Streltsy rebellion, supported the then-future Emperor Peter I, for which, in gratitude, he received from the ruler the post of head of the Local Order, and with it - ranks and estates. He left a good inheritance to his son - Daria and her older sisters Agrafena and Martha grew up in a wealthy family. The dynasty was related to Musin-Pushkin, Davydov, Stroganov, Tolstoy and other eminent nobles. No one then could have thought what the younger Ivanova would become famous for in the future.
The girl was very pious, like her mother. In general, little is known about the first twenty years of the life of the future landowner, because after it became known about the atrocities committed by her, an order came from above to destroy her portraits and any memory of her. The history of Saltychikha is known mainly from the memoirs of contemporaries, as well as from the materials of the investigation of her deeds.
Marriage
Daria had a pleasant appearance and an accommodating (for some time) disposition. She was considered an enviable bride. At nineteen, she was married to a rich captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Saltykov, who was a relative of noble Moscow aristocrats. By the way, his brother Sergei Saltykov was a favorite of Catherine II.
Daria was a beautiful girl, so she easily managed to find a good match
The newlyweds settled in a Moscow estate. Some historians claim that the couple lived in peace and harmony, others are convinced that Gleb, who had a reputation as a ladies' man before the wedding, cheated on his wife right and left. Daria gave birth to sons Fedor and Nikolai. The upbringing of boys, as was customary at that time, was carried out by a huge staff of servants. This allowed their father to travel on official business, and their mother to attend social events, charity events and go on pilgrimages.
After seven years of marriage, Saltykov caught a cold and died of a fever. 26-year-old Daria was very upset by the loss. She abandoned her business and moved from the center of Moscow to the Troitskoye estate near Moscow, which had previously belonged to her father. There she silently mourned her grief. Many historians agree that it was the death of her husband that became the turning point in Saltykova's life. It was after the tragedy that her sadistic inclinations began to manifest.
bloodthirsty monster
After the death of Gleb, Daria received into her full possession of about six hundred peasants on estates located in the Moscow, Vologda, Kostroma provinces, and became more than a wealthy person. Until the death of her husband, the lady did not show cruelty in dealing with people, and soon after she was widowed, rumors about her fierce atrocities spread around the estate.
The fact is that a wealthy widow intended to remarry and looked after herself a new groom, but the gentlemen were in no hurry to ask for her hand. Time passed, personal life did not stick, and the wealthy landowner began uncontrollable bouts of anger and aggression.
Seeing how the yard girls easily find suitors for themselves and create families, Daria began to fall into a rage and, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, caused them injuries of varying severity.
Not only serfs suffered from the dashing temper of the landowner: sometimes neighbors also fell under the hot hand.
The most common reason was the allegedly dishonest performance of household duties - for example, the allegedly poorly washed floor or linen that was not washed, according to the hostess. However, most often, Saltykova’s reasons were not required ... According to eyewitnesses, Daria struck the girls with the first object that came to hand, be it a broom, a rolling pin, a log or a stone. The offender was then flogged by grooms and often raped, sometimes to death.
After the death of her husband, Saltykova began uncontrollable attacks of aggression, and she began to torment peasant women.
Saltychikha, without a twinge of conscience, could pour boiling water over the face of a peasant woman, set fire to her hair on her head, chain her naked in the cold, or starve her. Over time, the torture of the landowner became more and more sophisticated: she tore out the hair of the servants, beat people with their heads against the walls and burned their ears with hot hair tongs ... The cause of death of a person (mostly girls, but later the investigation counted three men) was called some kind of illness , or he was put on the wanted list as an escaped serf.
At first, rumors spread around the surrounding villages about a wicked landowner who beats her serfs to death, and soon carts with a covered cargo of unknown origin began to move. Saltykova's people did not hide from witnesses and explained that it was just another serf who died and he was being taken for examination. Sometimes, however, by opening the fabric, it was possible to see the disfigured corpse. Popular rumor quickly spread such news. Soon people began to slowly report what they saw to higher authorities.
Rumors gradually began to circulate about Daria's atrocities.
There was also a leak of information from the serfs who had fled from Daria, who came to the police in order to show the injuries. Basically, police chiefs sent serfs back, preferring to remain silent about the atrocities of the noblewoman.
Moreover, her hand was generous not only for blows, but also for bribes for police chiefs.
The peasants, who were so happy about the miracle of their freedom, were returned back to the bloodthirsty mistress - this time to certain death.
From love to hate
The neighbor of this temperamental widow was officer Nikolai Tyutchev (grandfather of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev), who worked as a land surveyor. According to some reports, their affair with Daria began with a scandal. Once Nikolai, hunting, accidentally wandered into her territory. The dashing landowner ordered her people to immediately seize the insolent man and deliver him to the estate. The officer managed to hush up the conflict, and soon they began a relationship.
During a relationship with Nikolai Tyutchev, Saltychikha stopped torturing the serfs
The lovers arranged dates as soon as they had free time. Daria flourished and even calmed down for a while: for about a year she did not torment her peasants, but then everything returned to normal. Time passed, but for some reason Nikolai was in no hurry to propose to his beloved. It turns out that he heard rumors about her atrocities. Convinced of their veracity, Tyutchev decided to break with Saltykova. Megaera lost her temper and, according to some historians, ordered to catch her lover and put her in a cold barn for several days. He was saved by one of the peasant women, who opened the door for Tyutchev to escape.
A few months later, Nikolai set out to marry another neighbor, Pelageya Panyutina. Saltykova, having heard the news, was so shocked that, in modern terms, she finally "fell off the coils." She decided to kill her former lover, and at the same time his bride. The landowner ordered her groom to build a bomb from two kilograms of gunpowder. To blow up the estate in which Tyutchev and Panyutina lived, they instructed two peasants who, at the very last moment, chickened out and did not comply with the order. Of course, they were brutally flogged. Saltychikha decided to revise the retaliation plan and organized an ambush for the captain's crew, which was heading to Tambov. The serfs, realizing that they would face the death penalty for an attempt on an officer, were afraid again and warned him about the impending attempt. Tyutchev officially notified the authorities of a possible attack and received twelve soldiers as guards. Saltykova, having learned about this, canceled the attempt at the last moment.
After the failed revenge, Daria finally lost touch with reality and, with a vengeance, set about atrocities against the peasants.
Investigation
In the same 1762, two peasants Yermolai Ilyin and Savely Martynov, who fled from Saltykova, whose wives she killed (Ilyin had three in a row), managed to convey a complaint to Catherine II, who had just ascended the throne. This was the twenty-second complaint from the people of Darya, but only this one, by some miracle, fell into the hands of the Empress. Perhaps, under Elizabeth Petrovna and Peter II, the paper would have gone unnoticed (nobles had often flogged their peasants before), but the new ruler, who arrived in Russia from enlightened Europe, built a civilized society and did not want atrocities to go unpunished in her state .
Catherine II herself controlled the course of the case of Daria Saltykova
In the complaint of the serfs, it was indicated that their mistress had killed about a hundred souls in six years. Catherine II immediately initiated an investigation. And although Saltychikha belonged to a noble family, the empress decided to make the process indicative.
Investigator Stepan Volkov discovered a lot of interesting things. The interrogator seemed suspicious of the percentage of officially deceased serfs, especially since the death rate among women and girls far exceeded that among men.
The court adviser counted about one hundred and thirty-eight victims, and also found out that the peasants of Darya had already filed complaints against her twenty-one times.
Each of them described in detail the methods of torture that the landowner used on her people. It turned out that Saltychikha had her own prisons with various torture devices.
Daria obstructed justice with might and main, being sure that she would again be able to get out of the water dry thanks to money. By the way, historians say that if another investigator had come across the case of the landowner, perhaps her guilt would not have been proven. Saltykova was removed from the management of the estates. A priest was assigned to her for a month, who was supposed to persuade her to repent before the Lord and confess her crimes. The noblewoman refused to admit her guilt, claiming that she had been slandered by the servants.
After that, Volkov organized a general search on the estates of the villain and interrogated absolutely all the serfs and even neighbors. The facts of countless bullying of the servants, as well as murders, were revealed. The last victim of the mistress was the 19-year-old courtyard girl Fekla Gerasimova, who died in the summer of 1762. In addition, a ledger was discovered, which indicated all the bribes that Daria gave to officials. Two servants, a groom and a housemaid, Aksinya Stepanova, helped her mistress to commit atrocities. The last two served as undertakers.
The court ruled that Saltykova was "undoubtedly guilty" of the death of thirty-eight serfs; she was "left in suspicion" of the death of another twenty-six. The circumstances of the death of another seventy-four peasants remained unclear. By the way, Daria was also found guilty of the attempt on the life of Captain Tyutchev.
Sentence
The investigation went on for about six years. That the court verdict would be guilty, no one doubted, because the evidence was convincing. However, Saltychikha still did not admit to anything. In 1768, Catherine II decided to imprison Daria for life in the dungeon of the Ivanovsky Monastery without light and human communication, as well as to deprive her of her noble title and prohibit her from being called her father's or husband's family, including in court.
Daria stood at the pillory for about an hour (frame from the serial film "The Bloody Lady")
Saltykova had to stand for an hour at the pillory with a shield around her neck with the inscription "torturer and murderer."
By decree of Catherine Saltychikha, not only were they deprived of all rights and all property, but they also decided to continue to "call this monster a man."
The sentence of the condemned landowner was executed on October 17, 1768, on Red Square in Moscow. On the same day, the priest and two servants of the landowner convicted in the Saltykova case were whipped and branded. All three were sent to hard labor in Siberia.
Further fate
Saltykova was actually buried alive. She sat in a dungeon without light, she was not allowed to take walks, receive and send letters. Only on major church holidays Daria was brought to a small window. Eleven years later, the former landowner was transferred to a stone annex with a barred window. Visitors to the Ivanovsky Monastery could even talk to the "murderer". According to one of the historians, at the same time she “cursed, spat and stuck a stick through the bars,<…>thereby revealing her inveterate brutality, which did not extinguish in her either repentance for villainy, or the languor of long-term imprisonment in a gloomy sepulchre. There is some information according to which Daria, at the age of fifty, gave birth to a child from a security guard. Nevertheless, there are no documents that could shed light on the situation. Saltykova died at the age of seventy-one.
Hollywood chic, which we missed so much! At the Vanity Fair party, actresses and models, as fragile as figurines, as well as blooming Lewinsky and feminine Jenner, were pleasing to the eye.
SALTYCHIKHA (SALTYKOVA DARIA NIKOLAEVNA)
(born in 1730 - died in 1801)
A Moscow lady, a "tormentor and murderer", who killed more than 100 of her yard girls and terrified the whole district with her atrocities. Her name has become a household name for the definition of senseless cruelty.
Daria Nikolaevna Ivanova was born in 1730 in the family of a nobleman. Having married the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov, she gave birth to two sons, and at twenty-six years after the death of her husband she remained the owner of 600 serf souls and estates in the Vologda, Kostroma and Moscow provinces. The life of the widow took place in the Moscow house on Sretenka and in the Troitskoye estate, where all the bloody events took place. For 7 years, Saltychikha tortured to death more than 100 people, mostly women, including two 12-year-old girls. Sources give different numbers: from 120 to 139 people, of which 38 murders are proven.
Today it is difficult to surprise with the murders of women and children, torture, and the scale of executions. It is unlikely that in the days of Saltychikha this was an unusual thing. Nevertheless, the tormentor near Moscow can be put on the level of the infamous Count Dracula. If in the case of the latter it strikes, paralyzes the scale and real otherworldliness of atrocities, absolute evil is evil in its purest form, then in the case of Saltychikha, absolute dirt and stupidity terrifies. In a patriarchal estate near Moscow, blessed and hospitable, in a Moscow manor house with samovars, noodles and going to church, a young, healthy, stupid lady, who can neither read nor write, with the full connivance of those around her, out of boredom, killed innocent young women , girls and girls.
The torture lasted for a long time, death had to wait for hours, sometimes several days. One peasant woman was driven up to her neck into a pond after beatings (in November). A few hours later she was taken out and finished off, and the corpse was thrown under the windows of Saltychikha. The "accomplices" threw a living baby on the mother's corpse. The child also died immediately. Modern psychotherapists and psychiatrists, if they had a little more information about Saltychikha's childhood and youth, would certainly have found the reasons for her pathological behavior, explaining it with some kind of illness. However, the facts say that Saltychikha, and the current bigots like Chikatilo, and the NKVD investigators from Stalin's times, and just executioners, as a rule, have rare health, live to a ripe old age, even in prisons, and until death retain a clear mind and never than they do not repent. And before the moratorium on the death penalty, serial killers were not executed, and Saltychikha was not executed either. It seems that they all knew that they would live long.
In torture and murder, Saltychikha did not show ingenuity. She usually attacked the girls while they were mopping the floors or doing laundry. She beat them with a log, a roller, an iron, and when she got tired, haiduks, on her orders, dragged the victim into the yard and flogged. With special “inspiration”, Saltychikha tied the victim naked in the cold, starved, poured boiling water over her, burned her hair and pulled out her ears with red-hot tongs. Her “team” included 2-3 hayduk, a groom, a yard girl Aksinya Stepanova and a “priest”. The materials of the investigation spoke simply about the "priest". In those days, death was officially certified by the priest or the police in extraordinary cases. Apparently, Saltychikha had her own clergyman to cover up crimes. But not only him - everyone covered her. As one serf Saltychikha said during the investigation, if she had not been allowed to disband, then she would not have done anything. In Russia, the cruelty of landlords towards serfs was commonplace. Each province, each county, had its own local tyrant. Therefore, it is understandable why Muscovites and residents of the surrounding villages, passing terrible rumors from mouth to mouth, did nothing. Saltychikha's revelry was also facilitated by police and judicial officials, who for bribes did not give legal progress to complaints against the lady, and the complainants themselves were returned to the landowner for reprisal. It can even be assumed that Saltychikha had patrons at court.
But not everything is so simple. Researchers of the atrocities of Saltychikha usually assigned her serfs the role of dumb victims, but this is not entirely true. Both before Stepan Razin and after Pugachev, the peasants sent their landowners to the other world, burned and robbed the estates, and went on the run. Serf Russia was ruled not by landlords and not even by their managers, but by village elders, who themselves were serfs. There was practically no headman without a standard set of sins - spoiling girls, extortion in their favor, theft, sending objectionable soldiers, letting the recalcitrant around the world. And Troitsky was ruled not by the cannibal Saltychikha, but by the serf warden Mikhailov.
When Saltychikha sent the corpse of the peasant Andreev, who had been tortured by her, to the village to be buried without church and police examination, Mikhailov quickly figured out the legal nuances and realized that he would be guilty. He not only did not bury the corpse, but also forbade anyone to do so.
Gaiduk Bogomolov, who brought the corpse, was also frightened of the consequences and went to Moscow to the Detective Department with a complaint against the lady. In order to hush up the case, Saltychikha had to turn to the official of the police office, Ivan Yarov. He carried out explanatory work with Mikhailov, and the headman, making sure that he himself was beyond suspicion, gave false testimony. The case was closed.
Another example: the "inconsolable widow" had a long-term affair with the land surveyor Tyutchev. When she was taken under house arrest, love passed and Tyutchev married a commoner. Saltychikha did not forgive betrayal and arranged two conspiracies to kill both her former lover and his wife. Both conspiracies failed, because the haiduks were not going to fulfill them. The illiterate Saltychikha had literate serfs: they calmly beat unrequited girls to death, but they understood that the murder of a nobleman, a government official, was a completely different matter.
While Saltychikha was engaged in torture, yard accomplices robbed her. Starosta Mikhailov blackmailed the peasants, he could always send a woman from an objectionable house to wash the floors to the mistress. Even the neighboring landowners, voluntarily or involuntarily, benefited from Saltychikha. Against its background, they were just angels for their serfs. The blood of innocent victims directly or indirectly was on many. This was understood by the investigators involved in the Saltychikha case.
This is one of the few cases in the history of Russian jurisprudence when a case that had political overtones was investigated fully and objectively, and all those responsible were punished, including state and police officials. There were reasons for that. Catherine II ascended the Russian throne. The young queen and her entourage, primarily Count Orlov, tried to carry out progressive reforms. Catherine wanted to win the love of the people and did everything so that the Russian people saw her as an intercessor, a just monarch.
In the summer of 1762, the peasants Saveliy Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin (the latter's wife Saltychikha successively killed three wives) fled to the capital and filed a complaint against the lady with the empress. One can only imagine how much courage it took to take this step. Catherine II reacted immediately. High-ranking officials arrived in Moscow and took Saltychikha under house arrest. The Empress kept the investigation under personal control.
On May 17, 1764, a criminal case was opened against Saltychikha. For a whole year, two investigators worked in Troitskoye and on Sretenka. From the hiding places of the Detective Order, complaints and testimonies of the peasants were raised. They became a verdict for many bribe-taking officials. Catherine II spared neither strength nor means for a full investigation of the case. It was important to her for many reasons. The Saltychikha case was a good occasion for personnel purges and reshuffles in the police and the state apparatus as a whole. On this wave, it was possible to carry out a number of progressive reforms and transformations, while demonstrating to the world the best qualities of the new empress. There was another reason that lay on the surface. It is not difficult to imagine how patriarchal Moscow treated the new capital, its Western innovations, ideas, and indeed all the inhabitants of St. Petersburg. The Saltychikha case gave a legitimate reason to replace the "old guard" with loyal managers. At the same time, Catherine II won the sympathy of Muscovites, demonstrating in practice the ability to fight bribery, cruelty, and routine. Mother Queen showed concern for the people and their rights.
The investigation lasted 6 years. Saltychikha was found guilty and sentenced to death. All bribe-taking officials who covered up the murderer were stripped of their titles and property and sent into exile. Saltychikha's accomplices - peasants, courtyards and "priests" - were punished by a judicial college with a whip with cutting out their nostrils and exiled to Nerchinsk for eternal hard labor.
"one. Deprive her of her noble rank and ban her throughout our empire, so that she will never be named by anyone by the name of the family of either her father or her husband.
2. Order in Moscow to take her to the square and chain her to a pole and fasten a leaf around her neck with the inscription in big words: "Tormentor and murderer."
3. When she stands for an hour at this reproachful spectacle, then, enclosed in glands, take her to one of the women's monasteries located in the White or Earthen City, and there, near which there are no churches, put her in a specially made underground prison, in which she will be kept after death in such a way that it has no light in it from anywhere.
After the civil execution, Saltychikha was imprisoned in the underground prison of the Cathedral Church of the Ivanovo maiden monastery. Here she sat until 1779, and then until her death - in a dungeon attached to the wall of the temple. In total, Saltychikha lived in prison for 33 years and never once showed a shadow of remorse.
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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. For a woman who is not a ruler, this is a kind of record, the largest number of victims in history ...
While the clerk read from the sheet the crimes she had committed, Saltychikha stood with her head uncovered, and on her chest hung a plaque with the inscription "Tormentor and murderer." After that, she was sent to eternal imprisonment in the Ivanovo Monastery.
The picturesque, quiet, surrounded by coniferous forest, the Saltykov estate in Troitsky, near Moscow, soon after the sudden death of the owner turned into some kind of cursed place. “As if the plague had settled in those parts,” the neighbors whispered. But the inhabitants of the “enchanted estate” themselves lowered their eyes and pretended that everything was as usual and nothing special was happening.
Meanwhile, the number of serfs was steadily declining, and a new grave mound appeared in the village cemetery almost weekly. The cause of the inexplicable pestilence among the Saltykov serfs was not a mass epidemic, but a young widow, mother of two sons - Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova.
Complaining to CatherineII
In the spring of 1762, the serfs Savely Martynov and Yermolai Ilyin escaped, setting out to get to St. Petersburg and convey a complaint against their mistress to the empress herself. The peasants were not afraid of either police raids or a possible trip through the stage to Siberia. Savely had nothing to lose at all. After Saltykova cold-bloodedly killed his three wives in a row, the peasant lost hope for a calm and happy family life.
Maybe a miraculous miracle happened or heaven heard the prayer of the serfs driven to an extreme degree of despair, but only “written assault” - that was the name of the letter to Catherine II - nevertheless fell into the hands of the empress. The empress was not embarrassed either by the noble title of the accused or her numerous patrons, and within a few days after reading the complaint, a criminal case was initiated against Darya Nikolaevna Saltykova, who was accused of numerous murders and ill-treatment of her serfs.
The investigation into the Saltychikha case lasted six years, dozens of volumes were written and hundreds of witnesses were interviewed, and they all said that after the death of her husband, the new mistress of the estate seemed to have broken the chain. No one could have thought that the once timid and pious 26-year-old woman would not only mock her serfs in the most cruel way, but also brutally crack down on anyone who made even the slightest mistake in housekeeping.
Over the course of seven years, Saltykova killed at least 138 of her subjects. The reason for the execution could be the dissatisfaction of the lady with the quality of washing or cleaning. As witnesses in the Saltykova case later said, the landowner went berserk because some yard girl could not cope with her duties around the house. She grabbed whatever came to hand and began to beat the unfortunate peasant woman. Then she could scald her with boiling water, tear out more than one tuft of hair from her head, or simply set them on fire.
And if, after many hours of executions, the landowner got tired, and the victim still showed signs of life, then she was usually chained to a pillar for the night. In the morning, the savage execution continued, if at least one drop of life still lurked in the condemned.
Only a few of those tortured by Daria Saltykova were buried in the church and buried in the village cemetery, as required by Christian customs.
The bodies of the rest disappeared without a trace. And in the business books it was indicated that "one escaped, three were sent to our Vologda and Kostroma estates, and about a dozen more were sold for 10 rubles per capita." However, during the investigation it was not possible to find a single person from this list.
Revenge for dislike
This terrible woman was closely related to the Davydovs, Musin-Pushkins, Tolstoys, Stroganovs, moved in the highest circles of society, had the most influential connections, but at the same time she was absolutely illiterate and could not even write. It is known for certain that the Trinity landowner was very religious. She made several pilgrimages to Christian shrines and never spared money for donations. But the cruel Saltychikha was the exact opposite of that Darya Nikolaevna, who was received with honor and respect in the best houses of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
All Moscow officials were afraid to take on such a dubious case, in which the serfs went against their mistress, and even so influential and titled. In the end, the folder ended up on the table at the investigator Stepan Volkov. He, a rootless and not secular man, was distinguished by impartiality and perseverance, and with the help of Prince Dmitry Tsitsianov, he was able to successfully bring the matter to an end.
No matter how many obstacles Saltykova repaired to the investigation, she never managed to get out of the water dry. Each new evidence entailed a whole chain of crimes. It turned out that long before the serfs handed over the complaint to Catherine II, more than 20 similar complaints written earlier were quietly gathering dust in the archives of Moscow authorities. But none of them were given a move by the authorities. And the general searches in the estates of Saltykova and the seized account books indicated that the officials of these departments received rich gifts or some kind of financial assistance from Darya Nikolaevna.
Maybe that's why the landowner herself, throughout the entire investigation, was not only sure of a safe release, but also continued to intimidate her serfs in every way. Nevertheless, Catherine II was extremely offended by the behavior of her subject, who created a certain model of a “state within a state”, established her own laws, single-handedly decided “whom to execute and whom to pardon”, and thereby elevated herself to the rank of a royal person.
In the course of the investigation, one more fact came to light, which brought the investigation to a new level.
It turned out that in addition to reprisals in her own lands, Saltykova planned the murder of her noble neighbor Nikolai Tyutchev. The grandfather of the famous poet was in a love relationship with a young widow, but he decided to marry another. It is quite possible, precisely because he knew the strange inclinations of an exalted mistress. Daria Nikolaevna went crazy with jealousy and resentment. She decided to take revenge on her unfaithful lover and his new passion.
On her behalf, trusted servants, who more than once helped her in domestic executions, purchased several kilograms of gunpowder. This would be enough to smash to the last brick the entire Moscow mansion of Tyutchev, into which he then moved with his bride. But Saltykova realized in time that the murder of a nobleman and a serf are completely different things, and abandoned her bloody intentions.
In the second year of the investigation, Saltykova was taken under guard. Only then did the frightened peasants become reluctant to talk about all the horrors that they once had to witness. 38 cases of death at the hands of the landowner were fully proven: the victims were 36 women, girls and girls, and only two young men.
There were also double murders, when the landowner beat pregnant women until they had a miscarriage, and later dealt with the mother herself. 50 people died from all sorts of diseases and fractures resulting from beatings. Of course, there were still dozens of peasants who disappeared without a trace, whose bodies were not found, and traces were lost, but the available evidence was enough for the most cruel sentence.
Red pakhra - Saltychikha estate "Torturer and murderer"
Four drafts of the Saltykova case, written by the Empress herself, have survived in the archives. Regularly for six years, she received reports detailing all the atrocities of the landowner. In the protocols of the interrogations of Saltykova herself, the investigator Stepan Volkov was forced to write the same thing: "He does not know his own guilt and will not slander himself."
The empress realized that the landowner did not take advantage of the chance for repentance, and she would not receive concessions for her steadfastness. It was necessary to demonstrate that evil remains evil, no matter who does it, and the law in the state is the same for everyone.
The verdict, drawn up by Catherine II personally, replacing the name "Saltykov" with the epithets "inhuman widow", "a freak of the human race", "a completely apostate soul", entered into force on October 2, 1768.
Daria Saltykova was deprived of her noble title, maternal rights, as well as all land and property. The verdict was not subject to appeal.
The second part of the sentence provided for civil execution. On the eve of the event, posters were pasted around the city, and tickets for the execution of their former friend were sent to titled persons. On November 17, 1768, at 11 o'clock in the morning, Saltychikha was taken to the Execution Ground on Red Square. There she was tied to a pole with a sign “torturer and murderer” in front of a large crowd of Muscovites who had gathered on the square long before the convict was brought there. But even an hour-long "reproachful spectacle" did not make Saltykov repent.
Then she was sent to eternal imprisonment in the prison of the Donskoy Monastery. For the first eleven years, she was literally buried alive in a two-meter-deep "pit of repentance" dug in the ground and a grate laid on top. Daria saw the light only twice a day, when the nun brought her meager food and a candle stub. In 1779, Saltychikha was transferred to solitary confinement, which was located in the monastery annex.
John the Baptist Convent, where Daria Saltykova was imprisoned. Photo: Public Domain. The new apartments had a small window through which the convict could look at the light. But more often they came to look at her. They say that Saltychikha spat through the bars at the visitors and tried to get at them with a stick.
Visitors to the monastery were allowed not only to look at the convict, but also to talk to her. There are rumors that after 1779 Saltykova gave birth to a child from a guard soldier. The former landowner was kept in the stone annex of the temple until her death.
Saltychikha died on November 27, 1801 at the age of 71, having spent 33 years in captivity. There, in the Donskoy Monastery, she was buried in the monastery cemetery. The grave of the murderous landowner exists to this day, only the name of the villain has completely disappeared, and instead of a tombstone there is a large stone stake.
Today there is not a single evidence that Daria Saltykova repented of her deed.
photo: cemetery 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.
The Troitskoye estate near Moscow and the village of Tyoply Stan, in which the bloodthirsty landowner committed villainy, were first sold to the husband of Saltychikha's sister, the Bryansk nobleman Ivan Nikiforovich Tyutchev, and then to Nikolai Tyutchev, who, together with his wife, bought up plots of land and peasants. A few years later, the Tyutchevs became quite wealthy people, in whose possession there were more than two thousand peasant souls.
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.
