Тайна отрезанных пальцев из архивного сейфа или история одного убийства в Верхотурском уезде

Cahiers d'histoire russe, est-européenne, caucasienne et centrasiatique (ex. Cahiers du Monde Russe). 2025. Т. 66. № 1-2. С. 261–300.

Akelev E., Борисов В. Е.

The article is an attempt at archival investigation on the history of the most unusual objects stored in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), around which a whole corpus of academic legends has developed: two mummified human fingers. The authors trace the history of their storage, while also examining various issues of Soviet and pre-revolutionary archival work, especially the history of the Verkhoturskaia prikaznaia izba fund. They also reconstruct the circumstances in which the fingers found their way into the court file of a murder case that took place in 1665 in the Vogul (Mansi) community. The authors try to establish what role this unusual evidence played in the court procedure, which included the filing of a petition, interrogation of the parties and witnesses, confrontation, and then the filing of a conciliatory petition and the passing of two judgements more than five years apart. The article touches upon the attitude of the state and society to murder and addresses the issue of when reconciliation of the parties in murder cases was allowed, when adversarial judicial procedure was used, and when judges switched to ‘inquisition,’ which implied their active role in the investigation, in particular with the use of torture. The article is accompanied by a full-text publication of the court case, with historical commentary and biographical notes on all those involved.

Keywords: убийство, архив, суд, уголовный процесс, Московское царство, archives, РГАДА, манси