Clementia Augustae: милосердие и "нелепый обет" императрицы

Новое литературное обозрение. 2023. Т. 184. № 6. С. 329–351.

Polskoy S.

From 1744 to 1764, all capital punishments were suspended in Russia de facto. Contemporaries and historians associated this measure with the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna’s vow, made by her on the night of 25 November 1741. However, all known facts contradict this myth, which has proved unusually persistent, as has the refusal to rationalize the empress’s actions in historiography. There is no doubt that all the Empress’s "moves" towards the abolition of the death penalty and mitigation of punishment policy were political and discursive, i.e., it were aimed at achieving specific goals and, most importantly, were comprehended in the categories of politics, law, religious ideas and literature of her epoch, and the key concept around which the interpretation of her actions in the presented article is based is mercy (clementia). The history and interpretation of the concepts of clemency, its connection with the monarchical language of the epoch allows us to contextualize the empress’s actions and deprive them of their mystical aura. 

Keywords: макиавеллизм, history of concepts, история понятий, раннее Новое время, помилование, милосердие, machiavellianism, forgiveness, abolitionism, аболиционизм, clemency, monarchical language of the Early Modern Period, монархический язык

Publication based on the results of: Reformism and Disciplinarization in Early Modern Russia (2023)