Peasants Interrogated And Whipped

Excerpt From "Europa: The Days of Ignorance" (1935)

By Robert Briffault

The ringleader, they found, was a young man named Kostia Chevarek. Not long before, when the prince and his nieces had come down to the estate, they had attended the wedding of this young man, the girls being curious to see a peasant wedding in Little Russia. They had enjoyed the picturesque sight, the bright costumes and the dances. The bride, in her elaborately embroidered chemise reaching below her skirt, and with a kokoshnik of tinsel lace over the bright cloth that covered her hair like a nun's wimple, had knelt with the bridegroom, according to old Russian custom, three times before the prince.

Kostia had, however, imbibed socialist doctrines from the orators who held meetings at Kursk and distributed pamphlets and propaganda. Unfortunately his sister, a very pretty girl, had been seduced by the son of the starosta.

Kostia Chevarek was seized and brought to the manor, together with his wife and his sister. He refused to give the names of the other culprits. The Cossacks stripped him and after tying him by the hands to a rafter, whipped him severely. The prince himself, who was present at the execution, tried to induce him to reveal his associates. But the man maintained, under the lash, a complete silence.

His wife, and his sister, two strapping and beautiful young women, were then brought into the cellar where the scene was taking place. When Kostia was told that, unless he supplied the information asked for, the women would be whipped, he hesitated and writhed. "Hold your tongue, Kostia" his sister cried. He remained silent.

Then the Cossacks stripped the two women naked. They tethered their arms to the rafter. Two men plied the quivering flesh of the screaming women with their nagaikas. Kostia at last called to them to stop, and said he would give the names.

Each of the men who had taken part in the attack on the manor received one hundred lashes. Then all the rest of the peasants, who had been rounded up by the Cossacks, were gathered in the ruins of their village. They were made to drive six stout posts into the ground. The men were then tied, six at a time, with their clothes let down, and each received twenty strokes.

When all the men had been whipped, the women, old and young, were treated in the same manner. While they stood roped to the posts with their skirts tied over their shoulders, a Cossack went along the line of rumps, administering twenty lashes of the whip to each.

The prince referred briefly to the punishment the peasants had received. "It is the only sort of argument which they understand," he said, "and they are used to it. They much prefer it to a lot of palaver in the courts."