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Justice and how to attain it in Russian literature and film
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Justice and how to attain it in Russian literature and film
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Content
JUSTICE AND HOW TO ATTAIN IT
IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND FILM
by
Anna Krivoruchko
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES)
May 2014
Copyright 2014 Anna Krivoruchko
ii
Acknowledgments
This dissertation would not have been possible without a number of highly
esteemed individuals. First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation director,
Dr. Alexander Zholkovsky, for his excellent guidance and stimulating suggestions but
most importantly, for encouraging and inspiring my research by his great personality as a
scholar and individual. My sincere thanks also extend to the other members of my
committee: Dr. Marcus Levitt, whose thorough and diligent readings and tireless efforts
helped me to perfect my chapters; Dr. Hilary Schor, whose expertise in English law-
related literature proved invaluable; and Dr. Anna Krakus for her counsel in the area of
Law and Litrature.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my family for their belief in me and for their
moral support throughout my graduate studies. I am especially grateful to my husband
James Rowlins who was the first reader of my dissertation and without whom it would
never have become what it is. Additionally, I am indebted to the Slavic department’s
administrative assistant, Susan Kechekian, who consistently went above and beyond the
call of duty to provide me with the resources I needed.
iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
ii
Table
of
Contents
iii
Abstract
iv
Introduction
1
Chapter
One
Pushkin
vs.
Shakespeare:
The
“Quality
of
Mercy”
and
Quantity
of
Justice
29
Part
I.
On
the
Meaning
of
the
“Legal
Triad”
34
Part
II.
Shakespeare’s
Measure
of
Law,
Justice
and
Mercy
42
Part
III.
Pushkin’s
“Mercy,
not
Justice”
74
Part
IV.
Further
Development
of
the
Petitioning
Motif
113
Chapter
Two
Adjusting
Justice:
The
Case
of
Nikolai
Leskov
120
Part
I.
Leskov’s
Legal
Masterplot
121
Part
II.
The
“Oral
vs.
Written
Word”
in
Leskov’s
“Legal”
Writing
154
Part
III.
The
“Righteous
Trickster”
in
Leskov’s
Hierarchy
of
Trickster-‐heroes
171
Chapter
Three
Mikhalkov
vs.
Lumet:
Russian
Mercy
against
Western
Law
180
Part
I.
Jury
in
Life
and
Cinema
186
Part
II.
Twelve
Angry
Men
vs.
Twelve
197
Collective
vs.
Individual
202
The
Temple
vs.
the
Gym
210
Objective
vs.
Subjective
218
Dangerous
Freedom
vs.
Safe
Restraint
228
Conclusion
245
Bibliography
254
iv
Abstract
This dissertation, “Justice and How to Attain It in Russian Literature and Film,”
examines the national idea of justice and its correlation with the concepts of law and
mercy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature and film. It posits justice as
a moral, socio-political and legal concept, as well as one that is inseparable from the
“eternal questions” of Russian thought, such as the “unique Russian path,” “Russia and
the West,” and “the people vs. the state.” Russian law-related literary and cinematic
works are analyzed in conjunction with their Anglophone counterparts, which highlights
the “law-justice paradigm,” legal nihilism and patrimonialism characteristic of Russian
legal thought and the canon of Russian law-related literature.
More specifically, this work focuses on literary and cinematic texts, which, in
contrast to the Russian legal canon’s pessimistic treatment of law-related themes, see
justice prevail. Such a positive outcome becomes possible because it is assumed from the
start that justice is unattainable through the standard judicial process, and so alternative
methods of attaining it are used. Each of the three chapters of the dissertation, devoted to
Pushkin, Leskov and Nikita Mikhalkov respectively, explores one way of attaining
justice: by appealing to the authority’s mercy, by clever legal tricks and by resorting to
vigilante justice.
What unites the works analyzed in this dissertation, besides the fact that they all
provide an account of the triumph of justice, is that none of them present justice as the
ultimate goal but rather as a mere byproduct of a simple act of charity. This implicitly
confirms Georgii Fedotov’s hypothesis about the amalgamation of justice and mercy as a
v
characteristic feature of Russian legal thought. Moreover, all analyzed texts evince
skepticism about the power of the word, reasoning and rhetoric in legal issues: the word
and verbal activity never help one to attain justice but rather obstruct it. These two
insights into the specificity of the Russian understanding of law, justice and mercy
constitute the basis for the present research.
1
Introduction
Yes, one day perhaps the leading intellects
of Russia and of Europe will study the
psychology of Russian crime, for the subject
is worth it.
Fedor Dostoevsky. The Brothers
Karamazov
As it is clear from the title, “Justice and How to Attain It in Russian Literature and
Film,” justice is the principal subject of the present dissertation, and yet, ironically, not
much of it is actually found in Russian law-related fiction. Indeed, over the next two
hundred pages justice is conspicuous by its absence. The reason for this is, in essence, a
surprising tendency to factor justice out of the triad of law, justice and mercy that
underlies legal thought. Whether justice is considered unattainable specifically in Russia,
or whether this is a universal problem, in Russian literature and film, this concept often
appears to be omitted.
As an early twentieth-century author of historical novels Mark Aldanov wittily
remarked, “there are many sympathetic murderers in Russian literature but not a single
sympathetic lawyer” (introduction to Maklakov, V.A. Rechi. Parizh, 1949; cited in
Tumanov; my translation).
1
The world-famous story of Rodion Raskolnikov’s progress
1
Similar observations were made by other students of Russian literature, e.g. by Yurii Lotman (Kul’tura i
vzryv 142).
2
Remarkably, in Russian, there exists a separate word for “justice” as administration of law – pravosudie –
as opposed to spravedlivost’, i.e. the quality of being just.
3
At the same time, some scholars, e.g. historians Nancy S. Kollmann and Jane Burbank, debate this
common opinion about Russian legal institutions and judicial practices as being hopelessly corrupt and
inefficient. Based on their research, these scholars claim that there were periods in Russian history when
the legal system was flexible, self-regulating and just, and the rule of law was observed – even if in a
specifically Russian way. Their opponent, Elise K. Wirtschafter, justly points out a contradiction in their
argument: what exactly does it mean that Russia followed general European models of development but in
2
from a law student to an ideological killer and to a confessed convict seems to prove this
true. It was his eager quest for justice that urged Raskolnikov to murder an old
moneylender, but as he realized soon afterwards, it is far beyond the scope of humans to
attain perfect justice. Dostoevsky’s oeuvre provides more examples of justice-seekers,
such as the Underground Man in the eponymous tale, Katerina Ivanovna in Prestuplenie i
nakazanie (Crime and Punishment, 1866) and Ivan Karamazov in Brat’ia Karamazovy
(The Brothers Karamazov, 1880), and yet none of them is a particularly sympathetic
hero. To the contrary, their telic quest for justice exposes their finiteness and
defectiveness and leads these characters to resentment and inevitably to self-destruction.
In religious terms, as persons focused on justice, they will never see salvation through
mercy and grace. At the same time, in Zapiski iz mertvogo doma (The House of the Dead,
1861), Dostoevsky claimed with remarkable pride that no other nation has such a
profound sense of justice and longing for it as Russians (PSS vol. 4, 121). Apparently,
this statement contradicts the image of Russian culture as mercy-centered (Fedotov,
Lotman), for mercy is un-just by definition. It appears that contradictions similar to this
permeate the national understanding of law, justice and mercy, making it a rich academic
subject.
Justice is a fundamental concept of moral and political philosophy, yet one that
eludes a simple concrete definition. In The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky refers to a
sense of justice shared by all people, but what exactly does it mean? Justice is commonly
understood as (i) “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the
impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or
3
punishments,” including specifically administration of the law;
2
as (ii) the “quality of
being just, impartial, or fair”; or as (iii) “conformity to truth, fact, or reason” (Merriam-
Webster Dictionary). In all three meanings, the presence of a certain ideal, in relation to
which reality is organized and judged, is obvious. However, with this ideal changing over
time, it is really difficult to grasp the meaning of justice in one all-embracing definition.
There exists a well-known stereotype of the Russian legal model found in the
collective consciousness, as well as in popular media and confirmed in academic studies.
It includes a disrespect of the law and disbelief in its function as a means of social,
political and economical regulation (Hendley, Kashnikov, Tumanov, Jessica Wilson,
Wirtschafter); the opposition between law and justice (Rosenshield, Jessica Wilson,
Wirtschafter); and a distinct preference shown to mercy and all sorts of ways of settling
matters out of court – personally, unofficially (Fedotov, Hendley, Lotman, Kashnikov).
3
In his study of justice in Russia, the contemporary moral philosopher Boris
Kashnikov claims that the defining feature of the national idea of justice is its
“hybridized” nature, which occurred as a result of the imposition of a variety of
influences on the original Russian legal concepts. Similarly, political scientists
2
Remarkably, in Russian, there exists a separate word for “justice” as administration of law – pravosudie –
as opposed to spravedlivost’, i.e. the quality of being just.
3
At the same time, some scholars, e.g. historians Nancy S. Kollmann and Jane Burbank, debate this
common opinion about Russian legal institutions and judicial practices as being hopelessly corrupt and
inefficient. Based on their research, these scholars claim that there were periods in Russian history when
the legal system was flexible, self-regulating and just, and the rule of law was observed – even if in a
specifically Russian way. Their opponent, Elise K. Wirtschafter, justly points out a contradiction in their
argument: what exactly does it mean that Russia followed general European models of development but in
its own unique way? The explanation of this discrepancy lies in the fact that, according to Kollmann, mercy
was not an alternative to the law but an integral part of the Russian system of justice (“The Quality of
Mercy”).
4
Christopher Marsh and Nikolas K. Gvosdev, in their introduction to the collection Civil
Society and the Search for Justice in Russia (2002), portray the development of Russian
legal thought and the national idea of justice as a heterogeneous mix of various
tendencies. Marsh and Gvosdev see post-Soviet Russia as an
heir to a mélange of ideas and concepts. The overtly Western idea of the
contemporary constitution, drawing upon American and French precedents, has
been grafted onto a society whose conception of justice has also been shaped by
Slavic communalism, Byzantine formalism and Marxist materialism. (9)
Marsh and Gvosdev claim that as a Slavic country with “long standing traditions of
communalism” Russia originally defined justice “in terms of cooperation and mutual
assistance” (7). After the introduction of Christianity, continue the scholars, certain
features of Byzantine legal thinking were added to this original Russian understanding: a
sense of hierarchical order, a conception of duties before God and fellow human beings,
and the perception of proper procedure and jurisdiction. The separation between the state
and church jurisdictions at that time caused, according to them, the fateful split between
the notions of human and divine justice and a habit of ignoring the former in view of the
latter. Later, Russia began to absorb Western ideas about law and justice being based
upon the social contract, incorporating these rather mechanically into the existing set of
ideas. Marsh and Gvosdev conclude their account of the development of Russian legal
ideas with the statement that of all Western conceptions, Marxism, with its “communal”
view of what is just as what complies with the interests of the majority, was cognate to
the fundamental Russian perception and therefore influenced it the most.
5
Historically, the concept of justice has changed from Plato and Aristotle to John
Rawls’s theory of justice and Robert Nozick’s libertarian theory of distribution.
4
In
accordance with it, all Western countries have transitioned from one paradigm of justice
to another. Russia, however, – and Kashnikov and Marsh and Gvosdev are unanimous
about this – has constantly accumulated various, often contradictory ideas, instead of
transitioning from one paradigm to another. More specifically, as Kashnikov states,
throughout its history, Russia has preserved the same patrimonial paradigm of justice,
adjusting it repeatedly to rather superficial external impacts. This, according to the
scholar, has generated such hybrids as, for instance, the patrimonial utilitarianism of the
Soviet epoch and post-Soviet patrimonial liberalism of the 1990s.
As a constant of Russian legal thought and a defining principle of national justice
patrimonialism deserves a more thorough examination. The term was introduced by Max
Weber who widely used it in his historical sociology. As summarized by Swedberg and
Agevall, patrimonialism is a special form of patriarchalism, namely a “form of traditional
4
In his article for the
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wayne P. Pomerleau gives a survey of Western
theories of justice: “For Plato, justice is a virtue establishing rational order, with each part performing its
appropriate role and not interfering with the proper functioning of other parts. Aristotle says justice consists
in what is lawful and fair, with fairness involving equitable distributions and the correction of what is
inequitable. For Augustine, the cardinal virtue of justice requires that we try to give all people their due; for
Aquinas, justice is that rational mean between opposite sorts of injustice, involving proportional
distributions and reciprocal transactions. Hobbes believed justice is an artificial virtue, necessary for civil
society, a function of the voluntary agreements of the social contract; for Hume, justice essentially serves
public utility by protecting property (broadly understood). For Kant, it is a virtue whereby we respect
others’ freedom, autonomy, and dignity by not interfering with their voluntary actions, so long as those do
not violate others’ rights; Mill said justice is a collective name for the most important social utilities, which
are conducive to fostering and protecting human liberty. Rawls analyzed justice in terms of maximum
equal liberty regarding basic rights and duties for all members of society, with socio-economic inequalities
requiring moral justification in terms of equal opportunity and beneficial results for all; and various post-
Rawlsian philosophers develop alternative conceptions.” The article also provides a comprehensive
bibliography on the topic.
6
domination in which (1) the administration as well as the military are seen by the ruler as
his or her personal instruments, and (2) the ruler abides by tradition” (195). In
patrimonial domination, some norms are perceived as inviolable for the ruler, while
others form “a realm of free arbitrariness and favor of the lord” (Weber cited in
Swedberg and Agevall 195).
It should be noted that aside from the absolute power of the authorities over
ordinary citizens, the informal, personalized character of patrimonial justice implies the
possibility of a reciprocity between the judging magistrate and justice-seekers. Indeed,
when a personal attitude, rather than a fixed rule, is a decisive factor, there is a chance
that even the most powerless person can influence the judge – either by begging or by
some other kind of manipulation. This open-endedness of the outcome, when one can be
“misjudged” in a negative but also in a positive way, appears preferable to getting what
one deserves.
Apart from the hybridized but essentially patrimonial nature of Russian justice,
national legal thought is characterized by the “law-justice paradigm,” where law and
justice are understood as separate, distinct and even opposing concepts (Kurkchiyan,
Rosenshield, Jessica Wilson).
5
Jessica Wilson explains this by virtue of the fact that the
law is traditionally perceived in Russia as lacking any moral foundation and serving as an
5
This paradigm reminds one of Jacques Derrida’s maxim from “Force of Law” (1989): “law is not justice.”
However, if the French philosopher contemplates the incongruity between law and justice as conditioned
by violence inherent in law and hence ontological, in the Russian legal tradition it is perceived as
historically and politically determined. Moreover, according to Derrida, such incongruity paradoxically
reinstates the necessity of law, which in Russian culture is regarded with pessimism and even contempt.
7
instrument of state control and, therefore, unjust.
6
Justice, on the contrary, is a moral
principle based not on the law or on the notion of “dues” as in the West, but on collective
values of kinship and communal relationships and patrimonial hierarchy. Most scholars
agree with this definition of Russian justice (Kavelin, Kurkchiyan, Kashnikov, Marsh and
Gvosdev, Jessica Wilson). Thus, in contrast to Western principles of individualism,
rationalism and legalism, Harold J. Berman emphasizes in Russia’s justice
a strong tradition of collective social consciousness which relies for its
motivation less on reason than on common faith and common worship, and
which finds expression less in legal formality and ‘due process’ than in more
spontaneous and more impulsive responses. (156)
This general definition of the Russian idea of justice, specified by its constants and
fundamentally opposed to the West’s idea of justice, provides a departure point for the
present study.
To illustrate the fundamental difference between Russian and Western ideas of
justice, let us examine one recent high-profile criminal case that has drawn attention to
the national idea of law, justice and mercy by showing it as deeply complex and
problematic.
7
In 2004, Vitaly Kaloyev, an architect from North Ossetia, killed Peter
Nielsen, a Swiss air traffic controller, whom he considered responsible for the death of
6
Already Slavophile thinkers of the mid-nineteenth century, who originated the discussion and systematic
studies of the law and justice in Russia, considered this popular view expressed in the national folklore.
Marina Kurkchiyan’s statement that “[i]n the post-Soviet countries law does not symbolize morality,
honesty and justice. Rather, it is seen as a tactical game requiring expertise in manoeuvre, influence and
persuasiveness” (43) can be extrapolated to a broader period in Russian history.
7
The following account of Vitaly Kaloyev’s case relies on the information published
in “Nothing Left to
Lose: Grief-crazed Murder Suspect Haunted by Family’s Air Death” (The Guardian 28 February 2004),
“Vitaly Kaloyev: ‘Chto by ty pochuvstvoval, esli by uvidel svoikh detei v grobu?’” (pravda.ru 27 October
2005) and “Vitaly Kaloyev: ‘Ia possorilsia s bogom’” (Moskovskii komsomolets 29 June 2012).
8
his wife and two children.
8
Kaloyev’s family was on the charter flight of Bashkirian
Airlines, which collided with a DHL cargo plane over lake Constance on 2 July 2002.
Although Nielsen was freed from any responsibility in the following inquest and retired
from work afterward, a year and a half after the accident, Kaloyev, who suffered a
nervous breakdown, stabbed him to death in front of his home. In October 2005, Kaloyev
was sentenced to eight years in prison, but he was released as early as November 2007,
on the grounds that his mental condition had not been sufficiently considered in the initial
sentence, and returned to Ossetia.
This story would have remained a terrible personal tragedy, if it did not provoke
such an enthusiastic public response. Upon his arrival in Russia, the avenger was met as a
national hero and soon afterwards appointed deputy minister of construction of North
Ossetia. This appointment can be interpreted as a sign of supreme political approval of a
situation when a Russian citizen, “wronged” by European institutions, “asserted” himself.
Of course, the matter received different treatments in Russian and Western media. Vitaly
Kaloyev’s case emphasized the opposition between Russia and the West and once again
highlighted fundamental differences between the two legal paradigms. Thus, Kaloyev
insisted that he committed the crime in a state of temporary insanity provoked by
Nielsen’s refusal to admit his guilt. He also presented a legal document in which
Skyguide, a Swiss air navigation service provider, offered him sixty thousand Swiss
francs for the death of his wife and fifty thousand francs for the death of each of his two
children. In return, Skyguide wanted him to waive his rights to any further claims to the
8
Kaloyev’s story inspired Alexander Mindadze’s debut film as a director, Otryv (Take off, 2007).
9
company. In these examples, the stereotypical traits of Russian spontaneity, irrationality
and generosity appeared to collide with Western rationality, pragmatism and
mercantilism.
It is noteworthy that Kaloyev comes from the Caucasus, a region with a strong and
age-old tradition of blood feuds. This fact, on the one hand, channels the powerful
cultural image of the noble avenger and, on the other, offers a way of settling conflicts
outside of the legal system.
9
The latter, a topos of Russian legal tradition, demonstrates
the powerlessness of the judicial system and people’s lack of confidence in it. It appears
that the pain and moral right of a person who loses his family outweighs any judicial
considerations, and an extreme situation may excuse extreme measures. Like other
aspects of the national worldview, Russian legal thought tends towards extremes while
ignoring the norm (Lotman, Kul’tura i vzryv).
As it was demonstrated, the arbitrariness and legal relativism of patrimonial justice,
together with its high “politization” (Hendley, Kashnikov) determines the Russian “law-
justice paradigm.” The “law-justice paradigm,” in its turn, provokes legal nihilism, i.e.
the conviction that justice can never be attained through any legal institutions but only
extralegally, for instance, through revenge, a bribe or some other illegal activity.
10
Law in
9
In the last ten years, there were a number of similar incidents of vigilante justice, e.g. Alexander
Kuznetsov’s (2008) and Alexander Taran’s cases (2009).
10
“Legal nihilism” is a common term, used by both social scientists and non-academics. The Great Soviet
Encyclopedia defines it as a “trend in sociopolitical thought that denies the social value of law and
considers it to be the least perfect means of regulating social relations.” In one of his campaign speeches of
the 2008 presidential elections, Dmitrii Medvedev characterized Russia as a “country of legal nihilism”
(cited in Jessica Wilson 195 and Hendley 149). Since then, the term has been commonly used to define the
country’s present-day legal culture in both Russian and foreign media. At the same time, it is also applied
to the Soviet and tsarist periods of Russian history (e.g. Hendley, Wortman). In her recent article, “Who are
10
Russia is usually characterized as immoral (Berman, Kistiakovskii, Jessica Wilson),
inefficient, “unusable” (Hendley) and even “illegitimate” (Kurkchiyan), and sidestepping
it is perceived as permissible and “justified” (Hendley, “Varieties of Legal Dualism”
246). It is logical to assume, therefore, that the same negative view shapes literary
treatment of legal matters.
Indeed, in her article, “Russia’s Cultural Aversion to the Rule of Law” (2008),
Jessica C. Wilson demonstrates the existence of the “law-justice paradigm” in Russian
culture by analyzing three influential law-related texts: Metropolitan Hilarion’s “Slovo o
zakone i blagodati” (The Sermon on Law and Grace, the mid-eleventh century), Denis
Fonvizin’s comedy Nedorosl’ (The Minor, 1782), and Nikolai Gogol’s novel Mertvye
dushi (Dead Souls, 1842). This analysis brings Wilson to the following conclusions that
confirm the existing stereotype of Russia’s legal thought. First, the law in Russia is
universally disrespected for lacking morality and is considered at best to be a precursor to
justice. Second, the “law-justice paradigm” is constantly reproduced in literature and
stands for the belief that no legal institution is an adequate means of seeking the truth as
they all lack a moral foundation. Third, the “law-justice paradigm” has obstructed the
rule of law in Russia. Most strikingly, acknowledging literature’s role in expressing and
passing over legal ideas, the scholar “blames” classic Russian literature for preserving
and handing down the traditional “law-justice paradigm” and thus preventing the triumph
of the rule of law.
the Legal Nihilists in Russia” (2012), Kathryn Hendley thoroughly investigates the phenomenon of legal
nihilism in the country and defines it in terms of political participation, political attitudes, etc.
11
This accusation is not unfounded. Russian literature contains an abundance of
instances of failures of justice, when the individual is tortured and often completely
destroyed by the soulless bureaucratic machine. Aldanov, who remarked on the
unpopularity of lawyers in Russian culture, also stated that Russian literature “did not like
the court in general and in its portrayal usually followed the ‘path of least resistance.’ In
the two most famous novels that feature the court, The Brothers Karamazov and
Resurrection, a judicial error occurs” (cited in Tumanov; my translation). Most
frequently, the individual’s dealings with the system of justice are presented as tragic, as
in Alexander Pushkin’s “Dubrovsky” (unfinished), or absurd, as in Nikolai Gogol’s
Revizor (The Inspector-General, 1836), where, according to the mayor, a corporal’s
widow “flogged herself” (act IV, scene 15).
11
Sometimes, these two tendencies coincide,
creating, for instance, the macabre world of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin’s trilogy
Kartiny proshedshego (Scenes from the Past, 1869).
Let us take a closer look at this mainstream trend in Russian law-related literature.
In “Dubrovsky,” a rich and influential aristocrat Kirila Troekurov decides to punish a less
wealthy gentleman Andrei Dubrovsky for his self-respect and independent standing
despite his lack of means;
12
and he finds a way to do so with the aid of the court. He files
a complaint claiming that Dubrovsky is not the legitimate owner of his estate but that he,
Troekurov, is. They both know that this is not true for Dubrovsky’s father legally bought
11
The widow herself provides a different account of the event: “He [Mayor] flogged me… By mistake, my
father. Our women got into a squabble in the market, and when the police came, it was all over, and they
took me and reported me – I couldn’t sit down for two days” (Gogol, The Inspector-General, act IV, scene
11).
12
In other words, for considering himself equal to Troekurov.
12
the village from Troekurov’s father, but as the documental proof of this purchase is
destroyed in a fire and as Troekurov is the mightiest landowner in the province, the court
makes a decision in his favor. This blatantly unjust verdict causes old Dubrovsky’s
mental breakdown and soon afterwards his death.
13
In Sukhovo-Kobylin’s play Delo (The Case, 1861), Lidochka Muromskaia is
unjustly suspected of being an accomplice in a fraud committed by her fiancé
Krechinsky. This prompts the bureaucratic machine to extract money from the father
Muromsky threatening him with the possibility of Lidochka’s physical examination in
order to establish whether she has been sexually involved with Krechinsky. This “blood-
sucking” continues until the old Muromsky loses all his fortune and eventually dies from
a heart attack after yet another collision with the justice system.
In Nikolai Leskov’s drama Rastochitel’ (The Spendthrift, 1867), the main conflict is
between the young merchant Ivan Molchanov and his guardian Firs Kniazev, who killed
Molchanov’s father in order to take over his fortune, which he has then gradually
embezzled. Due to Kniazev’s influence in the town, their confrontation ends with
Molchanov first losing control over his own property as he is declared a spendthrift and
eventually with him being locked up in a mental asylum.
Fedia Protasov, the protagonist of Tolstoy’s play Zhivoi trup (The Living Corpse,
1900), suffers from the understanding that his way of life is torturous for his wife Liza.
The couple eventually decides to divorce but the respective legal procedure is so
humiliating that Protasov prefers to stage his suicide to free Liza. He disappears; unaware
13
This intrigue, however, is only the beginning of the main narrative, which is primarily focused on the
image of the noble robber, namely old Dubrovsky’s son, Vladimir.
13
that he is still alive she marries another man. However, in a while Protasov’s secret
becomes known, and the matter is brought to court. The Protasovs face exile to Siberia;
Liza is charged with bigamy, and her second marriage is about to be annulled. This
leaves Fedia Protasov only one exit – to actually kill himself.
The same pattern is seen in satirical works and in literary accounts of political, not
only criminal, cases. In his Sovremennaia idilliia (Contemporary Idyll, 1883), Mikhail
Saltykov-Shchedrin tells the tale of the Hapless Minnow. When the minnows of Kashin
district start leaving the river to avoid being eaten in fish soup, the Hapless Minnow is
arrested and charged with failure to report this unrest and – even more absurdly – with
not leaving with others only because of his bad health. When yet another witness, the
Pike, is called to bear false witness against the protagonist, the Minnow immediately falls
dead from terror in the courtroom. These are just some of the most dramatic examples of
the individual being destroyed by the Russian judicial system; there are many more
instances of innocent persons being thrown to jail, e.g. in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s
“Arinushka” from Gubernskie ocherki (Provincial Sketches, 1856-1857), as well as of
villains who manage to get away with their crimes, e.g. in Ostrovsky’s drama Groza (The
Thunderstorm, 1859) or in Sukhovo-Kobylin’s trilogy.
These and similar literary texts, which narrate the failure of justice, constitute the
dominant element of Russian legal writing. Two of Russia’s most famous legal novels,
which both provide a detailed depiction of a jury trial, Fedor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers
Karamazov and Leo Tolstoy’s Voskresenie (Resurrection, 1899), also belong to this
canon. Indeed, two innocent persons, Dmitry Karamazov and Katiusha Maslova, are
14
convicted and sentenced to hard labor for crimes they did not commit as a result of
judicial error. The writers’ treatment of the judicial system and the court is overtly
critical. At the same time, the court trial and erroneous punishment provoke spiritual
enlightenment and “resurrection” in Dmitry Karamazov and Dmitry Nekhliudov.
14
This
fact, of course, does not justify the inefficiency of the system of justice, but shifts the
emphasis from legal to moral judgment and punishment and, by opposing the two, once
again shows the inferiority of the former compared to the latter.
Thus, as a rule, the Russian legal canon proves the impossibility of attaining justice
through legal institutions by portraying the individual’s sufferings and even death caused
by attempts to do so.
15
These canonical texts – many of them written by the “generals” of
Russian literature (Tynianov) – are most commonly objects of scholarship within the
field of Law and Literature.
16
There are, however, literary works that differ strikingly
from this canon. The central way in which they do so is by having their characters deal
14
A similar transformation happens to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
15
Ivan Goliakov’s presentation of Russian classical law-related texts in his book Sud i zakonnost’ v russkoi
khudozhestvennoi literature XIX veka (Court and Legality in Nineteenth-century Russian Literature, 1956)
supports this conclusion. While not using the term “canon,” the author examines the literary treatment of
legal topics throughout the nineteenth century, as well as writers’ biographical connections with the legal
sphere. The book consists of fourteen chapters, devoted to single authors studied in chronological order:
Radishchev, Krylov, Pushkin, Gogol, Nekrasov, Gertsen, Sukhovo-Kobylin,
Ostrovsky, Saltykov-
Shchedrin, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Zlatovratsky, and Korolenko. Although the main
significance of
Goliakov’s work lies in collecting data rather than analyzing or theorizing about it, in terms
of its scope, this study still remains unrivaled in Russian Law and Literature scholarship. At the same time,
comprehensive as it is, the book does not include Leskov’s rich “legal” writing. It is also likely that
Goliakov’s choice and interpretation of authors was not free from ideological bias: in Soviet times, the
prerevolutionary judicial system could only be presented as corrupt and inefficient.
16
For this reason such law-related texts that clearly shaped the national canon as Dostoevsky’s Crime and
Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Sukhovo-Kobylin’s trilogy were
deliberately left on the margins of the present dissertation. That said, these works, which have been
thoroughly studied by Russian and Western scholars such as Richard Weisberg, Gary Rosenshield, Harriet
Murav, etc., constitute a necessary point of reference for this research.
15
successfully with legal matters by providing a necessary “adjustment” – mercy,
compassion or a trick – to the system of justice in order to secure a happy ending.
This
dissertation focuses primarily on such “non-canonical” texts and examines the particular
and unique ways of attaining justice in them.
In this “minor branch,” the unattainability of justice through the standard judicial
process is assumed from the start, but when the “straight” way of attaining justice is
blocked, there are always alternative – extralegal – ones. Those ways can be either from
“above” or from “below,”
17
i.e. either by appealing to mercy of a high authority, or by
unlawfully taking one’s due with physical force, or by circumventing the law through
personal wit and cunning. These three options define the set of actants in “legal” plots:
the authority, the humble petitioner, the noble avenger and the rogue or trickster –
although some hybrid types also occur. Remarkably, the named ways of attaining justice
– either from “above” or from “below” – correspond to the extremes of Russian
patrimonialism discussed by Kashnikov, namely authoritarianism and anarchy.
Each of the three chapters of this dissertation presents one of three ways to attain
justice. Chapter One deals with successful appeals for mercy before a figure of authority
(Empress Catherine II and Pugachev) in Pushkin’s Kapitanskaia dochka (The Captain’s
Daughter, 1836). Thanks to their humaneness and position above the law, they are able to
transcend its bounds with mercy. The satirical works of Leskov analyzed in Chapter Two
17
The idea that Russians as a rule put themselves either “above” or “below” the law belongs to Georgii
Fedotov. The patrimonial character of Russian justice, examined by Kashnikov, implies that in the national
cultural tradition, “vertical” relations between the superior (God, ruler, father) and the inferior (mortal,
subject, son) prevail over “horizontal” between equals. The “vertical” patrimonial paradigm, as well as
“vertical” mercy, where pardon comes from the superior to the inferior, is generally incompatible with the
rule of law.
16
provide a whole gallery of trickster-types practicing the way of attaining justice through
personal resourcefulness and cunning. These characters usually know the judicial system
well and use their knowledge to their own ends, which sometimes coincides with the
pursuit of justice. The highest degree of skill for them is to circumvent the law without
ever breaking it.
18
Finally, Chapter Three studies an example of attaining – or rather
securing – justice through force, as seen in Mikhalkov’s Twelve. In contrast to the
canonical treatment of this method in Pushkin’s “Dubrovsky,” where the protagonist fails
to achieve his goal,
19
Mikhalkov’s juror #2 promises to protect the innocent Chechen boy
from his enemies and to punish the actual killers of the boy’s foster-father, which the law
cannot do. The film does not show the fulfillment of this promise, but the portrayal of the
protagonist as a man of his word suggests that he will carry it out.
At the same time, it should be noticed that there exists a considerable number of
texts where justice is eventually attained and a proper order is restored, but only as a
result of the miraculous intervention of some deus ex machina. This happens, for
instance, in Russian law-related plays of the late eighteenth century
20
and in Nikolai
18
As one of the Russian most famous trickster-heroes, the great kombinator Ostap Bender, brilliantly
phrased it, “I admit that I’m no cherub, of course. I have no wings. But I respect the criminal code. That is
my weakness” (Il’f and Petrov 25).
19
Vladimir Dubrovsky represents the character type of the noble robber who seeks to restore social justice
through violence, although he eventually abandons the thought of personal revenge after falling in love
with the daughter of his offender. Remarkably, in both The Captain’s Daughter and “Dubrovsky,” the
conflict arises from the collision between different conceptions of justice: “vertical” patrimonial shared by
Troekurov, Catherine II, Masha Mironova, Vasilisa Egorovna, Pugachev and Savel’ich, and “horizontal”
aristocratic shared by the Dubrovskys, father and son, and Grinev. Remarkably yet predictably, the first –
significantly more numerous – group includes the most and least powerful characters, while the second –
those in the middle of social hierarchy.
20
By analyzing eight law-related plays in her monograph The Play of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment
Theater (2003), the historian Elise K. Wirtschafter comes to the following conclusion regarding Russian
17
Ostrovsky’s comedy Goriachee serdtse (An Ardent Heart, 1869). This sort of narrative is
deliberately left beyond the scope of the present dissertation,
21
as well as that where the
protagonist attains justice at the cost of sacrificing himself, as in Mikhail Lermontov’s
narrative poem “Pesnia pro kuptsa Kalashnikova” (“The Song of the Merchant
Kalashnikov,” 1837).
For the purposes of the present research, the selection of Russian “non-canonical”
law-related works consists of Pushkin’s poem “Andzhelo” (1833) and his only historical
novel The Captain’s Daughter, a number of Leskov’s short stories written in the 1860s-
1880s, and the film Twelve (2007) by Nikita Mikhalkov. In spite of obvious differences
in genre, medium, historical period and artistic value, these works constitute a unity in
their treatment of legal issues, which will be explained and explored further in this
dissertation. This unity allows the researcher to analyze these works as a single body (in
their idiosyncrasies and in their interconnectedness), which appears to be productive and
beneficial.
22
Moreover, analysis of Leskov’s law-related texts introduces the “minor
branch” of Russian literature (Eikhenbaum, “Teoriia formal’nogo metoda”), as opposed
idea of justice at that epoch: justice stands for the natural order created by God and preserved on earth by a
monarch, whose authority transcended both the legality and the judicial process. According to the scholar,
the purpose of the judicial process was understood as a restoration of the social order violated by corrupt
individuals. Personal moral virtue was considered the “antidote” to corrupt legal institutions, inadequate
notions of legality, and the absence of jurisprudence. This understanding of justice coincides with the
stereotype characterized by patrimonialism and “law-justice” paradigm.
21
What distinguishes this deus ex machina resolution of a legal plot from that about attaining justice from
“above,” through the “good tsar,” is that in the former, the authority does not appear in the text personally
and its interference in the chain of events is not motivated by any reason other than an abstract love of
justice, while in the latter it happens as a result of the authority’s communication with a petitioner.
22
This has not been done sufficiently. Thus, only a few Russian “legal” writers, i.e. major figures such as
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Sukhovo-Kobylin, are recognized as being important to
the Law and Literature
movement. Most existing research is limited to either a specific writer or a book, without offering a
general, systematic perspective on Russian legal thinking.
18
to the literature of the “generals,” to Russian studies of law and literature, thus expanding
the legal canon and emphasizing its complexity.
The present research springs from two main hypotheses. The first considers that the
Russian legal tradition shows a tendency towards pruning the triad of law, justice and
mercy into a binary opposition by eliding the central concept of justice. Thus, Pushkin
notably cuts out all but one mentions of justice from his “Andzhelo.” The second
hypothesis explores skepticism about the power of the word and rhetoric in legal issues
and a tendency resulting from this skepticism to minimize the role of speaking in
attaining justice. This skepticism is normally expressed by opposing the word to the deed,
on the one hand, and to silence, on the other, and through the opposition between the oral
and written word, in which the latter represents the letter of the law.
23
Let us now
examine the stated hypotheses in more detail.
In his last work Kul'tura i vzryv (Culture and Explosion, 1992), Yuri Lotman, a
Russian literary scholar, cultural historian and semiotician, suggests that the West tends
to perceive the universe in ternary oppositions, e.g. “heaven – purgatory – hell,” while in
Russia those are reduced to strict binary oppositions (“heaven – hell”). According to the
scholar, ternary oppositions of the West emphasize the norm and average, while Russia’s
preference for binary oppositions stems from the longing for an unattainable ideal. This is
why ternary oppositions are stable, whereas binary ones, which offer no mediator
between the ideal and anti-ideal (real), are fraught with “explosions.” By applying his
hypothesis to Russian law-related literature, Lotman comes to the conclusion that the
23
Lotman connects the oppositions of “law vs. mercy” and “oral vs. written word” with those of “state vs.
individual” and “collective vs. individual memory” (Kul’tura i vzryv 143, 204).
19
ternary opposition of law, justice and mercy undergoes a similar reduction. Thus, argues
Lotman, in the Western legal model justice plays the role of mediator between law and
mercy: it underpins the law, on the one hand, and at the same time, allows the law to be
sidestepped through mercy and equity. On the contrary, Russia’s legal mind rethinks the
ternary opposition of law, justice and mercy as a binary opposition of “law vs. mercy.”
This does not mean at all that the concept of justice is perceived as unimportant, but
rather indicates a desire to “replace jurisprudence with moral or religious principles”
(Lotman, Kul’tura i vzryv 142; my translation).
About fifty years before Lotman, Georgii Fedotov, a Russian émigré historian,
philosopher and religious thinker, came to a similar conclusion in his book The Russian
Religious Mind (1946), a seminal contribution to the study of Russia’s idea of law, justice
and mercy. Fedotov noted in the national legal tradition a strong tendency “to interpret
justice as a particular application of charity,” which can be explained by the fact that
justice in Russia has a moral value only if “exercised for the benefit of the poor and
oppressed” (390). This thesis implies that in Russian legal thought, justice and mercy
paradoxically merge and together are opposed to the law, which changes the relationship
within the “legal triad” compared to the Western tradition.
Kashnikov’s recent examination of the patrimonial nature of Russia’s justice brings
him close to Fedotov’s conclusion. If patrimonial justice is based on everybody’s equality
in having no rights before the despotism of the ruler and if the administration of justice
depends on a person rather then on a principle – which, according to Kashnikov, is still
20
the case in Russia, – then arbitrary justice becomes indistinguishable from mercy so long
as the one at the top of the hierarchy is benevolent or lenient.
24
The notion of the “legal triad” inherited from Lotman’s ternary opposition of “law –
justice – mercy” is at the core of the present research. However, it is not a recognized
academic term and as such may require clarification.
25
Within the triad, law is understood
as a certain binding rule; justice – as a universal principle demanding that the response to
an act be commensurate with that act and that identical acts be treated alike; and mercy –
as compassion and forgiveness which lead to a departure from the demands of law and
justice. In view of justice’s merging with mercy in Russian culture, motivation becomes a
useful criterion for distinguishing between the two. Although the following analysis deals
with a number of instances in which an act of mercy also serves to restore justice, in all
of them sincere compassion, an urge to do the “right thing” at any particular moment, is
the main driver, not indignation against injustice. Sometimes, like in the case of
Mikhalkov’s Twelve, the author himself defines the protagonist’s initial plan as an act of
mercy, in spite of the fact that it hardly fits into the common understanding of the term.
24
The personalized patrimonial character of national justice is also emphasized by the historian Richard S.
Wortman. In his monograph, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness (1976), Wortman
explores the formation and development of Russian legal consciousness from the beginning of the
eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century with a focus on the judicial reforms of 1864. The scholar
claims that because of a low level of legal consciousness in society, on the one hand, and the antilegalist
ideas of the Enlightenment, namely a belief that after establishing an ideal rational legislation there will be
no need for lawyers, on the other, the reforms resulted in a simplified model of justice, according to which
one should obey not the law, but an authority figure.
25
Thus, there are examples of alternative uses of the expression; for instance, in her article “Law and
Order: Exploring the British Legal System in David Hare’s Murmuring Judges,” Karen C. Blansfield
applies it to the judiciary arm, the prisons and the police.
21
The hypothesis about the Russian reduction of the “legal triad” to a binary
opposition does not necessarily mean that justice is unimportant for Russian culture or
even that it is less important than in the West. Justice is indisputably at the very core of
Dostoevsky’s legal writing, for example. This thesis postulates that the removal of justice
is precisely what makes the happy ending of non-canonical texts about law possible. It
will be more accurate, therefore, to define the essence of the triad’s transformation into a
binary opposition in terms of the theory of “semantic fields,” originally expounded by
Jost Trier. This theory states that a segment of reality is associated with a certain set of
words usually used to describe it, and that in different languages and cultures, the sets of
words which define the same segment of reality can be different (Candel). In the context
of this dissertation, that is to say that in contemplation and discussion of legal problems,
Western authors and characters use all three notions of the “legal triad” – law, justice and
mercy – to find the best possible solution to a problem, whereas Russian authors and
characters mostly use only two of them. Even if merely a gesture, justice is part of legal
discussion in the West but not in Russia.
Regarding the second hypothesis, Russian skepticism about the power of the word,
reasoning and rhetoric in judicial issues is really striking, and yet it has not become an
object of proper academic examination. This skepticism appears to be akin to the
phenomenon of the “failure of the word” studied by Richard Weisberg on the material of
literary texts by Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Camus and Melville, that constitute the world
canon of “legal” writing. The scholar observes that after the mid-nineteenth century, the
character of the lawyer – a hero of his time – became the prototype for the intellectual
22
hero of major literary works. Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, Flaubert’s Schahabarim and
Frédéric Moreau, Camus’s Jean-Baptiste Clemence and Melville’s Captain Vere are all
intellectuals driven by ressentiment – this major disease of modernity. They all try to
manipulate reality by words – the courtroom is, indeed, a place where words become
deeds – and all fail. These “legalistic” protagonists use the word to control unpredictable
reality, and “[h]ighly formalized language mediates between them and the exigencies of
life, protecting but also gradually distancing them from the sources of positive and
creative action” (Weisberg ix).
Weisberg’s approach would appear to be applicable to a larger number of texts –
literary as well as cinematic. At the same time, the author’s focus on one specific
character type and the genre of Realist novel – albeit typical for their time period –
eliminates a considerable segment of literary material from the scope of his research. As
this dissertation will show, Russian literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century has
a variety of legal-minded protagonists, some of whom are successful. On the other hand,
it looks like no matter what the hero’s success is, the failure of the word is universal. For
instance, the hero-tricksters of Nikolai Leskov succeed in attaining – or rather restoring –
justice by their simple actions, not by words or eloquence. Paradoxically, this skepticism
about the power of the word coexists with the acknowledged logocentrism of Russian
Orthodox culture. The constant juxtaposition of earthly word with the divine Word
provides a necessary context for the Russian understanding of the matter and explains
this paradox.
23
The two hypotheses outlined above are tested in three dissertation chapters, each
one focusing on the treatment of the “legal triad” in the oeuvre of a particular author or
within a specific text. The chapters are organized chronologically and, together, cover
over two centuries of Russian cultural history, arguing for a unity of national tradition of
legal thinking. Chapter One focuses on a number of fundamental law-related texts. This
chapter, entitled “Pushkin and Shakespeare: The ‘Quality of Mercy’ and Quantity of
Justice,” is a comparative study of the motif of petitioning in Alexander Pushkin’s poem
“Andzhelo” and his novel The Captain’s Daughter, alongside the English literary texts
that inspired them, namely two of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Merchant of Venice
(1598?) and Measure for Measure (1604?), and Walter Scott’s novel, The Heart of
Midlothian (1818). Remarkably, the title heroine of The Captain’s Daughter who comes
to plead before Empress Catherine the Great on behalf of her fiancé accused of treason
seeks “mercy, not justice,” whereas Shakespeare’s Isabella – at least initially – insists on
justice. As a rule, Shakespeare’s treatment of the “legal triad” appears to be more
complex, multidimensional and ambivalent than Pushkin’s.
From ancient myths to postmodern texts, the motif of petitioning – an appeal for
mercy before a magistrate on behalf of a person convicted under the law – has often been
at the core of writing about law. It naturally brings together all elements of the “legal
triad,” thus providing a unique opportunity to study how they correlate and interact. The
concept of mercy dominates this part of the dissertation. This dissertation’s comparative
analysis of these classical texts offers a new prospective on the particularities of Russian
legal thought.
24
The last section of Chapter One traces further developments of the motif of
petitioning in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature, specifically in
Sukhovo-Kobylin’s The Case, Tolstoy’s “Fal’shivyi kupon” (“The Forged Coupon,”
1904) and Bulgakov’s Master i Margarita (The Master and Margarita, first published
posthumously, in 1966-1967). This important focal point in the analysis of the concepts
of law, justice and mercy is further examined in the second and third chapters of this
dissertation.
Chapter Two, “Adjusting Justice: The Case of Nikolai Leskov,” examines the very
unorthodox treatment of the judicial system in stories by Nikolai Leskov in the broader
context of classical Russian literature. This author, considered one of the most
quintessentially Russian writers, expresses a critical and ironic – or as Leskov himself
called it, “tricky” – and, at the same time, surprisingly positive view of dealings with the
judicial system. In contrast to the authors analyzed in the previous chapter, Leskov’s
oeuvre has barely been studied from a “legal” perspective, with perhaps the only
exception being the famous crime tale, “Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda” (“Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk District,” 1864). This fact can be explained by the rudimentary
status of the Law and Literature movement in Russian studies, on the one hand, and the
difficulties presented by Leskov’s language for non-Russian researchers as well as the
paucity of translations of his works, on the other. At the same time, this chapter
demonstrates that Leskov’s “legal” writing is extremely rich and unique and is of great
interest for students of law and literature.
25
The analysis of a number of Leskov’s short stories whose intrigue unfolds around a
legal trick of some sort leads us to the conclusion about the existence of a certain
thematic invariant underlying seemingly random individual plots. Stories as disparate as
“Pigmei” (“The Pygmy,” 1876) and “Administrativnaia gratsiia” (“Administrative
Grace,” 1893), or “Staryi genii” (“The Old Genius,” 1884) and “O Petukhe i ego detiakh”
(“About Rooster and His Children,” first published 1917), written within three decades of
the Great Reforms, demonstrate remarkable similarities in their treatment of the “legal
triad.” These constant elements of Leskov’s idea of law, justice and mercy characterize
the author’s worldview as described by Irmhild Christina Sperrle, the author of the major
study of Leskov’s poetic world.
In this dissertation, special attention is given to the original Leskovian character
type of the “righteous trickster” that combines features of Leskov’s signature type of the
“righteous man” with those of the traditional trickster. This new character type is what
makes possible the writer’s unique and contradictory perspective on the national judicial
system, which is both critical and positive at the same time. The “righteous trickster” is a
vivid embodiment of Leskov’s philosophy of active love manifested through “small
steps” – little everyday deeds ordinary people do out of sympathy and compassion for
their neighbors.
Leskov not only opposes the application of the philosophy of “small steps” to the
sophisticated philosophy of murder, such as that expounded by Dostoevsky’s
Raskolnikov, and concrete deeds to abstract words, but he also contrasts the written and
oral word. His trickster heroes do this by objectifying the written word – usually that of
26
official documents – and manipulating it as an object. By fighting against the fixed word
of documents that represents the necessity of the law, these characters appear to be the
writer’s doubles. Implied criticism of the word is already found in Pushkin’s take on the
“legal triad” in the 1830s and does not disappear in the twentieth century as the final
chapter also demonstrates.
In Chapter Three, “Mikhalkov vs. Lumet: Russian Mercy against Western Law,”
the study of the concepts of law, justice and mercy switches from literature to cinema.
This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the two courtroom dramas, Twelve Angry
Men (1957) by Sidney Lumet and its remake Twelve by Nikita Mikhalkov. The analysis
focuses specifically on the treatment of the jury system in each work, also paying
attention to the subgenre of courtroom drama concerned with jury deliberation. A short
history of the institution of the jury in Russia and its treatment in literature provides the
necessary background for the analysis of the two films.
Unlike Pushkin’s and Leskov’s writings analyzed in Chapters One and Two, it is
remarkable that in Mikhalkov’s Twelve, the political constituent of the concepts of law,
justice and mercy dominates. By appropriating a classical American plot about jury
deliberation involving a minority boy accused of stabbing his father and transplanting it
to the Russian reality of the 2000s, Mikhalkov expresses his view of American
democracy and the values associated with it: the rule of law, collegial decision-making
and equality before the law. More important still, the director comments on the problem
of applying these democratic principles in post-Soviet Russia, arguing that they are
27
unsuitable. Mikhalkov is a propagator of the popular and long-standing belief in Russia’s
“unique path,” different from those of Western nations.
Mikhalkov shifts the main conflict of the story from the social to the political
sphere by making the defendant Chechen instead of the original Latino. Numerous insets
of wartime Chechnya shots and prominent politicians support this reading. The main idea
of Twelve emerges at the point where the plot of Twelve Angry Men ends. After twelve
jurors find out that the accused boy is not guilty – in the Russian movie, they prove his
innocence by finding the actual criminals, – the foreman, played by Mikhalkov himself,
suggests that the boy would be safer in prison. He therefore tries to convince his fellow
jurors to convict and imprison an innocent person in order to protect him from the real
criminals, the Moscow mafia, against whom the law is powerless.
The questionable idea of the protective safety of restraint is not new in literature. It
is seen, for example, in Pushkin’s late poem “Zabyv i roshchu i svobodu…” (“Having
forgotten both the woods and freedom…”) and O’Henry’s ironic short story “The Cop
and the Anthem” (1904). However, Mikhalkov takes the old idea to an extreme bordering
on political propaganda. Beyond any doubt, even though Twelve is a remake of Twelve
Angry Men and preserves the original plot quite accurately, ideologically the two films
could not be farther apart. At the same time, Mikhalkov’s idea of law, justice and mercy
appears as far removed from that of Dostoevsky as from Lumet’s, although both Russian
authors demonstrate a deep skepticism about the jury trial.
This dissertation’s methodology relies upon the theory of poetic invariants devised
by Alexander Zholkovsky, director of this thesis. The “poetics of expressiveness,”
28
developed by Zholkovsky in collaboration with Yurii Shcheglov, establishes the unity of
an author’s poetic world, i.e. its thematic and structural invariance expressed through a
number of variations of the same themes, motifs, and poetic devices (Zholkovsky and
Shcheglov). Together with textual analysis and close reading this approach allows us to
see the revelation of deep structures in place of individual occurrences.
In addition to this, a comparative approach seems to be particularly beneficial
because of Russia’s recurrent urge to import the fundamentals of the Western legal
system, which resulted in the hybrid nature of the national idea of the “legal triad.”
Russia has always needed the Other to understand itself and has constantly tested itself
against Western models. Linguistic and etymological analysis also helps to reveal
specificities of Russian idea of law, justice and mercy in comparison with the Western, as
language not only transmits but also contains significant cultural information.
26
Finally,
quantitative analysis of vocabulary, in spite of its obvious limitations, especially in the
sphere of the humanities, is used to support the present research.
This dissertation confirms that in different media and over two hundred years,
Russian culture has expounded a constant set of ideas regarding the “legal triad.”
Understanding the national idea of law, justice and mercy is a crucial element for
understanding of the Russian national identity. It is time now to see how the national idea
of law, justice and mercy reveals itself in literature and film and to put the two proposed
hypotheses to the test.
26
Thus, as a rule, English seems to have a more developed and differentiated vocabulary for legal terms
than Russian, which indicates its indebtedness to Roman Law and its more regularized legal thought.
29
Chapter One
Pushkin vs. Shakespeare:
The “Quality of Mercy” and Quantity of Justice
I have come to ask for mercy, not for justice.
Alexander Pushkin. The Captain’s
Daughter
This chapter studies the idea of law, justice and mercy by analyzing the literary
motif of petitioning, i.e. of an appeal for mercy before a magistrate on behalf of a person
convicted under the law. This motif naturally brings together all elements of the “legal
triad,” thus providing a unique opportunity to study how they correlate and interact. The
national understanding of law, justice and mercy expressed in Russian literature will be
compared with the treatment of these concepts in English literature with the aim of
identifying its unique features and idiosyncrasies. In this respect, a particular goal of this
chapter will be to test Yurii Lotman’s dichotomy of two cultural models, “agreement”
and “self-giving,” – associated with Western Europe and Russia, respectively, – and its
legal implications.
The following analysis focuses on the writings of Alexander Pushkin, a writer
considered the “everything” of Russian culture, whose role in “translating” (or
“transplanting”) ideas from foreign cultures to the national one and in shaping national
identity cannot be overestimated. Pushkin’s “universal receptivity” registered by
Dostoevsky made him an excellent mediator between Russia and the West, in particular
regarding their perspectives on law, justice and mercy, as well as a spokesperson for his
30
time. This chapter examines two of his “legal” texts – the narrative poem “Andzhelo”
(1834), a loose translation of Shakespeare’s comedy Measure for Measure, and his only
historical novel, The Captain’s Daughter (1836) – in comparison with English literary
texts he adapted and refered to.
Lotman grouped these two texts together with Pushkin’s short poem “The Feast of
Peter the Great” (1835) in a specific thematic cluster, whose central values were charity,
gift-giving, unexpected mercy, and a “‘saving [or salvation-bearing] inconsistency’ vis-à-
vis legal norms in absolutist states” (Emerson 94).
27
All three works, according to the
scholar, present an image of the good tsar – a historic figure, except in “Andzhelo” – as a
source of mercy and thus a humane corrective to laws that are overly strict and rigid.
Going beyond Lotman’s political reading, one can see all the main themes and ideas of
Pushkin’s later work summed up in these texts: relationship with the authorities, the
concept of the nobleman’s honor, humility and serene acceptance of death.
In order to define the singularity of the Russian view on law, justice and mercy, the
named works of Pushkin will be analyzed in comparison with a number of English texts
that served as literary sources for them: two comedies by Shakespeare, The Merchant of
Venice (1596-1598?) and Measure for Measure (1603-1604?), and Sir Walter Scott’s
novel The Heart of Midlothian (1818). These texts also unfold around the motif of
petitioning and are central for the English canon of literature about law. Moreover, as
sources for “Andzhelo” and The Captain’s Daughter, they influenced the Russian
tradition of “legal” writing as well.
27
Alexander Dolinin adds to this list Pushkin’s fairy tale in verse, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” and Catherine
O’Neil – the poem “Poltava.”
31
All the texts mentioned above have long been objects of devoted attention of
literary critics, as well as of historians, sociologists, anthropologists and other humanities
scholars. Each of these works has been thoroughly analyzed alone, as well as in
comparison with related ones, e.g. “Andzhelo” and Measure for Measure or The
Captain’s Daughter and Walter Scott’s novels. Scholars such as Danson, Gless,
Hawkins, Yoshino, Lotman, Zaslavsky have already made the problem of law, justice and
mercy in these texts the focus of their analysis. Nevertheless, the selected texts,
“Andzhelo,” The Captain’s Daughter, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure
and The Heart of Mid-Lothian, have never been studied as a cluster, although such a
comparative analysis clarifies the understanding of the concepts of law, justice and mercy
in their historical mutations and national specificity.
Apart from the motifs of judgment, conviction and subsequent pardon, a positive
resolution of the conflict between law and justice on the one hand and mercy on the
other, i.e. (at least formally) a happy ending, unites the abovementioned works.
28
This
distinguishes them from, for instance, Victorien Sardou’s drama La Tosca (1887) and
Giacomo Puccini’s opera of the same name (libretto Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa,
1900), in which Cavaradossi, initially sentenced to death, is indeed shot at the end despite
Tosca’s pleas. Although the French play has a very similar plot design and a set of
characters, including a good ruler and a bad deputy, as in, say, Measure for Measure, its
28
The justifiability and naturalness of the happy ending in the case of Pushkin and Shakespeare was
questioned by many scholars, who tended to see it as a rather arbitrary addition, which contradicts the
content and general mode of the text (Danson, Drakakis). For the purposes of the following analysis, this
dissertation assumes that each author wrote and ended his text in accordance with his understanding of the
three concepts and their interaction and that each element of the text complies with that general idea.
32
central conflict lies not between law, justice and mercy but in the dramatic relationships
between the lovers complicated by political struggle, jealousy and betrayal. Nevertheless,
the finale of the play does not strike one as completely tragic and unjust since the noble
cause, for which Angelotti, Cavaradossi and, in a sense, Tosca herself died, triumphs.
Besides the motif of petitioning, three of the selected texts, Measure for Measure,
“Andzhelo” and The Captain’s Daughter, also share the motif of the ruler in disguise,
which gives them a distinctly political dimension. This ancient migrant motif receives a
new treatment in the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, so that a presentation of a well-
known historical figure in unexpected circumstances or from an unusual perspective
becomes one of this writer’s trademarks, repeated many times in works of his followers
and epigones. Both Richard I in Ivanhoe (1820) and Louis XI in Quentin Durward (1823)
are first introduced to the reader disguised, and so are Pugachev and Catherine II in The
Captain’s Daughter. The introduction of the traditional motif of the ruler in disguise into
the genre of historical novel signifies a new understanding of history and the role of an
individual in it and becomes a sort of a literary game with the audience (Zholkovsky,
“Ochnye stavki”).
The topic of English influences on Pushkin’s oeuvre is well studied in both Russian
and Western literary scholarship, although certain questions still remain unsolved. One of
them is the level of the writer’s proficiency in the language and therefore the depth of his
penetration into English literature. Pushkin, who grew up in a Francophile milieu and cut
his teeth on French literature and theater, gradually became disappointed with it and
abandoned his former idols for English writers, primarily Byron, Walter Scott and
33
Shakespeare (Kruzhkov). Ironically, English texts were, at first, only available to Pushkin
in French translations but in the late 1820s he started seriously studying the language and
made considerable progress (Dolinin, Kruzhkov). Whatever the truth about Pushkin’s
proficiency in English, all critics agree that the writer would never borrow and embrace
the influence of what was not akin to and consonant with his own worldview.
It seems only natural to expect that a comparative analysis of literary works so
closely related in terms of their subject matter, plot structure and the system of characters
can help to reveal significant differences between the English and Russian understanding
of the concepts of law, justice and mercy. At the same time, one has to admit that despite
all cultural and historical dissimilarities, Russian and English idea of law, justice and
mercy share Biblical origins. On the other hand, the notorious Russian disrespect for the
law and legal nihilism
29
as well as strong patrimonial tendencies in the legal sphere
constitute a significant difference between the two. Indeed, although the traditional
opposition of the letter and the spirit of the law or such deplorable phenomena as corrupt
judges are known to both cultures, the frequency of references to them in Russian culture
is considerably greater than in English. For instance, only one out of twenty-three sayings
about law in Vladimir Dal’s Poslovitsy russkogo naroda (Bywords of the Russian People,
1862), still the most popular and authoritative collection of national proverbs, treats the
concept in an unambiguously positive manner: “Недолго той земле стоять, где учнут
29
This national feature finds its extreme expression in the popular proverb “Закон что дышло – куда
повернешь, туда и вышло” that might be loosely translated as “The law is like a harnessed horse: it will
go wherever a driver turns it.” The English expression “The law is an ass” might seem similar due to its use
of animalistic imagery but, in fact, has a different meaning, it is usually said of the application of the law
that is contrary to common sense.
34
уставы ломать” (literally, “That land will not exist long where people start breaking
laws”).
30
The explanation for this phenomenon can be traced to the history of forming and
developing of the legal sphere in both countries, most importantly, to the absence of the
legacy of Roman law in Russia. As Donald F. Bond claims,
English proverbs which praise the impartiality or even-handed justice of the
law seem to be, as a rule, translations of Latin sayings, or at least may be
traced back to the Roman maxims. The great body of native proverbs, on the
other hand, presents an unflattering picture of the law and lawyers. Like the
fabliaux and the early plays these popular sayings reflect a distrust of the
legal profession on a number of counts. (“Law and Lawyers,” 724)
Otherwise, Anglo-Saxon law, just as well as Russian, had its roots in a “primitive theory
of blood revenge, and an elaborate scale of “fees” or payments… laid down which might
be exacted for spilling of a man’s blood” (Bond, “English Legal Proverbs” 926). It is
obvious, therefore, that the relationship between the concepts of law, justice and mercy in
both Russian and English cultures is problematic.
Part I. On the Meaning of the “Legal Triad”
Before proceeding to the actual comparison of the texts, it will be useful to make a
few preliminary general observations regarding the medium, i.e. the language they are
written in: the meaning, etymology and “semantic haloes” of the analyzed concepts.
There are two Russian words corresponding to different meanings of the English
word “law”: zakon and pravo. The latter is defined as a system of rules, usually enforced
30
Therefore, one may come to a conclusion that while the law is good for the state, it is not necessarily
equally good for the people.
35
through a set of institutions, that serves as a primary social mediator of relations among
people and between people and the state, while the former refers to a particular kind of
law. Both English “law” and Russian zakon have a philosophical dimension, that of a
permanent and indispensable relationship among phenomena in the objective world
independent from human consciousness, e.g. in expressions“laws of nature,” “the second
law of thermodynamics,” etc. The difference between the first and the second meanings
of “law” is obvious: in the first the correlation between a cause and an effect is
contingent, whereas in the second, it is objective. In other words, law in the second sense
is a formulation of an existing rule, a statement of fact deduced from observation, while
in the first it is a convention accepted as just by a group of people. What may connect
these two meanings of the word is a third, religious, meaning: “law” understood as a
body of divine commandments as expressed in religious texts.
The Russian pravo is related to pravda (“truth”) and pravyi (“right”); it also has a
meaning of a moral or legal entitlement of a person to have, get, or do something. The
English word “law” derives from the Old English “lagu” literally meaning “something
laid down or fixed,” and zakon has the same root as nachalo (“beginning, origin”), konets
(“end”), and iskoni (“since the beginning of time”).
31
Therefore, unlike its English
counterpart with a rather spatial connotation,
32
the Russian term has a distinct temporal
31
All information regarding the etymology of English words is taken from the Online Etymology
Dictionary (www.etymonline.com) and of Russian – from the online version of Vasmer, M.
Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo yazyka: V 4 tomakh. Moscow: “Astrel’,” 2004 (vasmer.narod.ru).
32
Compare with the Russian words postanovlenie (“resolution, statement”), ustav (“statute”) and ustoi
(“foundations, principles”). This “spatial” meaning of the word creates a link between the words stoiat’ (“to
stand”) and ustavy in the previously mentioned proverb “That land will not exist long where people start
breaking laws.” The use of the verb uchinat’ (“to begin, to start”) in this context should also be noted. The
36
meaning. In other words, the law is the law in the English tradition because it exists, i.e. it
is “stated, settled,”
33
whereas in Russian it is the law because it has existed for a long
time, from the “very beginning” and has, therefore, been authorized by tradition, by the
fact that “it has always been like this.” In this light, bribery might appear more “lawful”
in the country than any anti-corruption laws. The two different understandings of law as a
set of written, fixed-on-paper rules or as a set of traditions and customs underlie the
opposition of “spatial” English law vs. “temporal” Russian.
Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, fairness and
equity. An important difference between Russian and English interpretations of the
concept is that Russian has two separate words corresponding to two aspects of the
meaning of the English “justice”: spravedlivost’, or the quality of being [morally] just or
righteous, and pravosudie, judicial administration of law or equity. Both meanings have
the same root, prav- (“rightness, truth”), which makes the separation of one referring to
ethics from the other referring to a legal system even more striking. This root also links
Russian justice with the law (pravo).
Finally, the word “mercy” derives from the Old French “mercit, merci,” i.e.
“reward, gift, kindness,” from the Latin mercedem “reward, wages, hire” (in vulgar Latin
“favor, pity”), which itself derives from merx (“wares, merchandise”).
34
It denotes
important semantic tension occurs between static, old, traditional ustavy and stoiat,’ on the one hand, and
dynamic, temporal, new uchinat’ on the other.
33
In his analysis of Measure for Measure, Kenji Yoshino notes that under Roman law, “courts could
invalidate statutes that had been unenforced for long periods under the doctrine “desuetude,” which
recognized the unfairness of resurrecting dead letters” (68).
34
The etymological correspondence between ethical and financial issues becomes especially significant in
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, as it was pointed out by a number of scholars (Danson). It gives the
37
forbearance, compassion or forgiveness shown by God to a sinful man and also a human
disposition to forgive or to show compassion. Often mercy implies compassion and
forgiveness of the high and mighty towards the weak and humble. God’s mercy to
humanity (the religious constituent of the concept) is a model of a sovereign’s mercy to
his subjects (political constituent) and each person’s mercy to his neighbor (moral
constituent). The corresponding Russian word, miloserdie, a calque from Latin
misericordia (“mercy”), has the same meaning. However, there is another word in
Russian, milost’, which combines the meanings of English “mercy” and “grace” and
contains the semes of “kindness, pity, gift and favor” (even unwelcomed).
35
As a theological concept, “mercy” means not getting the punishment that one
deserves, whereas “grace” denotes getting a reward that one does not deserve. Therefore,
as manifestations of absolute power, obviously, they both contradict the principles of
justice and law, although in different ways. The two concepts are significant as divine
attributes, and their fusion into one word, milost’, effects both and provides a new aspect
to their correlation with law and justice. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, all human
beings are born into sin, hence they only deserve destruction and death. However, the
Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is an eternal life with God
through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:23). So, even though people deserve to die because of
their sin, God saves them from this destiny. This demonstrates God’s mercy – sparing
people a deserved punishment. Moreover, God let His son die for His creatures so that
playwright an opportunity to present the opposition of “generosity vs. misery” in both its literal and
figurative meaning and perhaps it is what promotes merchant Antonio, and not usurer Shylock to the
position of the title character of the play.
35
This word will be more important for the following analysis than miloserdie itself.
38
they can have the gift of living in eternity with Him in heaven. This demonstrates God’s
grace – giving people what they admittedly do not deserve.
Although Russian enriches the meaning of mercy by combining it with the concept
of “grace” in the term milost’, unlike English, it fails to capture the difference between
“mercy” and “clemency,” or mercy shown by someone whose duty or function it is to
administer justice or to punish offenses. The word “clemency” is usually translated into
Russian as miloserdie (“mercy”), as for instance, in the title of Mozart’s opera La
clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus/Miloserdie Tita; libretto by Caterino Mazzolà,
1791). Thus, remarkably, the Russian tradition does not separate the official pardon from
personal forgiveness.
One more important term to be added to the “legal lexicon” is “equity.” Its most
general meaning is “fairness and justice in the way people are treated; justice according
to natural law or right; specifically, freedom from bias or favoritism” (Merriam-Webster
dictionary) that corresponds to Russian spravedlivost', bespristrastnost'. However, for the
purposes of this research its specific legal meaning of “a system of law originating in the
English chancery and comprising a settled and formal body of legal and procedural rules
and doctrines that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and are designed
to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by substantive law” (Merriam-Webster
dictionary) is more significant. Basically, it is the principle that “allows the magistrate to
make exceptions to general laws where enforcing the general law would lead to an
injustice under specific local circumstances – a ‘correction of law, where it is deficient on
account of its universality’” (Magedanz 327). Therefore, equity is supposed to correct
39
and mitigate the severity and formalism of the law, yet at the same time to “preserve [its]
authority” (Majeske 173), which mercy would otherwise undermine. Thus, equity exists
within the sphere of law whereas mercy is an escape from it. Remarkably, this specific
meaning of “equity” is unknown to Russian culture, as well as the phenomenon it
denotes.
The preceding etymological analysis of the elements of the “legal triad” is by no
means exhaustive: it does not cover all related concepts or the correlation between whole
semantic fields, including synonyms, or account for changes in meaning over the course
of history. However, it allows the researcher to make a few preliminary observations
regarding the differences between the Russian and English ideas of law, justice and
mercy, which will be tested further in this chapter. First of all, the English tradition
predictably provides a more developed and specific legal terminology than the Russian,
which can be explained by the legacy of Roman law. An important implication of this
difference is that Russian culture treats the “legal triad” in more radical and absolute
terms and perceives relationship among its elements as more antagonistic.
Secondly, the Russian understanding of law would appear to emphasize its meaning
as a custom and tradition in contrast to its English understanding as a set rule, i.e. in
English legislative tradition (both statute and common law) a law becomes law as soon as
it is set, while in the Russian collective consciousness it seems to require “sanctification”
by time. Finally, the fact that Russian language emphasizes the distinction between the
idea of justice and its administration (spravedlivost’ vs. pravosudie), while disregarding
the difference between various “faces” of mercy, such as clemency and equity, brings us
40
to the following conclusion. Outside of God, any authority assuming the right to
administer justice can potentially fail, whereas one cannot go wrong showing mercy, for
this indeed brings one closer to God. In this respect, the difference between mercy and
justice is the difference between imitating and pretending to be God.
The correlation between the concepts of law, justice and mercy is even more
complex and problematic than the interaction between the semes within each of the
terms. This can be seen from such universal proverbs as “Extreme law, extreme
injustice,” “An ounce of love [sometimes “favor” or “pity] goes farther than a pound of
justice” or “He who has no charity, deserves no mercy.” The first one problematizes the
relationship between justice and law it supposedly underlies: justice is based on the idea
of proper measure and, when the balance is upset, it no longer exists. The second saying
suggests that mercy does more good than justice, without specifying what exactly that
good is. The third proverb is remarkable because, in spite of its direct reference to mercy
and charity (in the sense of kindness and tolerance in judging others), it paradoxically
reinforces the main principle of justice, “an eye for an eye.” Moreover, national folklore
quite often bears two mutually contradictory morals, as for example in the sayings
“Severe law provokes crimes” and “What is severe, is rightful.” At the same time,
mankind never gives up its quest to reconcile all three concepts and to balance them
perfectly.
36
36
An interesting attempt to balance law, justice and mercy may be found in Sherlock Holmes’ stories by
Arthur Conan Doyle, the enormous popularity of which is, in particular, due to the popular views on legal
matters they express. In “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange” (1904), the famous detective investigates
the murder of a violent and abusive husband Sir Brackenstall, discovering the identity of the criminal but
letting him go because his deed is morally just. At the start, however, Holmes psychologically tests Croker
41
Pushkin’s take on the problem of law, justice and mercy is, on the one hand, rooted
in its treatment in Russian folklore, while on the other, considerably indebted to foreign
literary sources. The last years of Pushkin’s creative work were characterized by the
dominance of prose and drama over lyric poetry, and in the sphere of drama,
Shakespeare’s influence was incomparable with any other (Surat and Bocharov). It
started in the mid-1820s when the poet was working on his tragedy on the subject from
Russian history, Boris Godunov (1825), after being exiled to Mikhailovskoe. In this
period, in tune with the re-discovery of Shakespeare by the European Romanticists,
Pushkin was primarily attracted to the Bard’s philosophy of history and the treatment of
the character of nationhood (Shaitanov). At approximately the same time, Pushkin wrote
a parody on Shakespeare’s narrative poem The Rape of Lucretia (1594) as a
counterbalance to his serious take on history, which was typical for his creative method.
His mock-poem “Graf Nulin” (“Count Nulin,” 1825) transposes the events of the Roman
legend to early 19
th
-century Russia and offers an alternative – comic – ending to the
story. Later, in the 1830s, he turned to the Bard’s “problem plays,” in particular Measure
for Measure, that appeared to be more consonant with his artistic pursuit and state of
mind at that period.
and discovers that the man is ready to sacrifice his own life in order to rescue his beloved. Remarkably, the
detective also considers it necessary to “stage” a trial, in which Dr. Watson plays the role of the jury and
“officially” acquits the accused.
42
Part II. Shakespeare’s Measure of Law, Justice and Mercy
Let us begin the comparative analysis of Pushkin’s and Shakespeare’s conceptions
of law, justice and mercy with The Merchant of Venice. Although its connection with
Pushkin’s work is less direct and obvious than that of Measure for Measure, Pushkin was
familiar with the comedy as witnessed by his miscellaneous notes from the 1830s entitled
“Table-talk.” Among other observations, it contains the poet’s thoughts about
Shakespeare, specifically about the multidimensional nature of his literary characters.
Thus, reflecting on the type of a miser in literature Pushkin compares Molière’s
Harpagon and Shakespeare’s Shylock in favor of the latter, whom he finds more complex
and therefore more true-to-life and “real”: “In Molière the avare is avaricious and
nothing else. Shylock is avaricious, resourceful, revengeful, a devoted father, a man of
wit and sharp intelligence” (cited in Bayley 212). In the same fragment, he also opposes
Tartuffe and Angelo as two classical hypocrites and, again, shows a preference for
Shakespeare’s multidimensional and dynamic character. Apart from proving Pushkin’s
familiarity with The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, these notes also
indicate that the writer considered the two plays about judgment together and that the
controversial characters of Shylock and Angelo attracted his attention.
Of all Pushkin’s writings, The Merchant of Venice is most usually compared to The
Covetous Knight (1830), one of The Little Tragedies cycle written during the first
Boldino autumn and concerned with human passions and vices (Kruzhkov). Both texts
are centered on the images of misers, Shylock and the Baron, treated as complex and
tragic figures rather than traditionally comic ones. Moreover, both depict Jewish usurers
43
– Shylock in Shakespeare’s and Solomon in Pushkin’s text. At the same time, there are a
number of links between the Shakespeare’s play and Pushkin’s “Andzhelo” and The
Captain’s Daughter. For instance, the author makes Italy, not Vienna, the venue in
“Andzhelo,” which might suggest a return to the original Renaissance novella “The Story
of Epitia” from Cintio’s Hecatommithi (1565), or it might be a reference to the Italian
setting of The Merchant of Venice.
Besides this, the motif of a dead person controlling a living one from beyond the
grave, which in The Merchant of Venice defines the destiny of Portia bound by her late
father’s will, was likely to attract Pushkin’s attention, in view of his work on The Stone
Guest simultaneously with The Covetous Knight – both belonging to the same genre of
“little tragedy.” In this dramatic poem, a tragic version of the Spanish legend of Don
Juan, Pushkin creates an image of the young widow, donna Anna, forced to obey social
rules and conventions symbolized by the statue of her deceased husband, the
Commander. A similar – in terms of contrasting life and death – opposition of the man
vs. the statue is suggested by Gratiano, in his words about Antonio’s sadness in the
beginning of Shakespeare’s play: “Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, / Sit
like his grandsire cut in alabaster?” (act I, scene 1). Subtly, the motif of a man trying to
transcend his human nature and thus become a statue of himself is present in Measure for
Measure in the figure of Lord Angelo, about whom we read: “scarce confesses / That his
blood flows, or that his appetite / Is more to bread than stone” (act I, scene 3) and who is
“[a] motion generative” (act III, scene 2).
44
Also, each of these works by Pushkin and Shakespeare belongs to a mixed,
problematic genre
37
with distinct mythical and fairy-tale elements (Emerson),
characterized by arbitrary and hardly plausible happy endings that look like a sort of
“incantation of fate” – to use Anna Akhmatova’s (vol. 2, 132) definition of endings in
Pushkin’s Tales of Belkin (1831). The theme of destiny, of the vicissitudes of fate and
unexpected turns of the wheel of Fortune that no man can predict or control – presented
in The Merchant of Venice through the venture motif – is one of the most significant in
the ideological structure of the texts. Nerissa’s words in the play, “Hanging and wiving
goes by destiny” (act II, scene 9), connect the theme of fate, as arbitrary and unfair as
mercy, with that of marriage – both being central to the works in question and personally
important for Pushkin on the eve of his marriage in February 1831 and after it. The
themes of fate and marriage occur in both “Andzhelo” and The Captain’s Daughter, and
to an extent enhance the fairy-tale flavor of both texts, just as in Shakespeare’s plays.
Both Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice are considered
Shakespeare’s problem plays; and although, arguably, “all Shakespeare’s plays… are
problem plays,” some of them are “more insistently problematic than others” (Danson 1),
like these two. These plays contain a number of inner contradictions, such as the
incongruity between their use of the comedy genre
38
and their subject matter, and the
tragic twists in the plot ending in conventional marriages, which have caused much
37
Apart from the lively discussion in academic circles continuing to the present, there is evidence in
Pushkin’s manuscript drafts for “Andzhelo” and correspondence that the poet himself considered both
Shakespeare’s plays to be tragedies – in spite of their happy resolutions (Emerson 86).
38
This contradiction can be explained through the medieval idea of the comic form, as expressed by Dante,
as reflecting the fundamental pattern of human existence: a beginning in trouble and resolution in joy,
which is clearly seen in The Merchant of Venice (Lewalski 327), as well as in Measure for Measure.
45
controversy in their scholarly interpretations. Thus, some academics understand The
Merchant of Venice as a story of “judgment, redemption, and mercy; the supersession in
human history of the grim four thousand years of unalleviated justice by the era of love
end mercy” (Kermode 224) and of mercy’s triumph over justice (Coghill, Lewalski),
while others claim that the play “does not celebrate the Christian virtues [of love and
mercy] so much as expose their absence” (Moody 10) and that “the truth of the play is
revenge and retribution” (Girard 247). There are also scholars who restrain from extreme
judgments and from categorically opposing mercy to the law; they prefer to speak about
“completion or fulfillment, rather than victory or defeat” of mercy (Danson 17-18;
author’s italic).
In view of its primary concern with Pushkin and Russian idea of law, justice and
mercy, this chapter does not attempt a comprehensive analysis of The Merchant of Venice
but focuses specifically on the presence of the “legal triad” within it. It uses the text
primarily as a means of testing the two hypotheses described in the introduction and
focuses on parallels between the play and the Russian legal tradition and on that of
reading and interpreting Shakespeare in Russia. This concern explains why this analysis
privileges a Christian reading of the play over economic, gender- or race-based
interpretations.
There exists a strong tradition in the Christian reading of The Merchant of
interpreting the play as a eulogy of mercy and Christian love presented through an
opposition between law and justice, on the one hand, and mercy, on the other (Coghill,
Lewalski, Danson). Coghill and Lewalski see the text as a continuation of the medieval
46
tradition of morality plays, specifically those tackling the theme known as the
“Parliament of Heaven.”
39
In that plot, Mercy and Justice together with the other two
“daughters” of God, Peace and Truth, argue over the fate of mankind after its fall: Justice
and Truth demand righteous punishment, whereas Mercy and Peace plead for
forgiveness. Neither of the sides can win and the conflict cannot be resolved until their
reconciliation is made possible by Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. This understanding of
mercy as not being a mere kindness, lenience or indulgence, but justified by a sacrifice on
the part of either a convicted person or someone else, constitutes an important part of the
concept.
It goes without saying that Shakespeare’s comedy is incomparably more complex,
multidimensional and controversial than any medieval allegory and that its characters
cannot be reduced simply to emblems of human virtues and vices or to representations of
Biblical characters. All such attempts would lead to a schematization and
oversimplification of the play and will not suffice to explain and reconcile the numerous
twists and turns of the plot and characters’ behavior. Nevertheless, the significance of
biblical allusion and allegory in The Merchant of Venice is undeniable. It reveals itself
not only in the subject matter and allegorical images and motifs, but also in the very
language of the comedy, as convincingly demonstrated by Lewalski. The primary
39
A connection might also be seen between the plot of The Merchant and the trial described in the
medieval drama, the Processus Belial, in which “the Devil claims by justice the souls of mankind due him
under the law, and the Virgin Mary intercedes for man by appealing to the Mercy of God” (Lewalski 339).
A parallel can be seen between Shakespeare’s Shylock and the Devil, Portia and the Virgin, and Antonio
and sinful humankind.
47
importance of the religious dimension, especially the Gospels, unites The Merchant with
Measure for Measure, whose very title is taken from the Sermon on the Mount.
The focus on the biblical treatment of law, justice and mercy, in particular the
contrast between the law and justice, on one side, and mercy, on the other, as well as the
concept of a redeeming sacrifice, allows Lewalski to apprehend the three main plot lines
of The Merchant – Bassanio’s courtship of Portia, Antonio’s trial and the ring episode –
in their unity. Her analysis of the central plot line, that of the trial between Shylock and
Antonio over a pound of flesh, follows Coghill’s lead of opposing the law of the Old
Testament with mercy as the main principle of the New Testament. Naturally, the Jew
Shylock represents the former and the Christian Antonio the latter. Although mercy is
advocated as a higher virtue and eventually triumphs, Shylock’s stand on law and justice
is not shown as erroneous but rather as limited and incomplete. Thus, the New Testament
does not cancel the Old but complements or – to use Danson’s word – “fulfills” it.
40
Lewalski states that through the allusion to the Biblical parable of the Pharisee and the
Publican (Luke 18:9-13) in scene 3 of act I, “the emphasis of the Old Law upon perfect
legal righteousness is opposed to the tenet of the New Law that righteousness is
impossible to fallen man and must be replaced by faith” (332).
Lewalski also interprets the other two plot lines in Christian terms, which makes her
reading integral and consistent. Thus, at the allegorical level, “the caskets signify
40
The relationship between the two can be expressed through the phrase “Love is the fulfilling of the law”
[Gal. 5:14]: “God’s love to man is manifest in the gift of his Son, who undergoes in his own person the
rigor of the Law and through his sacrifice frees mankind from bondage to the flesh, establishing the New
Law of the spirit through which can attain salvation” (Danson 56).
This idea is also expressed in
Metropolitan Hilarion’s Sermon on Law and Grace.
48
everyman’s choice of the path to spiritual life or death” (Lewalski 336). According to the
scholar, Bassanio’s choice of the lead caskets symbolizes his “acceptance of the self-
abnegation, risk, and venture set up throughout the play as characteristics of true
Christian love” (Lewalski 335) and teaches the rejection of the anti-Christian values of
worldliness (the golden casket) and self-righteousness (the silver casket). The ring
episode is interpreted as a parody of the trial scene, given that “it provides a means
whereby Bassanio may make at least token fulfillment of his offer to give ‘life itself, my
wife, and all the world’ to deliver Antonio” (Lewalski 342).
The Merchant’s focus on the opposition between the Old and New Law invites a
comparison with one of the most prominent texts in Russian law-related literary tradition,
namely Metropolitan Hilarion’s Sermon on Law and Grace. The medieval church
hierarch and Shakespeare often use the same imagery drawn from the Bible to construct
the opposition of law vs. mercy (or grace). They employ a whole set of oppositions to
support the major one: Old Testament vs. New Testament, Mosaic Law vs. Christ’s
grace, Jews vs. Christians, justification vs. salvation, slavery vs. freedom, and the
particular, limited vs. the general, universal.
41
Law is understood in the sermon as a
precursor of the truth and grace, which is close to Danson’s reading of The Merchant of
Venice. When law was transcended through Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, grace filled
earth. Also, both texts recall the story of Jacob: Hilarion, in order to express the idea of
the younger and weaker surpassing and overpowering the older and stronger, and
41
Despite its religious genre, Sermon on Law and Grace has a pronounced political and nationalist
meaning, as Hilarion became the first Russian, i.e. non-Greek, head of the Russian Church, which
symbolized the growing power of Kievan Rus’.
In this context, the opposition of Jews vs. Christians also
stands for that of Byzantines vs. Russians (Zenkovsky 86).
49
Shakespeare – as an illustration of the opposing principles of Shylock and Antonio, who
interpret the same biblical episode differently.
Read in terms of the Old Testament law vs. the New Testament notions of mercy
and grace, the central conflict of The Merchant of Venice relies on the notion of contract
and on the opposition of “bound vs. free.” According to C.L. Barber’s Christian
interpretation, Shylock is the antagonist of the play not because he is a Jew, an outsider
equally hated by the Christians of a fictional Venice and the real Londoners of the late
sixteenth century, but as an embodiment of certain moral values – those usually
associated with the Old Testament and Judaism. Barber describes these values in terms of
one’s relationship to money: the Venetians gain, give, lose and waste money freely,
whereas the usurer Shylock primarily accumulates and hoards it.
42
Danson astutely
defines these opposing principles as “loving prodigality” and “spiritual meanness” (10).
43
In Shakespeare’s poetic world, natural profiting is blessed – be it making money by
honest trade or giving birth to babies, while Shylock’s charging interest in usury is as
unnatural as expecting a “breed for barren metal” (act I, scene 3).
By this logic, the Jew of Venice fails in the play because he understands law and
justice predominantly in arithmetic, contractual terms.
44
His great cause, his stand on the
bond and his reliance on the letter of the law, is perfectly just, yet absolutely “sterile” as
42
As an illustration of this statement, the rich Shylock keeps his servant Lancelot on a strict diet, while
Bassanio, who is in severe debt, hires a new servant and finds food and clothes for him.
43
Also,
Shakespeare’s metaphor of love’s wealth is well known (Brown; Drakakis 49-50).
44
Compare with the contractual nature of the Covenant. It is also interesting how a modern English author,
Julian Barnes, describes literally contract-based law and justice as the most suitable for the needs of a
dystopian island-state organized and governed by economical rather than political principles (England,
England, 1998). In this fictional account of a simulacre of England, employment contracts regulate all kind
of relationship among people and act as state laws.
50
it does not exceed talionic arithmetic. Before proceeding to the punishment in the court
scene, Portia gives Shylock one last chance to produce something out of nothing in a
manner of natural profiting, as discussed above. She asks him to allow a surgeon to the
courtroom to stop Antonio’s bleeding and to ease his suffering. The Jew refuses, “Is it so
nominated in the bond?” (act IV, scene 1). The issue with a surgeon appears to be of a
purely symbolic nature here: it is obvious that nothing can save Antonio’s life, and
Shylock will get his bond, yet the latter refuses this tiny drop of mercy as a matter of
principle.
45
An example of the non-contractual attitude towards interpersonal relationships is
shown in Bassanio’s reaction to the essentially contractual will of Portia’s father. Instead
of self-righteously claiming his prize after guessing the right casket, he says:
Fair lady, by your leave;
I come by note, to give and to receive.
Like one of two contending in a prize,
That thinks he hath done well in people’s eyes,
Hearing applause and universal shout,
Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt
Whether these pearls of praise be his or no;
So, thrice fair lady, stand I, even so;
As doubtful whether what I see be true,
Until confirm’d, sign’d, ratified by you. (act III, scene 2)
Although Bassanio uses legal terminology and respects the contract of Portia’s father’s
will, unlike Shylock, he does not feel morally just to claim what is his by contract.
46
His
45
Part of the reason why Shylock insists on getting a “pound of flesh” from Antonio so ruthlessly can be
that just before the trial, the Christian Lorenzo takes from the Jew his daughter Jessica – “his flesh and
blood.” Thus, Shylock’s legal literalism and calculative nature demand flesh for flesh.
46
In a similar way, the very ease with which Portia gives sums after learning about Antonio’s debt to
Shylock (“Pay him six thousand and deface the bond. / Double six thousand, and then treble that…” (act
III, scene 2)) undermines the arithmetic imagery of the scene. Shylock finds justification in precision and
51
humility and self-abnegation are opposed to Shylock’s assurance of his contractual rights,
and can be seen as Christian virtues that potentially deserve mercy and grace.
A reliance on the contract gives Shylock a sense of self-righteousness. The Jew
feels just indignation when Antonio reproaches him for “use of that which is mine,” i.e.
charging interest, and justifies his way of living by saying “thrift is blessing, if men steal
it not” (act I, scene 3). His self-righteous exclamation in the court scene, “What judgment
shall I dread, doing no wrong?” (act IV, scene 1), lays bare the core of his worldview –
the utmost importance of respecting the contract and the law – and raises a question of
the comparative value of the positive doing-good and the neutral “doing no wrong.”
According to the moral of the play, the latter is right and just, but not enough, certainly
not enough for salvation.
The comedy’s ethics of Christian love and spiritual generosity can be exemplified
by the letter Antonio sends to Bassanio before the trial. The merchant asks his beloved
friend to come to see him before his death but adds, “[I]f your love do not persuade you
to come, let not my letter” (act III, scene 2). This short formula postulates the freedom of
love as giving and forgiving. Indeed, Antonio lends more and more money to Bassanio
almost without a hope of ever getting it back – not because they are bound by a contract
but out of sympathy and his free will. He wants the young man to come to see him, also
out of his free will. The use of “letter” in this context seems deliberate: unlike, for
example, “request,” it signifies a written document and alludes to the formula of the
therefore eventually fails. Nevertheless, the fact that Shakespeare does not associate calculation and
legalism exclusively with Shylock implies that law, justice and mercy are not mutually exclusive.
52
contractual relationship – the “letter of the law,” as opposed to its spirit.
47
If there is an
indication of mercy’s superiority over law and justice, it is its freedom, as one can be
legally bound to do something or prevented from doing it, whereas the act of mercy is
principally genuine and voluntary.
Antonio is not the only character representing this idea in the text; the second
strongest opponent of Shylock is Portia. Like Shylock, Antonio and the play itself, the
young lady of Belmont has also received a diverse and controversial treatment by critics;
for instance, she has been equally praised and condemned for the legalism of her mindset
that brought her a victory over Shylock in court. Her behavior in the ring episode has
given Portia a reputation of a controlling character (Westlund) or even a petty tyrant
(Williamson). Williamson interprets the ring episode as Portia’s “exercising a last petty
tyranny on her open, unsuspecting bridegroom” (591). However, a more complimentary
reading of the heroine is possible. The ring scene can be viewed as an expression of the
ideal of Christian love analogous to Antonio’s letter.
When Bassanio guesses the right casket, he and Portia are expressly destined to get
married immediately, but after he reads her Antonio’s letter, she urges him to go and save
his dear friend, “O love, dispatch all business, and be gone!” (act III, scene 2). This
allows the attentive reader/spectator to suspect that, in fact, the marriage was not properly
registered, so that the only claim on Portia – and her estate, if you will, – Bassanio can
produce upon his return to Belmont after Antonio’s trial is the ring his fiancée gave to
him. As soon as Portia, disguised as Dr. Balthazar, manages to extract the ring from
47
“Letter” is also a punning alliteration on “let.”
53
Bassanio, there is nothing else that binds the two characters – if one understands human
relationships in Shylock’s sense, as contract-bound. The trick with the ring allows Portia
to give herself once again to the person she loves, which symbolizes that, according to
the free, non-contractual ethics, there is never an end to giving and forgiving. If the first
time Portia gives Bassanio her ring she is still bound by her father’s will – even if it so
happens that it coincides with her own, – the second time she repeats her marital vows
freely.
At the same time, this scene only describes Portia’s ethics in relation to Bassanio
and Antonio, while the heroine demonstrates a different kind of behavior towards
Shylock. In the trial scene, after her eloquent eulogy of mercy fails to convince (or
“convert”) Shylock, Portia turns out to be more legalistic than the Jew; she acts more like
a sophist than a true Christian. This implies that in the poetic world of the play, the value
of mercy is not universal but specifically Christian, e.g. it sets the standard for human
relationships among Christians and is not applied to others. Such an attitude has its logic
since these others, i.e. Shylock, do not acknowledge the supremacy of mercy and,
therefore, cannot expect to receive it. However, this narrow understanding of mercy does
not quite reach the level of perfect mercy that “is not strain’d” and “droppeth as the
gentle rain from heaven,” and that “is twice blest; / It blesseth him that gives and him that
takes” (The Merchant, act IV, scene 1).
The ring episode is not exclusively Portia’s one-person show; it is also yet another
test for Bassanio, who once again proves himself worthy of receiving the precious prize
he has won. As was mentioned before, to overcome its arbitrariness, mercy has to be
54
justified by a redeeming sacrifice or its substitute – a symbolic demonstration of one’s
readiness to embrace it.
48
This means that one must subject oneself, completely and
unconditionally, to someone else’s will and accept this other person’s absolute command
of oneself. By giving up the ring, as his friendship and the lead casket taught him,
Bassanio voluntarily gives up his rights to Portia and her estate, and that is precisely the
reason why he is awarded both at the end. The young man’s symbolic sacrifice parallels
Antonio’s readiness to give not just his money, but his very life for his friend’s
happiness.
However, the concept of mercy seems to combine complete free will with extreme
compulsion. When in the court scene Portia, disguised as Dr. Balthazar, in accordance
with legal proceedings, asks the merchant whether he confesses the bond, and Antonio
does, she says, “Then must the Jew be merciful” (act IV, scene 1). This “must” means
that Portia expects Shylock to forgive the debt simply because it is recognized.
49
In other
words, mercy is possible only when the binding force of law is fully acknowledged.
However, the Jew does not accept and cannot embrace this foreign for him moral
imperative “must” and transcend the law.
As perhaps the best known fragment of The Merchant of Venice, Portia’s “quality
of mercy” speech has predictably received as opposing interpretations as the play itself. It
48
Girard also puts the idea of sacrifice in the center of his chapter on The Merchant of Venice, but he sees it
in an ironic way, as the ritual sacrifice of the scapegoat Shylock by the Christian hypocrites in Antonio’s
stead.
49
Derrida extrapolates this scene to the entire history of Jews and Christians, claiming that “the elliptical
force of the verdict tends to take on a colossal symbolic and metonymic value on the scale of every
historical period: ‘the Jew’ also represents every Jew, the Jew in general in his différend with his Christian
counterpart, Christian power, the Christian State” (“‘Relevant’ Translation” 186).
55
has been treated as a sincere expression of Christian love and forgiveness and a close
paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount (Lewalski), as an example of the Christians’
ultimate hypocrisy (Girard), as a presentation of an unattainable ideal (Derrida) or even
as an irrelevant “piece of superfluous rhetoric” (Palmer cited in Danson 63). Indeed, it
does not save Antonio for unimpressed Shylock continues to insist on his bond.
Moreover, when the trial of Antonio becomes that of the Jew, the latter is nearly
destroyed by the “mercy” of his Christian judges, which appears to be very far from the
perfect Christian mercy described by Portia.
50
Danson insists that the true meaning of the
monologue reveals itself post factum, when mercy is yielded “through rigor,” and the true
meaning is that the spirit of the law is “latent in its letter” (63).
Antonio, Bassanio and Portia finally receive their reward or “salvation” after
showing their self-abnegation, and readiness to self-sacrifice: Antonio when he admits
the bond; Portia when she obeys her father’s will; and Bassanio when he gives up the
ring. On the other hand, Shylock refuses to forgive the debt to his debtor. Thus, the two
principles embodied by Shylock, on the one hand, and Antonio, Bassanio and Portia, on
the other, correspond not only to the opposition of the Mosaic Law vs. the New
Testament Law, respectively. These principles can also be interpreted in terms of the two
basic cultural models examined by Lotman in his path-breaking article, “‘Agreement’ and
‘self-giving’ as archetypal models of culture” (1993).
“Agreement,” or “contract,” is characterized by the equality of the two sides and
their mutual liability, whereas ‘self-giving’ implies principal inequality, when one side
50
Although admittedly they never attempt to take his life.
56
possesses all the rights and absolute power over the other, which unconditionally submits
to it. Although normally each national culture or cultural formation demonstrates a
combination of both in different proportions, Lotman locates the “agreement” model in
Western Europe, where the notion of contract is neutral and justified by the Roman legal
tradition. In contrast to it, Russian Orthodox culture is based, according to the scholar, on
the principle of “self-giving,” which defines relationships between man and God, man
and the authorities, and among people. Understood as a residual element of paganism and
primitive magic, based on a kind of agreement with supernatural forces, the Russian
dogovor (“contract, agreement”) has negative connotations. According to Lotman, this
inevitably leads to a predilection towards mercy, rather than towards law.
Remarkably, without any connection with Lotman’s article, Joseph Westlund
defines Shylock’s attitude towards the contract as “reliance on the bond as a magical
entity” (160; emphasis added). The first conversation between the Jew and the merchant
in act I, scene 3 gives an excellent illustration of the opposition of a pagan, magical
“agreement” with supernatural powers and Christian “self-giving.” In order to justify his
charging of interest, or broadly speaking, his contractual thinking, Shylock recalls the
biblical story of Jacob’s agreement with his uncle Laban (Genesis 30:25-31:16).
According to this parable, Jacob, who was taking care of Laban’s sheep and goats, was to
keep all the striped and spotted animals. When the sheep were mating, Jacob placed
striped branches in front of them so they gave birth to striped lambs. For Shylock, this is
the result of the patriarch’s magic action, but for Antonio – of God’s will.
57
Rather than praising man’s ingenuity, Antonio expresses an absolute
providentialism, which evokes the “historical providentialism” of Pushkin. By this term
Alexander Dolinin defines Pushkin’s conception of history in The History of Pugachev,
the writer’s study of a big peasant rebellion in Russia in 1773-1775. The scholar claims
that Pushkin “underscores the motif of the unexpected, unpredictable turns of fortune that
serve as ‘signs and symbols’ of some mysterious, unfathomable master plot concealed
beneath the seeming plotlessness of history” (“Historicism or Providentialism?” 303-304;
author’s italic). This understanding of history as the fulfillment of a predetermined divine
plan underlies the plot of The Captain’s Daughter. Providentialism can also provide the
key to reading the plot of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which is otherwise
puzzling in its inconsistencies.
Another of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” Measure for Measure, has provoked
even more controversy than The Merchant of Venice. The very title of the text is
ambivalent: formally, it expresses the principle of “arithmetic” talionic justice, although
given that its title comes from the Sermon on the Mount, it is expected to convey the
quintessence of Christian idea of mercy. Thus, the opposition of the Old and New Law,
central in The Merchant, remains relevant for Measure for Measure as well. In spite of
the variety of points of view and commentaries, political and religious interpretations –
either from a historical or allegorical perspective, or a combination of the two – are the
two main approaches to the text.
51
For the purposes of this comparative analysis,
allegorical religious interpretations appear to be more relevant as they reveal significant
51
The reading of the central image of the Duke in artistic terms, i.e. as a metaphor of the playwright
himself (Dolinin, Knight, Schleiner), is also popular and productive.
58
parallels between the two plays, although both approaches are ultimately closely
connected in view of the obvious analogies that can be drawn between God, the ruler and
the patriarch.
Political and legal readings show the play’s affinity with and indebtedness to the
political treatises of the Renaissance and the Reformation, foremost of which is James I’s
Basilicon Doron (1599). According to these interpretations, the play is a lesson to princes
in how to govern properly: how to be just by applying law and mercy in proper measure.
However, scholars still disagree about the very meaning of Measure for Measure and
about how to interpret its ending: whether or not the Duke learns his lesson and what
exactly that lesson is. Some researchers celebrate Escalus, a wise old advisor, for being a
moderate judge (Yoshino); others praise the Duke’s “shock-therapy” of extreme cruelty
replaced by equally extreme mercy (Majeske), or argue that his main principle was not
mercy, but equity (Kermode).
In Measure for Measure, not only are principles of governance and judging
discussed, but their very legitimacy is questioned. Indeed, the play’s very title comes
from the Sermon on the Mount, specifically, from the fragment that starts with the maxim
“Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1). Historically speaking, in the period of
the Reformation, this passage provoked an increase of skepticism towards authorities and
official institutions, reaching a peak with the Anabaptist “separatist nonresistance” to the
state (Magedanz 318). Although Russia did not know the Reformation, questions
regarding a legitimate authority and natural ruler sometimes arose, as, for instance, in the
time of Pugachev’s rebellion depicted in Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter or in
59
connection with Alexander I’s death, as discussed by Lotman in “Ideinaia struktura
‘Andzhelo.’”
Another significant aspect of the political reading of the play is the motif of a ruler
in disguise, whose roots are found in the cosmic myth. The core of this myth is
eschatological, as Caryl Emerson emphasizes in her paraphrase of it with regard to Yurii
Lotman’s analysis of Pushkin’s “Andzhelo”: “A good world becomes evil with age, and
as it nears its end, there is a “spoiling.” The agent or cause of this spoiling must depart
the realm, returning to it later as a savior; in the interim his surrogate, a pseudo-savior, is
unmasked as a sinner” (95) and order is restored. At the same time, the motif of disguised
ruler can be freed from this mythical element and interpreted in socio-political terms, as
Leonard Tennenhouse does in his study of the representation of power in the English
Renaissance. The scholar justly states that by experimentally removing the monarch,
Measure for Measure and other texts that employ this motif demonstrate
the power inherent in the patriarchal principle itself as they invoke a
regressive and magic-mythic notion of the monarchy. All of those features
which modern literary folk find so disturbing about Vincentio actually aim at
this single theatrical effect: the revelation of an earlier, rarified and magical
52
form of patriarchy as the principle of political order. (Tennenhouse 159)
Tennenhouse’s thesis about the restoration of patriarchal order appears to be very
close to Lotman’s reading of Pushkin’s “Andzhelo” and The Captain’s Daughter.
Richard Wilson’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s play through Foucault’s ideas comes to
the same conclusion. For Wilson, the comedy is about the historical shift from the
52
Unlike Westlund’s reading of the story of Jacob in The Merchant of Venice, here, the epithet “magic”
does not seem to imply an equal contractual relationship, but rather the delegation of the divine power to a
natural ruler.
60
“theater of sovereignty” to the establishment of institutions of surveillance, which marks,
as Michel Foucault argues, a turning point in the history of modernity, specifically in
terms of the relationship between individual and state. This shift in the purpose of the
state from “the act of government itself” to the “increase of the population” (Foucault et
al. 100) appears, according to Foucault, when the economy of politics changes: without
the threat of massive famines, it becomes more profitable for the state to save the life of a
criminal and to use his or her labor than to apply the death penalty. For Wilson, the
Duke’s return in act V of Measure for Measure from his secret mission of “spying” on
his citizens to the traditional patriarchal rule symbolizes Shakespeare’s “resistance to the
[new, emerging] therapeutic order” (168).
53
In contrast to Wilson’s historical interpretation, G. Wilson Knight suggests a
reading of the comedy as a timeless Christian allegory – analogous to Jesus’ parables –
whose main theme is man’s moral nature. All of the characters represent a certain aspect
of this nature: Isabella – sainted purity, Angelo – Pharisaical righteousness, Duke
Vincentio – “a psychologically sound and enlightened ethics” (28). According to Knight,
the Duke is the central hero of the play, a Christ-like “prophet of a new order or ethics”
(34), who possesses nearly divine powers and supernatural authority. Acting in the
capacity of the divine Providence,
54
he guides other characters through the turns and
twists of the plot towards self-knowledge. Specifically, he brings Isabella and Angelo to
the realization and acceptance of their own humanity and its limitations and teaches them
53
The question of patriarchy also rises in The Merchant, most pronouncedly, in relations between Jessica
and Shylock and Portia and her father.
54
Most scholars would still refrain from completely equating the figure of Duke Vincentio with God.
61
tolerance as a moral imperative, instead of pursuing “impossible and valueless ideals”
(Knight 43). Thus, in the context of Measure for Measure, Angelo appears to be a
parallel to Shylock’s self-righteousness.
Darryl Gless also connects this character with the idea of justification and salvation
by (godly) deeds, pejoratively called “legalism,” in contrast to the Protestant
Reformation’s justification by grace and by faith. These latter imply that humankind is
sinful and therefore justly condemned, so only a clear understanding of one’s personal
imperfection and nullity before God and one’s absolute dependence on divine grace lead
to salvation. “Precise” Lord Angelo stands for the rigor of the law, but he forgets that
only justice (and law) “seasoned” with mercy brings one close to God and, in common
with Shylock, he is eventually hanged with his own rope. Thus, Shylock’s and Angelo’s
defeat with their own weapon appears as an instance of poetic justice.
Apart from those mentioned above, Measure for Measure also demonstrates a
number of other parallels and affinities with The Merchant of Venice. To name just a few
more examples, Isabella’s apologia of mercy in act II, scene 2 almost repeats Portia’s
“quality of mercy” speech (act IV, scene 1); both comedies employ monetary imagery
together with that of precise measuring and weighing. Most importantly, however, the
two texts describe a situation when mercy is granted and salvation is given, although not
until one realizes one’s ultimate worthlessness and helplessness before the law and
accepts it.
Measure for Measure is a highly paradoxical play in which every character receives
his or her judgment, although none seem to attain justice. The egregious non-
62
differentiation of punishments for completely different crimes, on the one hand, and
pardon eventually granted to everyone, on the other, are particularly noteworthy. They
would be absolutely inappropriate for a legal statute, and yet they adhere to a particular
kind of logic. At first, Claudio is justly accused of fornication with his fiancée Juliet and
sentenced to death according to the law; Angelo is justly accused of rape and breach-of-
promise and sentenced to death; Lucio is justly accused of slander, although he is guilty
also of fornication and perjury, and sentenced to death; and finally Barnardine, who has
long ago been justly accused of murder and sentenced to death, is about to get his due. In
parallel to this, Isabella and Marianna are condemned for “slandering” Angelo. Then,
when their last hope is gone, Claudio, Angelo, Lucio and Barnardine are suddenly
granted pardon and find themselves ordered to marry the women whom they, willingly or
not, wronged – except Barnardine, who does not have such a woman. The innocent
Isabella and Marianna are, naturally, set free and their good name is restored, but in
addition to this they are married, which for Isabella might be unwelcome.
55
The events of the play are staged by the Duke in a way that leads all the characters
to an understanding of their imperfection and therefore their dependence on mercy and
grace, and yet his immediate reason for pardoning remains unclear. It may be thanks to
Isabella’s and Marianna’s forgiveness and intervention, although initially the Duke firmly
refuses to comply with their request. It may also be for the pragmatic benefit of a third
person, Miss Kate Keepdown, who needs Lucio alive to provide for her child and herself.
Or else, it could be because of the Duke’s “miraculous” intervention throughout the
55
On an allegorical plane, however, Isabella’s marriage to the Christ-like Duke can be seen as a perfect
realization of her aspirations, for every nun is a Christ’s bride.
63
course of the play: thanks to his tricks, intrigues, deceptions and substitutions, the harm
done can be repaired without having recourse to the gallows.
56
Moreover, the Duke’s
likeness to God allows another interpretation: as God created men frail and imperfect, He
cannot now punish them with severity for crimes inherent in human nature; similarly
Duke Vincentio at least partly shares Angelo’s guilt, because corruption in Vienna started
under his rule.
How does such an illogical distribution of punishments and rewards define
Shakespeare’s idea of law, justice and mercy? The scene of the Duke’s judgment, central
for its understanding, appears to be extremely problematic, provoking much disagreement
regarding the idea of Measure for Measure not only among Shakespearean scholars but
also among those of Pushkin. Thus, Lotman considers the finale of the play to be a
triumph of justice, which Pushkin rewrites as a triumph of mercy (“Ideinaia structura
‘Andzhelo’”). However, one might ask if justice does not imply – according to Aristotle
and to common sense – equal punishment for identical crimes and different punishments
for different crimes. It is true that for Marianna, marrying Angelo means something
completely different from what it means for Angelo to marry Marianna, and yet
pardoning the unrepentant murderer Barnardine cannot possibly conform to the principle
of justice.
56
Some scholars consider Lucio’s punishment the harshest, although, strictly speaking, it is identical to
Claudio’s: both characters are ordered to marry women they made pregnant. Shaitanov explains this fact in
terms of Bakhtin’s carnival theory: Lucio is a man of carnival, and as soon as carnival is over he is made a
scapegoat (“Shakespeare in a Bakhtinian Light”). There are even more reasons to call Isabella a scapegoat
as she is forcefully married even without having committed any crime other than upholding rigid chastity.
At any rate, this symbolic image of a scapegoat adds yet another parallel with The Merchant.
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On the other hand, Dolinin’s claim that both Shakespeare’s and Pushkin’s texts
present an apologia of mercy as the main attribute of Divinity in the spirit of the Christian
doctrine appears more convincing (“Poema Pushkina ‘Andzhelo’”). However, it does not
account for the forcefulness of the final act of mercy: the characters of the comedy are
not simply forgiven and granted life instead of death (both literally and symbolically), but
also softly punished. Moreover, it cannot possibly explain the Duke’s initial willingness
to execute Barnardine in order to save Claudio. How does this agree with the Christian
teaching that all people are sinners and therefore condemned to die, until God, through
His mercy, grants everyone life instead of death?
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It therefore becomes possible to state
that the freedom and bondage of mercy in Measure for Measure can be reconciled
through the idea of the necessity of self-abnegation and (self)-sacrifice, as in The
Merchant of Venice. In this context, Shylock and Lucio, being scapegoats for other
characters (Girard, Shaitanov), present only part of the problem. Angelo has to sacrifice
his self-righteousness, self-justification and pride, Isabella – her prudish saintliness.
Claudio comes so close to death that he realizes the existence of something outside of the
hedonistic search for pleasure. Marianna had learned her lesson of humility before the
action of the play started.
The most puzzling case that stands out is that of Barnardine, who is a confessed
murderer without any extenuating circumstances, who has spent years in prison without
showing any sign of repentance and for whom not a single living soul feels compassion.
There is how the Duke explains his decision to grant pardon to him:
57
This combination of free will and compulsion in mercy, also found in The Merchant, appears to be
essential for Shakespeare’s development of the concept.
65
There was a friar told me of this man.
Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul.
That apprehends no further than this world,
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And squarest thy life according. Thou’rt condemn’d:
But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all;
And pray thee take this mercy to provide
For better times to come. Friar, advise him;
I leave him to your hand. (act V, scene 1)
In other words, the Duke hopes that his clemency will open the world of God to this
criminal. For other characters of the play the understanding of the quality of mercy was a
prerequisite for receiving it, while for Barnardine it is a lesson to learn. He, so to speak,
receives his pardon on credit.
Duke Vincentio is the central but not the only judge in the text; Angelo and Escalus
are the other two. If the Duke represents divine judgment, both Angelo and Escalus might
be read as representations of human justice in its wrong (tragic) or right (comic)
application, respectively. In his legal literalism, Angelo rejects mercy and sets moral
standards so high that he himself fails to satisfy them, which undermines the integrity of
his judgment. Unable to reconcile his own perfectionism and imperfectness, Angelo tries
to stick to the letter of the law and to calculate and control everything but fails to do so
with perfect accuracy. Thus, a messenger, who brought Provost a secret order from
Angelo to execute Claudio, says, “My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further
charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it, neither in time, matter, or other
circumstance” (act IV, scene 2). Angelo’s written order serves to emphasize the rigidity
58
It is interesting to compare the Duke’s decision with that of Bulgakov’s Woland, who condemns atheist
Berlioz to nonexistence, instead of judging him per se.
66
of the law.
59
Another illustration of the inhuman rigidity of Angelo’s judgment is that his
verdicts are always definitive and without the possibility of appeal. As Provost says to the
disguised Duke regarding Claudio execution, “[Y]et I believe there comes / No
countermand; no such example have we…” (act IV, scene 2).
On the contrary, in his dealing with Elbow’s comic appeal against Pompey and
Froth, Escalus demonstrates professionalism, an understanding of human psychology and
the frailty of human nature, combined with patience and compassion. His strength is in
the knowledge of the limitations of legal justice and in administering a balanced
application of law, justice and mercy. As he says to the dumb constable Elbow, who
himself represents the judicial system, “Truly, officer, because he [Pompey] hath some
offences in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his courses
till thou knowest what they are” (act II, scene 1). What distinguishes Escalus’s judgment
from Angelo’s is that the former does not chase a ghost by trying to execute perfect
justice in an imperfect world.
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No doubt, the idea of the play is intricately bound with its genre. As Harriett
Hawkins states, in Shakespearian comedy, “the action is devised to liberate the comic
heroes and heroines from the domain of necessity, which is strongly associated with some
59
In contrast to this, the Duke’s orders are mostly oral, which is intensified by his incognito appearance. In
particular, the openness of the unfixed oral word signifies flexibility, vitality and creative force. This
opposition of the oral vs. written word is of a great importance for the topic of this dissertation and will be
considered in more detail in Chapter Two.
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The use of a conditional phrase in Escalus’s answer to the Duke about Angelo’s aptitude to become his
deputy, “If any in Vienna be of worth / To undergo such ample grace and honour, / It is Lord Angelo” (act
I, scene 1), can be understood as simply a rhetorical device. At the same time, it can indicate the old
judge’s “positive skepticism” about the very possibility of human justice (Gless 28).
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law” (85). This formula can also be applied to Measure for Measure, in the first half of
which
[t]he major characters are portrayed as subject, by law or by their own
psychological or biological nature, to tragic (or potentially tragic)
necessities and consequences. In the second half of the play, necessity is
got round by the Duke, acting as a kind of deus ex machina in order to
avert tragic consequences, and to emancipate other characters from dire
necessity. Dramatically, as well as socially, the Duke’s contrivances and
evasions, and final pardons to everyone on the criminal docket, in effect
revoke (or transcend) the rule of law, and to revoke (or transcend) the
rule of law is to negate necessity. (Hawkins 85-86)
As in The Merchant, the necessity is transcended, but not before it is completely realized
and accepted, which brings us back to Lotman’s cultural model of “self-giving.”
The “self-giving” model implies that all people are equal in their impotence before
the authority, which evokes the idea of everyone’s total equality before God and death.
This idea of universal equality can explain the numerous absurd substitutions in Measure
for Measure. In the famous bed-trick scene, Angelo mistakes Marianna for Isabella.
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Moreover, when asking the Provost to send Angelo Barnardine’s dead head instead of
Claudio’s, the Duke claims that “[d]eath’s a great disguiser” (act IV, scene 2), i.e. that all
dead look the same. This proves to be true, as Ragozine’s head does indeed deceive
Angelo.
To give one more example, when the Provost summons Pompey to help the
executioner – as two hangings are scheduled for the same day, – the latter says that a
61
This episode is close in its meaning to a legend about Russian Princess Olga. When she was still a
ferrywoman, Prince Vsevolod started pursuing her, in spite of being married to another woman. Olga asked
Vsevolod to drink water on one side of the boat and then from the other and compare their taste. When the
prince, obviously, could not tell the difference, Olga said that, similarly, there is no difference to him,
whether it is her or his wife. The same episode also occurs in the medieval “Tale of Peter and Fevroniia of
Murom.”
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“bawd” is not good enough for this lawful métier. To this the Provost replies, “[Y]ou
weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale” (act IV, scene 2). This episode would have
been simply a comic, albeit a little morbid, illustration of the executioner’s professional
pride, if Angelo did not similarly believe himself to be better than the others – as his
strictness in Claudio’s case implies. When at the beginning of the play, Mistress
Overdone brings news about Claudio’s arrest and claims that this young man was “worth
five thousand of you all [Lucio and his two interlocutors]” (act I, scene 2), it can only
raise a laugh as, at the end of the text, the head of a “most notorious pirate” (act IV, scene
3) passes successfully for the head of such an excellent person. Ironically, the only
intended replacement in the play that does not work out well – it is also the only overt
one – is that of Angelo for the Duke. The deputy spectacularly fails in his attempt to
replace the natural ruler (in a political reading) or to bring about divine justice (in a
religious one).
The image of the scale, a conventional emblem of justice, is deeply symbolic in
both The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. In his rigid contractual world,
Shylock nearly loses his life for not being able to take an exact pound of flesh:
Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh.
Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more
But just a pound of flesh: if thou cut’st more
Or less than a just pound, be it but so much
As makes it light or heavy in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,
Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. (act IV, scene 1)
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Measuring justice also fails Measure for Measure – albeit for a different reason. Indeed,
what use is the balance if the right scale always equals the left one? What measure is
applicable in a world where Marianna passes for Isabella, Ragozine for Claudio and a
bawd for an executioner?
Shylock’s and Angelo’s “precise” justice is doomed to fail as it tries to measure and
weigh what cannot possibly be measured and weighed. A tiny mistake in “the twentieth
part of one poor scruple” undermines the whole principle. This “anti-arithmetic” message
of Shakespeare’s comedies recalls that in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
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Its
protagonist Raskolnikov, being sick and delirious after killing the old pawnbroker Alyona
Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta, explicitly relates justice and weight, measure and
arithmetic in his mind: “[в]озможную справедливость положил наблюдать в
исполнении, вес и меру, и арифметику” (Dostoevsky, PSS vol. 6, 211).
63
Like Shylock
and Angelo, he believes that justice – albeit in his case non-legal justice – is guaranteed
by the rigorous observance of rules and principles.
62
Although beyond the scope of the present research, it is worth mentioning that Dostoevsky expresses his
condemnation of “arithmetic” justice consistently throughout the novel. Apart from the protagonist’s self-
exposing and self-accusatory reasoning, this idea is presented through other characters. Soulless calculation
is exposed primarily in the figure of the businessman Luzhin, while the impossibility of justice and danger
of reliance on it is shown with regard to Katerina Ivanovna, Sonia’s stepmother. The story of this proud
woman, who has three little children and a drunken husband unable to provide for his family, is truly tragic.
Her search for justice and justice alone and her inability to accept its absence in the world gives her only
illness, mental aberration and eventually leads to her death. In Dostoevsky’s last novel, Ivan Karamazov’s
insistence on justice turns out to be equally destructive. Arithmetic can also represent necessity and law in
Dostoevsky, e.g. in Notes from Underground, whose protagonist rebels against the mantra that “two times
two is four.”
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“…in the execution of my design I devoted so much attention to securing the utmost justice accurately
calculated by weight and measure” (Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 233).
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Immediately afterwards, Raskolnikov explains what made this murder just and
therefore justified in his eyes: “[и]з всех вшей выбрал самую наибесполезнейшую и,
убив ее, положил взять у ней ровно столько, сколько мне надо для первого шага, и
ни больше ни меньше...” (Dostoevsky, PSS vol. 6, 211).
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Already in this short excerpt,
Raskolnikov makes two mistakes that Shakespeare’s characters also make: first,
categorizing people into who deserve to live and who do not, and, second, relying on
precise measurement. In bringing together the notions of justice and perfect measure,
Dostoevsky’s protagonist follows not only the archetypal talionic principle of “an eye for
an eye,” but also, Shakespeare’s lead from The Merchant of Venice. Portia’s warning to
Shylock, to cut no “less nor more”
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than one pound echoes in Raskolnikov’s “neither
more nor less.” The cited fragment from Crime and Punishment also sheds new light on
the cluster “retributive justice, calculation, money,” key to understanding The Merchant
of Venice and also implicitly present in Measure for Measure. Raskolnikov believes the
murder is justified if any profit resulting from it is given to charity.
The association of justice and money with the notion of measure or weight is rooted
in the Old Testament, which connects the administration of justice with monetary
imagery in the story of Belshazzar’s feast from the Book of Daniel. It tells how King
Belshazzar was punished by God for drinking from sacred vessels from Solomon’s
Temple. His imminent death was predicted in the mysterious writing, “Mene, mene,
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“[F]rom all the lice on earth, I picked out absolutely the most useless, and when I had killed her, I
intended to take from her exactly as much as I needed for the first step, and neither more nor less”
(Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 233).
65
There are more references to Shakespeare’s legal writing in the novel. Thus, trying to justify her fiancé
Luzhin, Raskolnikov’s sister Dunia says, “[W]ords are not deeds,” which is a close paraphrase of Isabella’s
speech in Angelo’s defense in Measure for Measure: “[T]houghts are no subjects; / Intents but merely
thoughts” (act V, scene 1).
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tekel, parsin,” which appeared on a wall of his royal palace. The fiery words refer to the
Aramaic names of measures of currency, “two minas, a shekel and two parts,” and
initially appeared meaningless. However, Daniel interpreted the words as “numbered,
weighed, divided,” for they have the same roots, and explained the prophecy to the king:
“Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting” (Daniel 5:27). Thus, man, or his
deeds, is equated with money.
In the biblical text, unlike the modern works of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, the
link between justice and money also involves the image of the balance, which can be
explained by the fact that in ancient times money was not counted but weighed. This
superficially insignificant historical switch from weighing to counting money provides an
explanation for one of the most pregnant monetary images in Measure for Measure and,
more importantly, a very iconic metaphor opposing the old retributive justice to new
Christian mercy. When at the very beginning of the comedy Angelo learns about his new
position as the Duke’s deputy with full powers, he asks the Duke,
Let there be some more test made of my metal,
Before so noble and so great a figure
Be stamp’d upon it. (act I, scene 1)
This utterance, similarly to Daniel’s prophecy, establishes the equivalence of man and
money, in this instance, a coin, albeit with one significant difference. Before examining
this difference, let us first examine the image of the “man-coin.”
Indeed, the equivalence between man and money is supported elsewhere in the
comedy; among other instances, in Angelo’s name that refers to the “angel” – a common
name of a golden ten-shilling coin circulating in England in the fifteenth-sixteenth
72
centuries (Martin C. Battestin cited in Gless 29). The reason for such a name was that the
image of the Archangel Saint-Michael was on one side of it, while that of a ship was on
the other. The metaphor of “man as a coin” implies – and this is clear from Angelo’s
words – the idea of man as bearing the image and likeness of God. The likeness of God
conveyed by the “stamp” assigns value to a “piece of raw metal” – man. In other words,
it is what gives man, unworthy by definition, “credit.”
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As all men are made in the image
of God, they are equal in “credit” they receive, whereas differences between them, like
the content of various elements in the composite metal, are totally insignificant.
The historical switch in assigning value to money helps us understand the
aforementioned difference between the biblical implications of the “man – money”
equation, and its significance in Shakespeare. The value of old money was honestly and
unambiguously defined by its weight: the cost of gold and silver depended on the
quantity of metal. With the move away from weighed money to counted coins, the
correlation between its value and the actual price of the metal in it changed radically.
67
Indeed, while the proportion of precious metal in it might not change, the denomination
printed on its face now defined money’s value. In semiotic terms, the correlation between
a coin’s intrinsic and face value has become purely conventional, akin to that between the
form and content in a sign. Most importantly, the said switch from pre-modern weighed
money to modern counted money made any weighing and measuring meaningless: this is
66
The parable of the talents from the Gospels – the word “talent” refers to yet another measure of weight
and also a unit of currency – provides a necessary background for this motif in Measure for Measure, as
pointed out by Gless (27, 30).
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Not to forget that in spite of arbitrariness between the coin’s content and its denomination, its face value
may change in time, as it happened repeatedly with the English “angel.”
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no longer what defines value. Metaphorically speaking, the scales lost their right to be an
emblem of justice, and a new principle of judging was in need.
One more thing to be discussed with respect to the “justice and money” metaphor is
authority. With the shift from quantity to quality, i.e. from weight to denomination, the
question of authority underlying coins’ stamps becomes of paramount importance, as it is
exactly this that assigns value to money and allows one the ability to differentiate
between genuine and fake coins. Shakespeare touches upon this idea when Angelo
justifies severe law against fornication on the grounds that it results in the birth of
illegitimate children, i.e. the children that were not properly “authorized,” or
“counterfeit” children, so-to-speak.
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It were as good
To pardon him that hath from nature stolen
A man already made, as to remit
Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven's image
In stamps that are forbid: ’tis all as easy
Falsely to take away a life true made
As to put metal in restrained means
To make a false one. (act II, scene 4)
In his mention of the question of illegitimate children, Angelo uses the “man – money”
metaphor. Its main implication in Measure for Measure, in regard to the idea of justice
and judgment, is that all men are saved at the end because they bear a resemblance to
God, or His “stamp.” It is not possible to deprive anyone of this divine likeness and
therefore to condemn him or her totally.
68
The image of illegitimate children will be discussed in Chapter Two, in connection with Plato’s
interpretation of the opposition of the written vs. oral word.
74
In conclusion, the humanistic spirit shown in the apologia of mercy and the
condemnation of calculative retributive justice, or “justice for the sake of justice,” that
pervades Shakespeare’s comedies, appears very close to the Russian understanding of the
triad of law, justice and mercy. As was suggested with regard to Crime and Punishment,
Shakespeare’s texts constitute a significant part of the Russian tradition of “legal”
writing. Let us see now what exactly from the Bard’s treatment of the subject Pushkin
assimilated in his work and how.
Part III. Pushkin’s “Mercy, not Justice”
According to Lotman, Pushkin was continually interested in Measure for Measure
and even started translating it, but eventually, in 1833, i.e. while working on The
Captain’s Daughter, he rewrote it as a part dramatic, part narrative poem that abridged
the original text considerably (“Ideinaia struktura ‘Andzhelo’”).
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“Andzhelo” was one of
the poet’s experiments in a mixed-genre mode: on the one hand, Pushkin retold the story
quite loosely, cutting out a lot and adding emphasis to clarify his idea, while on the other,
he chose a few most dramatic narrative knots and translated them very accurately. The
author preserved two interviews between Angelo and Isabella and the heroine’s dialogue
with her brother in jail in dramatic form and constructed his text around these episodes.
70
69
The question of whether it was because of Pushkin’s lack of language skills or for another reason remains
beyond the scope of the present research, as well as speculations about the author’s immediate object of
inspiration. This may have been the original play, its source – an Italian novella by Cintio, its French prose
translation by Guizot-Pichot or Charles Lamb’s paraphrase of it published in Tales from Shakespeare,
Designed for the Use of Young Persons, which the poet had in his library (Dolinin, Shaitanov).
70
Indeed, a male-female duel is a recurrent motif in Pushkin’s work.
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Academic approaches to the analysis of “Andzhelo” are generally similar to those
to Measure for Measure – mainly political (Lotman, Makogonenko) and religious
(Krasukhin).
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Lotman reads the text in connection with the cosmic myth, on the one
hand, and the contemporary political situation, i.e. Alexander I’s suspicious death far
from the imperial capital and the fate of the Decembrists, on the other. He interprets
“Andzhelo” as an apologia of divine mercy distributed by the political power.
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Georgii
Makogonenko also stays within the Aesopean tradition but reads the poem on a more
abstract, philosophical level – as a cautionary tale against the danger of arbitrary mercy
and indifference to justice. If Lotman believes that in “Andzhelo” a man is tested by
power, Makogonenko claims that political power itself is tested. Gennadii Krasukhin
focuses on Angelo’s evolution from arrogant self-righteousness, through repentance, to
humility and submission, or “self-giving.” Igor Shaitanov, although he generally admits
the dominance of a Christian moral in the text, explores the poem in terms of “genre
heteroglossia” and “the deeper carnival truth of inseparable polar extremes” (Emerson
100), with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin. These readings refer to various aspects of the
problem of law, justice and mercy already discussed in connection with Shakespeare’s
play.
It was apparently the Christian idea of the superiority of mercy over justice, as well
as the complexity of the figure of Angelo, that attracted the Russian writer to one of the
71
A comprehensive summary of the main Russian and Soviet works on “Andzhelo” is presented in
Emerson 2006.
72
Catherine O’Neil supports and develops this idea in the second chapter of her book.
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least popular, at the time, of Shakespeare’s works.
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Unlike Measure for Measure,
dominated by Duke Vincentio, in the Russian text, Angelo becomes the center of the
author’s attention and artistic analysis and the title character.
74
In fact, Pushkin limits the
original text to Angelo’s plot line by cutting out the low comic sphere that features such
characters as Elbow, Froth, Pompey and Mistress Overdone.
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The study of principles of
judgment, announced in the title of Shakespeare’s comedy, becomes, therefore, a study of
a character.
Pushkin dramatically reduces the Duke’s part and, in contrast to the treatment of
Angelo, Isabella, Claudio and Lucio, denies him the right to speak for himself – the
character exists exclusively in the sphere of the authorial narrative. The poet turns him
into a father-figure, a patriarchal kind of deus ex machina, by giving him features of the
old Escalus, who is absent from the text of the poem, and by eliminating his vow to
marry Isabella (Dolinin, “Poema Pushkina ‘Andzhelo’” 137). This poetic modification
confirms Kashnikov’s statement about patrimonialism being a specific part of Russian
legal thinking. Although Tennehouse and Wilson write about the restoration of the old
patriarchal order already in Measure for Measure, with the change of the Duke’s age and
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In his analysis of “Andzhelo,” Dolinin states that Pushkin “could not possibly be unaware of the fact that
the apologia of mercy in Shakespeare’s play (the very title of which refers to the Sermon on the Mount) is
based on the fundamental Christian ideas of earthly and divine judgment. According to these ideas, mercy
is the main attribute of God” (149; my translation).
74
It is remarkable that, as follows from the subtitle to the poem in one of the draft manuscripts, Pushkin
considered Measure for Measure, as well as The Merchant of Venice, a tragedy (Emerson 86).
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The traces of this comic sphere are, nevertheless, found in The Captain’s Daughter, which will be
discussed later in this chapter. John Bayley observes that “[t]he irony of Andzhelo is that in abandoning
comedy Pushkin also abandons the very thing he so much admired, the freedom that is an aspect of
Shakespeare’s natural and essential comic genius” (190). Grigorii Kruzhkov, however, considers Pushkin’s
elimination of the comic sphere as an example of “the highest freedom of self-restraint.” This literary
discussion adds to the question of freedom and bondage of mercy considered above.
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removal of his marriage proposal to Isabella, the idea of patrimonialism in the Russian
text becomes very graphic.
Pushkin alters the atmosphere of sin and corruption present in Measure for Measure
to a lighter fairy-tale mode and “straightens” – or “sanitizes,” to use Caryl Emerson’s
word – the characters by making them more definite and less controversial and, at the
same time, more humane than cerebral. Indeed, no one could possibly reproach Pushkin’s
angelic and forgiving Isabella for being a cold, selfish and legalistic prude. Finally,
Pushkin rewrites noticeably the finale of the play. Instead of the Duke’s tricks and
“machinations” and his extended comments designed to inform the reader about the fate
of each character, the author concludes the poem with just one short remark about
Angelo’s fate, which stands out against the rest of the text. Isabella’s plea for Angelo,
“Прости же ты его!” is answered by “и Дук его простил.”
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The very simplicity,
artlessness and unpretentiousness of this finale, so different from Shakespeare’s elaborate
lines, is powerful and striking. Pushkin strips all esthetic connotations and rationalizing
away from the ethical problem of mercy and forgiveness. Thus, the major difference in
Shakespeare’s and Pushkin’s treatment of the “legal triad” is in their emphasis: “in final
scenes of Measure for Measure, Shakespeare lays stress on rational rather than religious
and ethical principles of judgment” (Dolinin, “Poema Pushkina ‘Andzhelo’” 151; my
translation). As in Measure for Measure, in “Andzhelo” the Duke’s reason for pardoning
remains unclear. Most likely, what attracted Pushkin in the plot was the human ability to
pardon: primarily, “the arbitrariness of absolute power meddling in public acts and
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“‘Forgive him!’ / And the duke forgave him” (cited in Emerson 92).
78
private lives, its ability to pardon and condemn at will, activate or deactivate laws”
(Emerson 89),
77
but also in the private sphere, where Marianna and Isabella both
willingly forgive Angelo.
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One aspect of analysis, overlooked by other students of the “legal triad” in Pushkin
and Shakespeare, is quantitative, namely the ratio of the references to law, justice and
mercy in the texts. In spite of Shakespeare’s insistence on the “quality of mercy,” its very
“quantity” appears revealing and relevant for the understanding of the two different
national ideas of justice. As “Andzhelo” is not a direct translation of Measure for
Measure and is significantly shorter – it contains 535 lines, which is not much longer
than the first act of the comedy alone – it therefore makes more sense to consider ratios
rather than numerical counts.
In total, the word zakon and its derivatives are mentioned in the poem fifteen times,
exclusively in the first half of the text, i.e. up to the end of Isabella’s second interview
with Angelo. It is defined as inherently severe but just, and its function is understood as
being to punish evil (karaiushchii zakon). Remarkably, the law is presented positively,
except in one instance, when according to Angelo, Isabella calls it a “tyrant” but then
retracts the claim. At the same time, Pushkin contrasts the idea of law – as being
universal, objective and superior to any influence – and its application that is subject to
interpretation. In his first interview with Isabella, Angelo says aloofly, “Не я, закон
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Besides Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure, this quality is exemplified in Shakespeare’s Prospero
from The Tempest (1610-1611?).
78
These and other changes and adjustments Pushkin made to Shakespeare’s text, e.g. Marianna’s
transformation into Angelo’s estranged wife instead of his rejected fiancée, are well examined in Pushkin
studies. See the bibliography in Dolinin’s “Poema Pushkina ‘Andzhelo’” (135).
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казнит,”
79
whereas in their second meeting he offers the heroine the chance to use the
law in favor of Claudio if she agrees to his conditions. Most impressively, seven out of
fifteen instances of the use of zakon belong to the authorial narrative – four of them refer
to or characterize Angelo – and eight are found in Angelo’s speech. No other character in
the poem ever uses the word. Pushkin could not make the association between the title
character and the power and limitations of the law more obvious and clear.
In Measure for Measure, the word “law” and its cognates are mentioned thirty-eight
times; thirty-one in the first half of the text and seven in the second. Proportionally to the
length of the texts, this is approximately one and a half times less often than in
“Andzhelo.” References to the law are more evenly distributed among the characters:
spoken eleven times by Angelo, nine by the Duke, and five times each by Isabella and
Pompey. This characterizes Shakespeare’s world as more diverse and democratic:
anybody, whether a lawgiver, a judge, a commoner or a criminal, can refer to the law,
discuss it and try to make use of it. Along with numerous affirmative references to the
law, Shakespeare uses a few “negative” ones, such as “lawless” and “unlawful,” which
denote absence of the rule of law while still expressing a positive view of law.
Interestingly enough, those are completely absent from Pushkin’s text.
On two occasions, Shakespeare mentions law and mercy together: when Isabella
opposes “lawful mercy” to “foul redemption” (act II, scene 4) and when Duke Vincentio
states that “the very mercy of the law” (act V, scene 1) is horrified by Angelo’s crimes.
This implies that the two notions are not absolutely opposed and mutually exclusive.
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“Not me, but the law punishes” (my translation).
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Pushkin, on the other hand, consistently omits this trope. This, together with the total
disappearance of any mention of the law in the second half of “Andzhelo,” which
narrates the Duke’s “return” and judgment, demonstrates a sharp antagonism between the
law and mercy in the Russian text.
The words miloserdie and milost' are mentioned eleven times in “Andzhelo” by the
author, Isabella and Angelo; nine of them in the first half of the text. Thus, the
confrontation between “law” and “mercy” is the main theme of the first part of the poem
but disappers in the second. In Measure for Measure, there are nineteen instances of
“mercy”: nine in the first half and ten in the second. Pushkin, therefore, considering the
length of the two texts, uses the term about 2.3 times more often than Shakespeare. In
both texts, the notion is strongly, though not exclusively, associated with Isabella: eight
instances in the poem and seven in the comedy. As with “law,” Shakespeare shows more
variety in assigning characters to speak about mercy. At the same time, Angelo only
mentions it once: at the end of the play, when crushed by the conscience of his guilt, he
says, “I crave death more willingly than mercy” (act V, scene 1). Interestingly, this
instance is missing from Pushkin’s “Andzhelo”: if Shakespeare’s Angelo explicitly
rejects mercy, Pushkin’s character simply acknowledges that he deserves death.
In spite of this omission, Pushkin’s Angelo mentions mercy twice; both are in his
second interview with Isabella when he is trying to convince her that if she commits a sin
in order to redeem her brother’s life, it will not be a sin: “…его спасти грехом / Не
милосердие ль?”
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In these instances, Shakespeare’s Angelo uses the word “charity,”
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“Would not it be mercy to save him by a sin?” (my translation).
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which can be translated as miloserdie, although a more accurate translation in this context
would be liubov’ k blizhnemu (“Christian love”). What difference does this substitution
of “charity” with “mercy” make? It would appear that Shakespeare’s Angelo offers
Isabella to rescue her brother out of love, while Pushkin’s Angelo – out of pity. Indeed,
this latter relationship, based on charity as Christian love, is equal, or “horizontal,”
whereas that based on mercy is unequal, or “vertical.” Therefore, by choosing “mercy”
instead of “charity,” as well as by turning the Duke into a patriarch, Pushkin foregrounds
the relationship of inequality among people. Thus, with respect to both law and mercy,
the Russian text follows its English original quite accurately, albeit with a few
specificities and some added emphasis.
On the other hand, the comparative quantitative analysis of the use of “justice” in
Measure for Measure and “Andzhelo” captures and reveals a core difference between
English and Russian “legal” thinking. In the comedy, the word and its derivatives appear
thirty-one times: twelve in the first half and nineteen in the second.
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This is about as
frequent as the word “law,” and noticeably more frequent than “mercy.” In term of its
distribution among the characters, it is as popular as the other two terms, while it is
mostly used by the main characters: nine times each by the Duke and Isabella and six
times by Angelo.
In the sharpest possible contrast, Pushkin mentions spravedlivost’ only once in his
entire poem. Moreover, this only reference is, in fact, negative – the poet describes the
Duke as trying not to be unjust:
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Instances where the noun “justice” was used in the meaning “judge” and the adjective “just” in the sense
“true” were not considered in the analysis.
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Зло явное, терпимое давно,
Молчанием суда уже дозволено,
И вдруг его казнить совсем несправедливо
И странно было бы – тому же особливо,
Кто первый сам его потворством ободрял.
(Pushkin, SS vol. 3, 262-263)
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It goes without saying that Pushkin’s elimination of ninety-seven per cent of mentions of
“justice” from “Andzhelo” cannot be accidental or explained by abridgement or artistic
reasons. In fact, what Pushkin does here is not simply reducing mentions of the word; he
removes the very concept from the “legal triad” and legal discussion. If Shakespeare
explores the correlation and interconnectedness between law, justice and mercy, for
Pushkin justice is completely out of the equation.
Part of the reason why the Russian author eliminates justice from his text lies in his
treatment of episodes relating to petitioning. In Measure for Measure, Isabella appeals to
the authority three times: first, she asks Angelo to pardon her brother; second, she asks
the Duke to punish Angelo; and finally, when everything comes into the open, she pleads
with him to forgive Angelo. If on the first and third occasions the heroine asks for mercy,
as both Claudio and Angelo are officially found guilty, the second time she demands
justice and emphatically repeats the word five times:
Justice, O royal duke! Vail your regard
Upon a wrong'd, I would fain have said, a maid!
O worthy prince, dishonour not your eye
By throwing it on any other object
Till you have heard me in my true complaint
And given me justice, justice, justice, justice!
(act V, scene 1)
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“Manifest evil, long tolerated, / Is already justified by the court’s silence, / So to punish it suddenly
would be unjust / And strange – especially for the one / Who first encouraged it” (my translation).
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In contrast to this, Pushkin’s Isabella appeals to mercy, not justice in the respective
episode: “Помилуй, государь! / Ты щит невинности, ты милости алтарь, /
Помилуй!..”
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Moreover, in this context she pleads with the Duke to have mercy not
upon villainous Angelo, which is yet to come, but upon herself, even though she is not
guilty of anything. The repeated imperative pomilui (“have mercy”), together with
Isabella’s throwing herself at the Duke’s feet, is a ritualistic sign of her absolute
submission and “self-giving” to a higher power. This is not rational behavior on the part
of someone unjustly wronged with a moral right to demand the restoration of justice, and
even less so an example of legalistic thinking in the model of Portia.
Similarly to eliding justice from the “legal triad,” Pushkin removes the figure of
Shakespeare’s moderate judge Escalus from his poem and focuses on the two polar
images of a judge, the merciful Duke and overly strict Angelo. In his work Culture and
Explosion (1992), Lotman discusses two structures, binary and ternary, underlying
perception and understanding of the world. The former presents the reality through binary
oppositions, such as “top vs. bottom,” “right vs. wrong,” while the latter puts a mediator
between the two poles. In terms of its relation to reality, the ternary structure seeks to
adapt the ideal to the reality, whereas the binary structure seeks to realize it in practice.
Lotman illustrates the “binary vs. ternary” opposition with the idea of the afterlife, which
in Eastern Orthodoxy consists of two parts, heaven and hell, while in Western
Christianity includes the intermediate stage of purgatory. This example allows the scholar
to associate ternary structures with the West and binary ones with Russia, as he
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“Sire, have mercy! / You are the shield of innocence and the altar of mercy, / Have mercy!” (my
translation).
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previously did with the cultural models of “agreement” and “self-giving.” However, at
this later stage of his work, Lotman does not demonize or even criticize the Western
model, but prefers it over the rigid and fragile Russian one, considering it to be more
stable and thus providing historical continuity in the event of sociopolitical disruption.
Towards the end of his article, the scholar applies his hypothesis to the analysis of
the Russian “law – justice” paradigm. He states that the ternary structure is generally
preoccupied with averaging and survival and uses the judicial system to this end, while
the binary replaces the legal system with moral or religious principles. This is exactly
what happens in “Andzhelo” and The Captain’s Daughter, where Isabella and Masha
Mironova beg for mercy rather than demand justice.
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Interestingly, Lotman, who
previously analyzed these two texts in terms of being an apotheosis of mercy, now uses
them as an implicit warning against the intolerance of binary structures. Emerson points
out this discrepancy between the scholar’s earlier and later views on law, justice and
mercy:
Lotman’s message is mixed. He makes a passionately topical plea at the
end of Culture and Explosion for post-Communist Russian culture to
“rekey” itself in a ternary mode – because binary structures, he suggests,
are too intolerant, too fragile, too impatient, and thus liable to collapse
altogether when the local explosion occurs. (103)
No doubt, the drastic changes in Russia’s political order and the unruly reality of
the early post-Soviet period – Culture and Explosion was written in 1992, a year before
Lotman’s death – can explain why the scholar’s views might have changed. If this was
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As Emerson justly points out, “When characters begin to beg for mercy rather than demand justice – and
here the examples Lotman provides are Masha Mironova’s plea for Grinev before Catherine II in The
Captain’s Daughter and Isabella’s plea for Angelo before the duke – this is an indication that the collapsing
structure was a binary and has been rent by explosion” (104).
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the case, the scholar’s legal thinking evolved in the direction opposite to that of
Pushkin’s, who in his early ode “Liberty” (1817), pronounced universal law the highest
political value, but in the 1830s, praised irrational, “personal” mercy instead. This
attempt to “make a political principle out of an ethical concept is a feature of Pushkin’s
political and poetic thought in the 1830s; the autocratic principle itself may be grounded
in the possibility of personal moral decision that is above the law” (Surat and Bocharov
160; my translation). The discrepancy is due to their different historical conditions:
Pushkin’s life started in the quasi-liberal Alexandrian reign and ended in Nicholas I’s
absolutism, while Lotman, after decades of the Soviet regime, eventually found himself
in a country that was promisingly and dangerously open to many different kinds of
changes. Despotism raises the importance of mercy, whereas liberalism appeals to justice
and law.
The comparative quantitative analysis of Measure for Measure and “Andzhelo”
showed that Pushkin changed the ratio of law-to-justice-to-mercy from 35:31:19 in the
original text to 15:1:11, i.e. he increased the share of mercy twofold and nearly expelled
justice. Is this negation of rational justice and preference for idealistic binary structures
over more realistic ternary ones inherent in Russian culture? Or is it just an accident, a
solitary instance? In The Captain’s Daughter, the ratio of law-to-justice-to-mercy is
4:2:13,
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meaning that “mercy” figures twice more often than law and justice combined.
86
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One of the two references to justice is negative, and in the other one justice is rejected. The only positive
instance is, therefore, in “The Omitted Chapter,” which Pushkin did not include in the final version of the
novel.
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Technically, it is even bigger due to the idioms, such as milostivyi gosudar’ (literally, “graceful sir”),
sdelai milost’ (“do me a favor”) and milosti prosim (“welcome”), which were not considered.
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In The History of Pugachev references to mercy also exceed those to law and justice
combined, while most instances of “justice” simply state that information is true. In The
Case by Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin, a canonic text for Russian “legal” writing, the law-
justice-mercy ratio is 29:3:12. There are certain variations in these statistics – e.g. almost
all twelve mentions of “mercy” in The Case refer to God, the only possible source of
mercy in the cruel world of the play, – although justice consistently remains virtually
absent.
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The same tendency characterizes Pushkin’s unfinished tale “Dubrovsky,” where
this ratio is 8:1:2. As a point of comparison, the law-justice-mercy ratio in The Merchant
of Venice is 21:15:15. Thus, this comparative quantitative analysis demonstrates that the
concepts of law, justice and mercy exist as equal members of the triad in the Western
legal discourse, while in Russia, the “legal triad” is reduced to a binary opposition by
eliminating the notion of justice.
The Captain’s Daughter, on which Pushkin worked for about four years and which
he completed three months prior to his death, was the writer’s final work. Written in the
form of a family chronicle, the novel tells a story of how, at the time of the peasant
rebellion of 1773-1775, a noble youth Petr Grinev marries Masha Mironova thanks to the
help of the leaders of the two warring sides, Empress Catherine the Great and the
Cossack Leader Emelian Pugachev. In the most general form, the composition of the
novel may be described as consisting of two parts mirroring one another. In the first part,
the rebel forces take over Fort Belogorsk where Petr serves under Captain Ivan Mironov,
Masha’s father. They hang Mironov and his wife, Vasilisa Egorovna, and Masha only
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The situation differs in Dostoevsky’s works, where rational and intellectual characters, such as
Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, put justice at the center of their reasoning.
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escapes the same fate because her true identity is not discovered. Officer Grinev survives
in spite of his refusal to swear an oath of allegiance to Pugachev, who claims to be
Emperor Peter III, because earlier in the text he gave his hare-skin jacket as a token of
gratitude to a mysterious man who rescued him from a blizzard.
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Now, that man turns
out to be Pugachev himself, and he shows mercy to Grinev in return for the young man’s
favor and as he had already rescued his life once. Pugachev lets Petr go to Orenburg and
leaves the fort under the command of Shvabrin, Grinev’s fellow officer who goes over to
the rebels’ side. Shvabrin tries to force Masha to marry him. In order to rescue his
beloved, Grinev leaves his service without the permission of his commander and is
captured by Pugachev’s troops.
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After the protagonist explains the situation to Pugachev,
they both ride off to Fort Belogorsk where the “peasant tsar” again shows mercy to the
character by setting the couple free.
In the second part, Masha, in her turn, rescues her fiancé who is condemned for
treason, i.e. his alleged defection and communication with the rebels, and is sentenced to
death (this is later commuted to penal servitude). The heroine goes to St. Petersburg to
present a petition to the Empress, which Catherine II eventually grants. However, even
before that Masha, who stops not in the capital but in Tsarskoe Selo – the Empress’s
favorite summer residence, – meets a sympathetic lady in a park and explains her plan to
plead before the Empress on Petr’s behalf. Soon afterwards, the heroine receives an
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This unfortunate monarch was Emperor of Russia for six months in 1762 until he fell a victim of a
conspiracy led by his wife, who succeeded him to the throne as Catherine II.
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In an earlier version of the novel, Grinev goes to Pugachev’s camp deliberately (Lotman, “Ideinaia
struktura Kapitanskoi dochki” 223).
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invitation to see the Empress, and recognizes her as the lady she had talked to earlier.
Catherine II pardons Grinev, and the lovers live happily ever after.
The apologia of mercy in the scenes of Pugachev’s and Catherine’s judgment and
pardon, which will be at the heart of the following analysis of the novel, indubitably,
constitutes the core of Pushkin’s legal thinking. Like Shakespeare, Pushkin liked to
combine low and high, comic and tragic matters in the same story, and The Captain’s
Daughter is no exception. In the text, the author gives a few examples – mostly comic –
of people’s idea of justice. In one of them, the episode describing Grinev’s arrival to Fort
Belogorsk, Vasilisa Egorovna is shown as an autocratic sovereign of the fortress and thus
as a comic parallel to the Empress. In very homey settings and in a very familial manner,
she instructs one of the Cossacks about where to lodge a newly arrived officer:
“Максимыч! – сказала ему капитанша. – Отведи господину офицеру
квартиру, да почище”. – “Слушаю, Василиса Егоровна, – отвечал
урядник. – Не поместить ли его благородие к Ивану Полежаеву?” –
“Врешь, Максимыч, – сказала капитанша, – у Полежаева и так
тесно; он же мне кум и помнит, что мы его начальники. Отведи
господина офицера... как ваше имя и отчество, мой батюшка? Петр
Андреич?.. Отведи Петра Андреича к Семену Кузову. Он,
мошенник, лошадь свою пустил ко мне в огород. Ну, что,
Максимыч, все ли благополучно?”
– Все, слава богу, тихо, – отвечал казак, – только капрал
Прохоров подрался в бане с Устиньей Негулиной за шайку горячей
воды.
– Иван Игнатьич! – сказала капитанша кривому старичку. –
Разбери Прохорова с Устиньей, кто прав, кто виноват. Да обоих и
накажи. (Pushkin, PSS vol. 6, 276)
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90
“Maksimych,” said the captain’s wife to him, “assign this officer to a lodging, but mind you, a clean
one.”
“Yes, madam, Vasilisa Egorovna,” replied the sergeant. “Should we perhaps billet His Honor at Ivan
Polezhaev’s?”
“Nonsense, Maksimych,” said the captain’s wife. “Polezhaev’s house is crowded as it is; besides, I’m the
godmother of his child, and he’s never forgotten that we’re his betters. Take the officer… What’s your
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The cited fragment is remarkable in many respects. First of all, the motherly figure
of Vasilisa Egorovna makes her little world look very habitual, long-established,
comfortable, secure and immutable. No one could imagine that this patriarchal, or
“matriarchal,” world, with its slow-paced cyclical time was soon to fall victim to the
rebellious peasants and Cossacks. Vasilisa Egorovna’s world is opposed to the big outer
world as mythical to the historical and peaceful and feminine to the military, masculine.
Moreover, it is contrasted to the big world as the domain of personal, especially familial,
relationships to that of state bureaucracy and the Table of Ranks. The clash between these
two modes of existence constitutes the main conflict of the novel and is captured in its
very title – The Captain’s Daughter (Zaslavsky 49-52).
Vasilisa Egorovna’s justice reflects the principles of her world and the people’s
world: patrimonialism, nonreciprocality and subjectivism, which also characterize
Lotman’s cultural model of “self-giving.” Regarding Grinev’s lodging, she orders the
protagonist be sent to lodge with her personal enemy, because providing a billet for a
soldier was always a burden for peasants. Common sense, kinship and personal
sympathies and antipathies, not objective considerations or adherence to regulations
govern her decision. When neither of those is applicable, a more general principle comes
to play – let us call it the principle of “universal guilt.” This is exemplified when Vasilisa
name and patronymic, dear? Petr Andreich? Take Petr Andreich to Semen Kuzov’s. The scoundrel has let
his horse into my vegetable garden. How are things otherwise, Maksimych? Everything all right?”
“Everything’s been peaceful, thank God,” said the Cossack, “except that in the bathhouse Corporal
Prokhorov got into a scuffle with Ustin’ia Negulina over a tubful of hot water.”
“Ivan Ignatich,” the captain’s wife turned to the one-eyed little old man, “please sort out the matter between
Prokhorov and Ustin’ia: who’s right, who’s to blame. Then punish them both” (Pushkin, Complete Prose
Fiction 283).
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Egorovna advises her loyal “adjutant” Ivan Ignatich on the matter of Prokhorov’s quarrel
with Ustinia, “[P]lease sort out… who’s right, who’s to blame. Then punish them both.”
As has been noticed by a number of students of the novel, this short quotation
echoes Angelo’s remark to Escalus on Elbow, Pompey and Froth’s litigation in Measure
for Measure, which was excluded from Pushkin’s “Andzhelo”: “I’ll take my leave, / And
leave you to the hearing of the cause, / Hoping you’ll find good cause to whip them all”
(act II, scene 1). Both Vasilisa Egorovna and Angelo form a judgment already before
judging, almost before hearing the case. Moreover, when deliberating about the case – in
both texts an insignificant matter to the point of being comic and absurd, – they decide
that it is just to punish all parties. Both verdicts, therefore, reverse the principle of mercy
by pronouncing unreasonable punishment for everyone instead of forgiveness for the
guilty. One could ask, however, if the punishment is absolutely unreasonable. In Measure
for Measure, Angelo expresses his wish that Escalus find a reason to punish all involved,
while in The Captain’s Daughter, the question of a reason does not rise at all.
Vasilisa Egorovna’s “verdict” demonstrates her assurance that both participants,
Prokhorov and Ustinia, are guilty, like when children quarrel; in this respect her justice
might be called not only patrimonial, but also “pedagogical.” Moreover, in general terms,
it might refer to the Christian belief that all human beings are sinful, i.e. they are guilty of
something, therefore, deserve punishment, and it is not really important whether one is
punished specifically for any particular crime or not. This principle of everyone’s
equality in guilt, or the principle of “universal equivalence,” discussed earlier in
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connection with Measure for Measure, also underlies the ideological structure of The
Captain’s Daughter, in which a hare-skin jacket can potentially redeem one’s life.
Somewhat similar in its all-punishing ardor, although a straight rather than reversed
case of the administration of people’s justice is proposed to Pugachev by Beloborodov,
one of his counselors. When Grinev is brought to the rebels’ camp in Chapter XI he tells
Pugachev about Shvabrin’s plan to marry the orphan Masha forcefully. The quick-
tempered “peasant tsar” wants to punish Shvabrin immediately for his lying, self-will and
for oppressing people but is stopped by his counselors.
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Khlopusha says that it would not
be wise to decide hastily, without reflecting carefully, whereas the old Beloborodov notes
that Grinev himself deserves further scrutiny and, by all appearances, an equal
punishment for an identical fault – lying: “[О]н [Grinev] тебя в глаза обманывает…
Коли ты Швабрина хочешь повесить [for deceiving you], то уж на той же виселице
повесь и этого молодца, чтоб никому не было завидно” (Pushkin, PSS vol. 6, 333).
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This logical and reasonable suggestion by an overtly negative character could have been
the only instance of a just, albeit “arithmetic,” judgment in the text. However, earlier
during the same conversation, he expressed more legal extremism. In response to
Khlopusha’s moderate advice, he says precisely, “Нечего их [gentlemen] ни жалеть, ни
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The fact that in Pugachev’s absence Shvabrin is his deputy in Fort Belogorsk establishes an interesting
parallel with Measure for Measure and “Andzhelo,” although Pushkin’s antagonist is by no means a
virtuous man who is suddenly “corrupted” by power or who discovers his erroneous human nature. Like
Angelo, Shvabrin also tries to use his power for getting a woman he wants on the pretext of not disclosing
her true identity to Pugachev and thus saving her. At the same time, this narrative element, which
corresponds to Propp’s function of “unfounded claims,” reveals a stronger connection with folklore than
with Shakespeare’s comedy.
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“You can see,” the little old man chimed in, “that he’s lying right to your face… If you want to hang
Shvabrin, hang this pretty young man, too, on the same gallows, so that neither of them could feel envious
of the other” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 333).
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жаловать! <…> Швабрина сказнить не беда; а не худо и господина офицера
допросить порядком” (Pushkin, PSS vol. 6, 333).
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Beloborodov’s attitude towards
Shvabrin’s supposed execution as “it’s not a big deal” shows that he also believes in
universal human guilt. Like Vasilisa Egorovna, he advocates a “just” punishment for
everyone rather than simply a just judgment.
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Vasilisa Egorovna and Beloborodov belong to ideologically opposite worlds, yet
both represent the people’s judgment. This suggests that the idea of universal human
guilt, shared by the two characters, is central to the Russian national understanding of
justice.
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After Pushkin, who expressed this idea in artistic images, it received its further
development in Nikolai Gogol’s writing, most prominently, in his nonfictional Selected
Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Opposing the traditional ideas of human
and divine justice in his short chapter “Sel’skii sud i rasprava” (“Rural Justice and
Punishment,” 1845), written as an instruction to landowners on how to judge their serfs,
Gogol explicitly states that the latter, undeniably superior, form of justice implies
condemnation of both innocent and guilty sides.
Судите всякого человека двойным судом и всякому делу давайте
двойную расправу. Один суд должен быть человеческий. На нем
оправдайте правого и осудите виноватого. Старайтесь, чтоб это было
при свидетелях, чтобы тут стояли и другие мужики, чтобы все видели
ясно как день, чем один прав и чем другой виноват. Другой же суд
сделайте божеский. И на нем осудите и правого и виноватого. Выведите
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“No need either to pity or to favor them… There’ll be no harm in hanging Shvabrin; and it wouldn’t be
amiss, either, to question this here officer thoroughly” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 332).
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At the same time, one cannot deny an element of class hatred in Beloborodov’s attitude towards
Shvabrin.
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Although in Measure for Measure Angelo’s words, “Hoping you’ll find good cause to whip them all,”
characterize legal thinking in fictional Vienna, an association with Russia is already established as the
country is mentioned in the previous sentence.
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ясно первому, как он сам был тому виной, что другой его обидел, а
второму – как он вдвойне виноват и пред богом, и пред людьми; одного
укорите, зачем не простил своему брату, как повелел Христос, а
другого попрекните, зачем он обидел самого Христа в своем брате; а
обоим вместе дайте выговор за то, что не примирились сами собой и
пришли на суд, и возьмите слово с обоих исповедаться непременно
попу на исповеди во всем. Если такой суд вы будете произносить, вы
будете сами полномочны, как бог, потому что бог вас уполномочит. Вы
извлечете оттуда для себя самого много добра и много прямых и правых
познаний. Если бы многие из государственных людей начинали свое
поприще не бумажными занятиями, а устной расправой дел между
простыми людьми, они бы лучше узнали дух земли, свойство народа и
вообще душу человека, и не заимствовали бы потом из чужеземных
земель нам неприличных нововведений. Правосудие у нас могло бы
исполняться лучше, нежели во всех других государствах, потому что из
всех народов только в одном русском заронилась эта верная мысль, что
нет человека правого и что прав один только бог. Эта мысль, как
непреложное верование, разнеслась повсюду в нашем народе.
Вооруженный ею, даже простой и неумный человек получает в народе
власть и прекращает ссоры. Мы только, люди высшие, не слышим ее,
потому что набрались пустых рыцарски-европейских понятий о правде.
Мы только спорим из-за того, кто прав, кто виноват; а если разобрать
каждое из дел наших, придешь к тому же знаменателю, то есть – оба
виноваты. И видишь, что весьма здраво поступила комендантша в
повести Пушкина “Капитанская дочка”, которая, пославши поручика
рассудить городового солдата с бабой, подравшихся в бане за
деревянную шайку, снабдила его такой инструкцией: “Разбери, кто
прав, кто виноват, да обоих и накажи” (Gogol, PSS vol. 8, 342-343).
96
96
“Judge every man with a double judgment, and give every action a double decision. One judgment
should be human. In it vindicate the innocent and denounce the guilty. Try to do it before witnesses that
other peasants may be there, so that they may all see clear as day that one is innocent and the other guilty.
Make the other judgment a divine one. In it vindicate [in the original, “denounce”] both the innocent and
the guilty. Clearly make the first admit what fault he committed for the other to offend him, and the second
how he is doubly guilty, before God and before men; reproach the one because he did not forgive his
brother, as Christ commanded, and reproach the other because in his brother he offended Christ himself;
reprimand both because they did not make it up and came to court, and with both of them form the words
for them to confess to the priest in their confession. If you pronounce such judgment, you will be like a
representative of God, because God authorizes you. From this you will extract much good, much sincere
and correct knowledge. If many people in the government began their careers not with paper work but with
the verbal administration of business among the simple people, they would know the spirit of the land
better, the temper of the nation and the general soul of man; they would then not borrow unseemly
innovations for us from foreign lands. Justice among us can be fulfilled better than in all other states,
because of all the nations only the Russian has given a rise to this certain thought – that no man is right,
that only God is right. This thought, like an immutable belief has spread everywhere in our nation. Even a
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Gogol contrasts Russian religious justice to the Western “chivalrous” – or
“agreement-based,” in Lotman’s term – idea of truth on the grounds that the former
presumes everyone guilty, while the latter seeks to establish one’s guilt or innocence. He
presents the process of establishing the truth and of establishing judicially one’s guilt or
innocence as superfluous and provoking disagreement and hostility among people.
Moreover, he calls on Russian governors to reject the “empty, chivalrous, European”
conceptions and return to the native Russian idea of universal guilt, which is still alive
among simple people.
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Such treatment of the concept of justice appears to be
“economical,” as it saves time and energy by avoiding “unnecessary” arguments.
In addition to embodying the national idea of universal guilt and the legal nihilism
that logically stems from this, as well as the traditional dichotomy between Russia and
the West, Gogol explaines other ideas that are crucial for Russian legal thinking. The
writer’s legal nihilism is never more extreme than when he criticizes people for coming
to court instead of settling the matter out of court. Reaching an agreement in private is
supposed to be based on the Christian idea of mercy and forgiveness, not on revenge, and
simple, stupid man armed with it receives power in the nation and stops quarrels. Only we, people of a
higher station, do not perceive it, because we have acquired an empty, chivalrous, European understanding
of truth. Only we quarrel about who is innocent and who guilty; if each of our affairs is analyzed, you will
come to the same meaning, that is, both are guilty. Look at how the highly reasonable commandant’s wife
treated this matter in Pushkin’s tale The Captain’s Daughter: she sent a lieutenant to judge between a
garrison soldier and a peasant woman who had fought in the bathhouse over a wooden; she gave him these
instructions: ‘Look into who is innocent and who guilty, and punish them both’” (Gogol’, Selected
Passages 163-165).
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In his novel ZhD (Living Souls, 2006), the contemporary writer and journalist Dmitrii Bykov ironically
encapsulates this principle of Russian justice: “In SMERSH, already in Dzerzhinsky’s Academy, they
instill: nobody’s innocent. The goal is exclusively to find the guilt. People are right saying that in our
country, we do not imprison people for nothing” (my translation).
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underpinned by the notion of universal guilt. In his reliance on divine justice and mercy,
Gogol seeks to remove an unnecessary mediator, the judicial system, from the process of
judging. The only law to be observed is Christ’s teaching, which is simple enough for
everyone to understand and to follow. If any trouble occurs, serf-owners should guide
and instruct their peasants in a fatherly manner without any interference from the judicial
authorities. Gogol himself, though, does not see a contradiction between legal justice and
the idea of universal guilt or a problem with the double standard of justice. He believes
that only Russia, of all European countries, can perfectly administer justice following his
principles.
The opposition between the letter and the spirit of the law, as well as that between
the written and oral word is also implicitly present in the quoted fragment, when Gogol
suggests that people in the government should begin their careers “not with paperwork
but with the verbal administration of business among the simple people.” The writer does
not merely oppose paperwork and real life, he advocates that the authorities should reject
their gentlemanly connection with faulty European ideas and go to the simple people to
learn the principles of justice from the Russian oral folk tradition. Finally, with the use of
the expression “прийти к тому же знаменателю” (literally, “to come to the same
denominator”) near the end of the passage, translated as “to come to the same meaning,”
Gogol implicitly reaffirms the mathematical nature of justice.
The belief in universal guilt as a characteristic feature of Russian “legal” thinking
has also been noted by foreign writers. In Albert Camus’s novel La Chute (1956), which
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belongs to the canon of world “legal” writings, the protagonist mentions a Russian
landowner who exercises this principle in practice:
Je disais aussi, à qui voulait l’entendre, mon regret qu’il ne fût plus
possible d’opérer comme un propriétaire russe dont j’admirais le
caractère : il faisait fouetter en même temps ceux de ses paysans qui le
saluaient et ceux qui ne le saluaient pas pour punir une audace qu’il
jugeait dans les deux cas également effrontée. (55)
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This utterance by the protagonist Jean-Baptiste Clamence, an ex-lawyer turned self-
proclaimed “judge-penitent,”
99
is not merely a parenthesis, but touches upon the main
idea of the novel. The hero experiences a deep professional and ideological crisis when,
in the middle of his brilliant career, he suddenly discovers that his whole life was selfish
and hypocritical to the core. All the time, he successfully defended people who had the
same faults as he had. It remains unclear to what Russian landowner, presumably
fictional, Clamence refers in his monologue, but given Camus’s constant fascination with
Dostoevsky – La Chute overtly follows the narrative mode of “Notes from the
Underground” – it may be from Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, and through him – from Gogol.
Like Gogol, and especially like Dostoevsky, Camus’s “underground man”
Clamence approaches the ideas of justice and guilt in connection with the notions of
freedom and slavery. He abandons his publicly recognized position in Paris to move to
Amsterdam and become a “judge-penitent,” thus hoping to achieve superiority over other
people and together with it – to gain the right to judge them. His strategy works in the
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“Finally, I used to express, to whoever would listen, my regret that it was no longer possible to act like a
certain Russian landowner whose character I admired. He would have a beating administered both to his
peasants who bowed to him and to those who didn’t bow to him in order to punish a boldness he considered
equally impudent in both cases” (Camus, The Fall 68).
99
A judge who is doing public penance in order to make other people to repent as well.
97
following way: Clamence would meet occasional visitors in the bar “Mexico City” and
tell them his life story – with total honesty and self-exposure. This “striptease of
conscience,” in the manner of Dostoevsky, would suddenly turn into an accusation:
“Mais, du même coup, le portrait que je tends à mes contemporains devient un miroir”
(Camus, La chute 81).
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He wants to condemn everyone in order to lighten his own
conscience or even to escape it. To this end, he also reduces justice to simple arithmetic,
without any expected catharsis of repentance and remission of sins. Finally, Clamence
absolutely insists on universal guilt, but without any religious rationale whatsoever: “En
philosophie comme en politique, je suis donc pour toute théorie qui refuse l’innocence à
l’homme” (Camus, La chute 77).
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Although Pushkin does not explicitly say so in The Captain’s Daughter, the
connection between the idea of universal guilt and the application of the principle of
mercy is everywhere. Let us now proceed to the analysis of mercy in the text. A number
of scholars have examined the problem of mercy in the novel, but Lotman’s article,
“Ideinaia struktura Kapitanskoi dochki” (“The Ideological Structure of The Captain’s
Daughter,” 1988) is the most influential study of it. In this article, Lotman treats mercy as
the core and the superior principle of Pushkin’s political and historical thinking in the late
1830s. He sees it as the only means of overcoming the deep conflict between the two
social worlds, peasant and nobiliary, each with its own understanding of what is legal and
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“But at the same time the portrait I hold out to my contemporaries becomes a mirror” (Camus, The Fall
102).
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“In philosophy as in politics, I am for any theory that refuses to grant man innocence” (Camus, The Fall
97).
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legitimate.
102
According to Lotman, in his later work, Pushkin moves away from the idea
of the political leader being a perfect embodiment of the transpersonal principles of
historical progress, e.g. Peter I in “Poltava,” to the appreciation of humaneness in the
leader, his or her separation from the state and the soulless bureaucratic machine. Both
Catherine the Great and Pugachev appear to be able to rise above their historical position
in the act of mercy, and this allows Grinev and Masha to survive in the chaos of a
Russian rebellion. Pushkin’s evolution, in terms of his ideas on law, justice and mercy,
went from a celebration of superpersonal, rational and regular principles of law to an
apologia of the random, arbitrary and inconsistent quality of personal mercy (Kuleshov).
That is how Lotman characterizes Pugachev, and the words can be applied to the
Empress as well:
Он поступает так, как ему велят не политические соображения, а
человеческое чувство. Он милостив, следовательно, непоследователен,
ибо отступает от принципов, которые сам считает справедливыми. Но
эта непоследовательность спасительна, ибо человечность таит в себе
возможность более глубоких исторических концепций, чем социально
оправданные, но схематичные и социально релятивные “законы.”
(Lotman, “Ideinaia struktura Kapitanskoi dochki” 356)
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Lotman considers the concept of mercy in The Captain’s Daughter in the broader
context of the evolution of Pushkin’s political views and eighteenth-century European
theories of justice – per se, and as thus related to Russian literature of the period. In
102
Although Lotman developed the opposition of the two cultural models a few years after writing on The
Captain’s Daughter, the peasant world can be loosely related with “self-giving” and that of the nobility
with “agreement.”
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“He acts according to human feeling rather than political considerations. He is merciful and, therefore,
inconsistent, as he breaks the rules he himself considers just. However, this inconsistency serves as a means
of salvation because humaneness is fraught with the possibility of deeper historical conceptions than
socially justified but schematic and socially relative ‘laws’” (my translation).
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contrast, Oleg Zaslavsky analyzes the content of the concept of mercy specifically as it is
presented in the novel. His analysis of numerous examples of showing mercy in the text
brings the scholar to a few unexpected and insightful conclusions. First and foremost,
mercy is never based on free will, but is always a discharge of some debt.
104
By
displaying mercy, Pugachev “pays back” Grinev for his hare-skin jacket, while Catherine
II herself acknowledges that she owes Masha Mironova for her father’s loyalty to the
sovereign. Secondly, in order to obtain mercy one needs to convince the authority that
one depends completely and unconditionally on that authority’s will. With reference to
the details of Pushkin’s biography, in particular to the fact that in the beginning of the
1830s the poet’s marriage depended on Emperor Nicholas I’s approval, Zaslavsky claims
that the author’s main idea in The Captain’s Daughter was that “the world where human
happiness depends on mercy is inimical to the human being” (52; my translation).
Although Zaslavsky’s article is perceptive and convincing for the most part, his
conclusions raise a few questions. First of all, there are examples of acts of mercy in the
novel that do not quite fit his hypothesis, such as the initial replacement of the death
penalty for Grinev with exile thanks to his noble origin; the actions of the chiefs of
separate detachments sent in pursuit of Pugachev who “arbitrarily punished and
pardoned”; and the episode from “The Omitted Chapter,” when the old Bulanin [Grinev’s
father] pardons his serfs after their uprising. Secondly, one should not confuse various
104
Indeed, the characters’ free will is limited in the novel: Pugachev’s power is restricted by his “generals,”
and Grinev says to Savel’ich that he is bound by honor, etc. Compare mercy’s binding nature in
Shakespeare, e.g. Portia’s “must the Jew be merciful.”
100
attempts to rationalize or explain mercy with “paying” a debt.
105
Moreover, if the
Empress feels indebted to Captain Mironov’s daughter, she cannot forget her duties as a
guarantor of the rule of law, and the law states that a state criminal must be punished. It is
similar with Pugachev, who has certain liabilities before his followers. In both cases, the
choice is, therefore, a choice between listening to personal human feelings of sympathy
and compassion and carrying out high official duties.
The question of Catherine’s and Pugachev’s motivation for their humane actions is
more complex and subtle than being a case of merely “paying back.” It cannot be
completely explained by the reasons Zaslavsky gives in his article: one’s favor to the
ruler, the ruler’s previous favors to one, and one’s manifested unconditional submission
to the authority. Khlopusha’s words to Beloborodov indubitably affect Pugachev’s
decision: “Тебе бы все душить да резать… Разве мало крови на твоей совести?..
Конечно… и я грешен… и эта рука повинна в пролитой христианской крови. Но я
губил супротивника, а не гостя…” (Pushkin, PSS vol. 6, 334).
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Finally, the
understanding of mercy as simply a compensation for some favor, allegedly shared by
Catherine the Great and Pugachev, Grinev and Masha, does not conform to the sincere
quality of Pushkin’s protagonists. If both Grinev and his fiancée simply manipulate
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A big joyous event or a celebration can be one of the most traditional motivations for showing mercy.
Thus, the old Bulanin explains pardoning his rebellious serfs by the joy of his son’s safe return home:
“Прощаю вас для радости, что Бог привел мне свидеться с сыном Петром Андреичем. Ну, добро:
повинную голову меч не сечет” (Pushkin) – “I’ll forgive you this time, out of joy, since it’s been the
Lord’s will to reunite me with my son Petr Andreich... Well, all right: it is not a valiant sword that strikes a
repentant head” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 449). This is also the reason why Pushkin’s tsar Saltan
pardons his villains.
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“All you ever want is to strangle and slaughter. <…> Haven’t you already got enough blood upon your
conscience. <…> Of course… I am also a sinner… this hand, too, is guilty of shedding Christian blood.
But I’ve slain foes, not guests…” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 333).
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authorities and “extort” their help by showing complete submission, then how can they be
morally superior to the villain Shvabrin?
More obvious examples of the “obligatory,” or “contractual,” mercy described by
Zaslavsky are found in both English and Russian literature. These examples illustrate
Lotman’s dichotomy between “agreement” and “self-giving” and provide proof of a
certain correspondence between these two cultural models and Western and Russian
mind-sets, respectively. Pugachev does not feel bound to pardon Grinev because he
received a hare-skin jacket from him: the value of the favor is too small to consider this
seriously, and yet it was enough for the establishment of a personal relationship between
the characters. On the contrary, in Walter Scott’s novel The Tale of Old Mortality (1816),
a number of characters save their enemies’ lives because they consider themselves to be
bound by the chivalrous code of honor.
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The exchange of human life for a hare-skin
jacket, therefore, becomes an emblem of the unequal relationship implied by “self-
giving,” while that of a life for a life is emblematic of “agreement” based on the parties
being equal.
As for Zaslavsky’s second conclusion establishing a link between one’s absolute
and unconditional submission to the authority and the display of mercy and the act of
pardoning, it looks like, indeed, one accompanies the other. When Pugachev storms Fort
Belogorsk and hangs Captain Mironov and Corporal Ivan Ignat’ich, it is finally Grinev’s
turn. The protagonist knows his only chance to survive is to swear allegiance to the rebels
and, as it is incompatible with his idea of nobleman’s honor, he prepares to die. The
107
Thus, Henry Morton shelters the wanted criminal John Balfour of Burley, who once helped his father;
also Morton and his adversary and rival Claverhouse save each other’s lives.
102
“peasant tsar,” however, orders his execution without even looking at him, which can be
either a result of the defector Shvabrin’s interference or simply the momentum of the
punishments. At this moment, Savel’ich, Grinev’s servant, steps forward and pleads for
his master’s life. During his very brief but intense intervention the old serf manages to
offer a number of reasons for granting a pardon. First of all, he states that there can be no
benefit from Grinev’s execution, whereas if he is alive, his parents will pay a good
ransom. This reason is logical, yet potentially dangerous as it reveals that Savel’ich
considers the rebels to be a band of robbers. He also calls Pugachev “father,” which
establishes a patriarchal relationship between them. Moreover, he offers his own life to
redeem Grinev’s. He does not question the necessity or legitimacy of the punishment, but
proposes a redeeming sacrifice. Finally, Savel’ich belongs to the same stratum of society
as the rebels, so presumably they are fighting for his cause as well. Either of these
reasons or, perhaps, the very fact of someone pleading for mercy
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causes Pugachev to
pardon Grinev and even to disregard the young man’s refusal to kiss his merciful hand in
gratitude.
Grinev only later comes to realize that the leader of the rebellion and the drunkard
to whom he gave his hare-skin jacket are one and the same person, and understands why
he was granted pardon. As Pugachev himself says, “[Я] помиловал тебя за твою
добродетель, за то, что ты оказал мне услугу, когда принужден я был скрываться от
108
A petition, which by default presumes the mercifulness of the magistrate, already contains a germ of
forgiveness.
103
своих недругов,”
109
i.e. for being humane to him, and not specifically due to his gift, as
Zaslavsky suggests. In other words, as Lotman claims, Pugachev pardons Grinev because
he recognizes him as a man, not as a social unit, a class enemy. He tries to convince
Grinev to join the rebel troops, or at least not to fight against them, but respects the
protagonist’s loyalty and refusal to bargain for his life. When the protagonist says to
Pugachev, “Голова моя в твоей власти: отпустишь меня – спасибо; казнишь – бог
тебя судья” (Pushkin, PSS vol. 6, 316),
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he not only emphasizes his complete
dependence on Pugachev’s will, as Zaslavsky notes, but also singles him out and speaks
to him personally, as Pugachev does to him. Thus, what eventually saves Grinev on this
occasion is that both he and Pugachev behave humanely.
It seems that one turns out to be what another person thinks of one, i.e. being
addressed as an individual, one responds as a human being, but when referred as a social
unit or an abstract principle, one turns out to be just as soulless. Empress Catherine II and
Pugachev – who belong to opposite camps – can never see each other as individuals; that
is why the latter never asks for pardon and is never granted it. At the same time, each of
them retains her or his own humanity and is able to see it in other people. They appear to
be the only people in authority who are able to do this – precisely because of their
position at the very top of their power verticals. Grinev’s commander in Orenburg, for
instance, as well as the protagonist’s judges, do not dare to put themselves above the law
and above their instructions.
109
“[I] pardoned you for your charity, for doing me a favor at a time when I was forced to hide from my
enemies” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 317).
110
“My life is in your hands: if you let me go, I’ll be grateful; if you execute me, God shall be your judge”
(Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 318).
104
By admitting his or her humanity and by following his or her heart, the authority
figure comes, in fact, as close as possible to being God, and this is the true meaning of
forgiveness and granting pardon. This idea of mercy being “an attribute to God himself”
and thus bringing the one who shows it closest to Him, is expressed in Portia’s “quality
of mercy” speech (The Merchant of Venice, act IV, scene 1). Also, it is explicit – even if
with obvious sexual connotations – in Lucio’s words to Isabella, “when maidens sue, /
Men give like gods” (Measure for Measure, act I, scene 3), in a line also preserved in
Pushkin’s “Andzhelo.” However, the balance of omnipotence and humaneness in the
authority figure should not be upset. Thus, the heroine of Sardou’s Tosca explicitly
insists on the humaneness of Queen Maria Carolina, who has a lover herself and, thus,
will understand Tosca’s pleas. This assumption is never tested in the text, but chances of
a successful resolution of the conflict seem rather weak, as it denies the queen the
possibility of rising to the level of God.
111
The humanistic principle characterizing Grinev’s intercourse with Pugachev
remains valid for Masha’s encounter with the Empress too. Similar to Grinev, the heroine
first meets the sovereign as a private person, which gives her an opportunity to speak
privately. For a long time, there has been a discussion among scholars regarding whether
Masha Mironova was aware that she had spoken to the Empress herself or not. In his
article “Chitaia Pushkina,” Moisei Al’tman convincingly proves that she was. She knew
that the court was in Tsarskoe Selo at that moment. Moreover, she was told in detail
about Catherine the Great’s habits, particularly her strolls in the park, and she took the
111
That is to say that a petitioner can praise an authority’s kindness and humaneness but not appeal to his or
her human flaws and weaknesses.
105
petition with her when going to the park precisely at the time that the Empress usually
walked there. In this context, Masha’a art of petitioning consists in her decision not to
disclose the incognito of an important person and her awareness of that person’s
importance and powers.
112
Masha’s conversation with Catherine II in the park is truly remarkable; it is based,
on the one hand, on the literary clichés of the motif of petitioning and, on the other, on
the refutation of them. The tone of it is, for the most part, very informal and intimate: a
benevolent, experienced society lady listens with compassion to a young provincial girl
in trouble. This was Catherine’s favorite performance – it is a well-known fact that the
enlightened monarch at times fancied a normal human life, whereby she could take lonely
strolls and wear informal outfits, – and Masha aptly follows her lead. In fact, in this game
Captain Mironov’s daughter appears to be a better player still, the importance of which
will be discussed later.
Learning that Masha is an orphan, the Empress concludes that the girl came here to
plead against some injustice or offense, but Masha surprises her. The heroine’s answer to
Catherine, “Я приехала просить милости, а не правосудия,”
113
can be seen as the key
to the novel and as such deserves a thorough analysis. First of all, unlike Isabella, Masha
Mironova does not even mention justice (spravedlivost’): the word pravosudie she uses
112
Beyond any doubt, in order to receive a pardon, a pleader must display not just sincerity and persistence,
but certain skills. When Claudio sends Lucio to Isabella to ask her to go plead before Angelo, he says:
I have great hope in that; for in her youth
There is a prone and speechless dialect
Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art
When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade. (Measure for Measure, act I, scene 2)
113
The subtlety of Masha’s answer is lost in translation, “I have come to ask for mercy, not for justice”
(Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 354).
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simply means the administration of justice, which the heroine rejects. Moreover, she does
not even ask for mercy, like Portia and both Shakespeare’s and Pushkin’s Isabellas;
instead she pleads for milost’, which is mercy and grace at the same time. This appeal
dismisses the question of Grinev’s guilt by the law, and therefore the question of justice
too, eagerly discussed by a number of scholars (Lotman, “Ideinaia struktura Kapitanskoi
dochki”). Mercy can only be granted to a guilty one, while grace can be bestowed upon
anyone; the vertical organization of the relationship between the giver and the receiver,
crucial for the Russian cultural model, remains intact.
In his treatment of Masha Mironova’s petitioning before Catherine the Great
Pushkin uses a similar episode from Sir Walter Scott’s 1818 novel The Heart of
Midlothian, namely Jeanie Deans’s meeting with Queen Caroline (Iakubovich). Both
storylines of the two petitioners are similar: like Masha, Jeanie travels to the capital alone
in order to request a royal pardon for her sister Effie, who had been unjustly charged with
infanticide. With the help of the Duke of Argyle, the girl achieves an audience with the
Queen – also a private one – and successfully fulfills her mission.
114
Some scholars think that Pushkin’s idea of law, justice and mercy in The Captain’s
Daughter was distorted in order to comply with the demands of censorship, but there are
reasons to believe that the novel reflects the deeper structures underlying Pushkin’s
thought in the 1830s and Russian culture in general (Lotman, “Ideinaia structura
Kapitanskoi dochki”). Leaving aside the global question of Scott’s influence on Pushkin’s
historical writing, as well as other parallels that can be drawn between The Heart of Mid-
114
Both Masha and Jeanie know who they are talking to, while Catherine II, unlike Queen Caroline,
believes that her true identity has not been
disclosed.
107
Lothian and The Captain’s Daughter,
115
let us focus on the scene of the suppliant’s
meeting with the authority figure in Chapter XXXVII of Scott’s novel. Both authors
praise mercy over the other members of the “legal triad,” as well as the humaneness in
people regardless of their social status.
116
At the same time, the Scottish heroine never opposes mercy to justice as her
Russian counterpart does. Moreover, her appeal – although intended to neutralize the
Duke of Argyle’s legalistic introduction to Effie’s case – is undeniably more rational and
eloquent than Masha’s. Jeanie’s main argument is simple and does not refer to God or
concern any elevated matters, yet it bears a noticeable similarity to Portia’s and Isabella’s
speeches. She states that an act of mercy is a blessing in itself:
But when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body – and
seldom may it visit your Leddyship – and when the hour of death comes,
that comes to high and low – lang and late may it be yours! – Oh, my
Leddy, then it isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune
for others, that we think on maist pleasantly. And the thoughts that ye
hae intervened to spare the puir thing’s life will be sweeter in that hour,
come when it may, than if a word of your mouth could hang the haill
Porteous mob at the tail of ae tow. (Scott vol. 2, 147)
Portia, Isabella, Jeanie and Masha Mironova all come to plead for mercy. What
distinguishes Pushkin’s idea of mercy from that of Shakespeare and Walter Scott is the
way in which they plead. All of the English heroines produce very elaborate appeals and
are praised – and sometimes criticized – for their unrivaled eloquence, while Pushkin’s
Isabella almost stays silent, especially in her last appeal to the Duke. Furthermore,
115
Zholkovsky’s article “Ochnye stavki s vlastitelem” can be added to the bibliography of works on the
question in Dolinin’s “Val’ter-Skottovskii istorizm i Kapitanskaia dochka.”
116
The epigraph preceding the chapter, taken from the seventeenth-century tragedy Rollo Duke of
Normandy, also known as The Bloody Brother, by Fletcher, Massinger, Jonson, and Chapman, confirms
this.
108
Masha’s speech to the Empress is almost reduced to “[т]ут она с жаром рассказала все,
что уже известно моему читателю” (Pushkin, PSS vol. 6, 358).
117
Pushkin’s deliberate ellision of developed argumentation serves to present mercy as
a mystical and irrational quality and, most importantly, as free from verbal fetters. Even
for Jeanie Dean, admittedly the least sophisticated verbally of all the English petitioners
discussed in this chapter, the conversation with the Queen turns into a war of words,
when what is asked and answered eventually becomes less important than how it is asked
and answered. Thus, when Queen Caroline asks the girl a potentially dangerous question
about whether any of her friends were engaged in the Porteous mob,
118
Jeanie is happy
that “the question was so framed that she could, with a good conscience, answer it in the
negative” (Scott vol. 2, 147). This kind of thinking is akin to Portia’s legalism. On the
contrary, the fact that Pushkin, unlike Shakespeare and Walter Scott, omits the heroine’s
speech suggests that the way she tells her story is not important. The petition affects the
Empress because it is true, not because it is delivered smartly and skillfully. Overall,
politics – understood in the broadest sense of the word – plays a crucial role in Scott’s
novel: mercy is eventually granted for a combination of essentially political reasons –
primarily, to reestablish the prestige of royal power in Edinburgh shaken after the
117
“She then ardently related everything that is already known to the reader” (Pushkin, Complete Prose
Fiction 355).
118
The historical backdrop for the novel was the Porteous Riots that broke out in Edinburgh in 1736 over
the execution of two smugglers. The Captain of the City Guards, John Porteous, ordered the soldiers to fire
into the crowd, killing several people. He was later killed by a lynch mob who stormed the Old Tolbooth
prison, to which the title of the book refers. This incident caused serious complications in the political
relationship between London and Edinburgh (Encyclopedia Britannica).
109
Porteous Riots.
119
Pushkin, on the other hand, completely eliminates any political
component from Masha’s dialogue with Catherine II.
120
At the same time, the naturalness of the act of mercy and immediacy of the
interpersonal contact in The Captain’s Daughter is just an artistic illusion. In this respect,
the difference between Masha Mironova and the heroines of Shakespeare and Scott is
that Masha succeeds in her pleas not because of her eloquence and solid argumentation,
but thanks to her non-verbal actions, that is to say, that she creates a scenario in which the
Empress would like to see herself. The heroine’s innate purity, modesty and naturalness
are successfully combined with her understanding of the nature of power and mercy.
121
Portia and Isabella try to convince their addressees, as does the less rational, more
emotional Jeanie Dean. They all make a point that mercy is as much a blessing for the
giver as for the receiver, as well as – in case of Isabella – that the judge himself will be
judged one day. Masha mentions none of this – she simply presents her petition and then
narrates the events as they happened. Isabella and Jeanie act like talented actresses,
whose actions are directed by Lucio and Friar Lodowick and the Duke of Argyle,
respectively, while Masha Mironova appears more of a psychologist and a director
herself.
119
Russian literature also provides this kind of political background for the pardon of a private person, e.g.
in Leskov’s short story “The Pygmy” analyzed in the next chapter.
120
One can speculate on the Empress’s hidden motives for pardoning Grinev and find political ones among
them. For instance, the prerogative of pardon, which indicates the ruler’s likeness to God, might be
considered a proof of his or her legitimacy, just like the monarch’s legendary ability for curing scrofula.
This observation might apply to Catherine the Great, who became a sovereign as a result of a coup d’état,
in which her husband was assassinated, and therefore could have needed some legitimization.
121
This corresponds to Zaslavsky’s second conclusion.
110
The emphatic theatricality of the petition scene in Scott’s novel, as well as in
Shakespeare’s comedies, receives a different treatment in The Captain’s Daughter. The
mix of the suppliant’s naturalness and artfulness, naïveté and finesse expressly present in
all analyzed texts, reveals that receiving mercy requires a performance, even if the
heroine herself does not realize this.
122
The authors noticeably arrange the episode of
petitioning as a theatrical scene with its obligatory attributes: mise-en-scéne, costumes
and dialogue. Indeed, what is the following description from The Heart of Mid-Lothian, if
not a pantomime?
When they were within twelve or fifteen yards of these ladies [the
Queen and Lady Suffolk], the Duke made a sign that Jeanie should stand
still, and stepping forward himself, with the grace which was natural to
him, made a profound obeisance, which was formally, yet in a dignified
manner, returned by the personage whom he approached. (Scott vol. 2,
144)
The Duke of Argyle acts as a director, instructing his protégée how to present herself
favorably to the Queen at the decisive meeting. He knows that the secret of success lies in
personal engagement and, to summarize, he teaches Jeanie the difficult art of remaining
herself on a “stage.” For instance, he recommends that she remain in her Scottish clothes,
which in London look like a theatrical costume. In contrast to Portia’s lawyer’s suit and
Isabella’s frock, this recommendation is not motivated by necessity, but by the desired
effect based on political considerations. Following the pattern, Pushkin also describes
Masha’s dress, but not as a costume: after the informal meeting in the park, the heroine
goes to the palace, still in her casual clothes, because the Empress orders it this way.
Cathrerine II, thus, wants to continue playing the comedy of herself by showing favor to
122
See more in Zholkovsky’s “Ochnye stavki.”
111
a poor orphan in a “natural” way. Although the theatricality of the petition scene in The
Captain’s Daughter is undeniable, the author makes the theatrical effects subtler and
“naturalizes” them better than Scott.
In the context of virtuosic balancing on the borderline between naturalness and
theatricality, even Jeanie’s and Masha’s faux pas, like that of Isabella’s,
123
appear almost
deliberate and “staged.” They do not prevent the heroines, as one might expect, from
accomplishing their mission. These little mistakes seem to be an important part of the
petitioning motif, as they reappear in multiple texts. On the one hand, they add dramatism
to the scene, while on the other, demonstrate the sincerity and humaneness of both the
petitioner and the judge.
In The Captain’s Daughter, Masha’s exclamation, “It isn’t true!” in response to the
yet “unrecognized” Empress, who has called Grinev an “immoral and ill-meaning
scoundrel” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 355), is such serendipitous faux pas. The
heroine’s natural and involuntary reaction suggests the ultimate closeness and equality of
the two women, which at first offends Catherine II: “‘What do you mean not true?’
rejoined the lady, coloring” (Pushkin, Complete Prose Fiction 355). At this moment, the
Empress, despite getting exactly what she wanted, becomes angry. However, as a proverb
says, “Where there is anger, there is mercy.” Catherine II appears able to overcome her
momentary – and very human – anger, to listen to Masha’s story and eventually to pardon
123
Remarkably, Isabella’s fault in Measure for Measure is caused by her eloquence and rhetorical finesse:
she expresses her intent to bribe Angelo, although not with earthly gold but with her prayers (act II, scene
2).
112
Grinev.
124
Thus, this important person’s anger stands for the spontaneity of human
feelings, but also, by provoking a little deviation from the image of the ideal impartial
judge, it creates a desire to make up for it with generosity and mercy.
There are even more examples of the heroine’s “flaws” in The Heart of Midlothian,
which are both diverse and historically rich. First, Jeanie mentions mothers who are
unkind to their children without knowing about a generational conflict in the royal
family. In response to this, the Queen “coloured highly [sic!], and darted a glance of a
most penetrating character first at Jeanie, and then at the Duke. Both sustained it
unmoved; Jeanie from total unconsciousness of the offence she had given, and the Duke
from his habitual composure” (Scott vol. 2, 146). This makes the Duke think that Jeanie
has “shot dead… her only hope of success” (Scott vol. 2, 146), but he is mistaken.
Jeanie’s next unconscious “shot” restores the Queen’s sympathy for the girl – precisely
because it hits Lady Suffolk, the King’s favorite and consequently the Queen’s enemy.
Therefore, by her faux pas, Jeanie Deans unwittingly makes Queen Caroline feel that she
acted in a way inappropriately to her high status, while, at the same time, giving her an
opportunity to rise higher.
124
Scott’s Queen Caroline has a somewhat similar temperament, which similarly works in Jeanie’s favor:
“With all the winning address of an elegant, and, according to the times, an accomplished woman, Queen
Caroline possessed the masculine soul of the other sex. She was proud by nature, and even her policy could
not always temper her expressions of displeasure, although few were more ready at repairing any false step
of this kind, when her prudence came up to the aid of her passions” (Scott vol.2, 143).
113
Part IV. Further Development of the Petitioning Motif
The analysis of the motif of petitioning in The Merchant of Venice, Measure for
Measure, “Andzhelo,” The Captain’s Daughter and The Heart of Midlothian reveals the
following constituent topoi: a complex mix of sincerity and theatricality; the suppliant’s
eloquence and appeal to humaneness in the magistrate; her faux pas provoking the
magistrate’s anger but eventually leading to the pardoning of a convict. These topoi
remain relevant for literary texts written after the 1830s, yet are often subject to
considerable rethinking in accordance with each author’s idea of law, justice and mercy.
A remarkable example of such a revision is found in Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin’s play,
The Case
125
– the central piece in his legal trilogy. The text creates a terrifying and
hopeless picture of the judicial system, which punishes the innocent more cruelly than the
guilty. The sytem’s main functions consist in extracting bribes from the innocent and the
guilty alike and in generating new and new cases to keep itself running.
The play tells the story of how, after Lidochka Muromskaia’s fiancé Krechinsky
commits a forgery using a diamond pin she gave him, the police turns the case against
him, as well as against the innocent heroine, who is suspected of complicity in the crime.
This unnatural, humiliating, morally and financially-devastating process has already been
on-going for five years, when old Muromsky, Lidochka’s father, comes to St. Petersburg
to petition in the case. So far in this chapter, only a woman has acted in the role of the
suppliant, as her innate weakness, helplessness and sensibility provide a contrast to the
strength, rationality and impartiality of the law, usually embodied in the figure of a male
125
The text was finished in 1861 but banned from stage until 1881.
114
magistrate. Moreover, women’s notorious irrationality and submission to feelings and
whims, instead of reason, make the law less irrefutable for them than for men. Indeed, if
men fully realize and acknowledge the absolute character of the law, women often
consider it negotiable. It should not be forgotten that with the traditional gender
distribution of roles, female suppliant and male magistrate, there is the possibility of a
sexual exchange to obtain the pardon.
126
Sukhovo-Kobylin, however, unexpectedly sends
in a male character to plead.
Muromsky, a nobleman, a man of fortune and hero of the Napoleonic Wars,
127
has
to beg before the soulless state officials. In Lotman’s terms, this means rejecting the
chivalrous contractual cultural model and accepting the “self-giving” one. Wearing all his
war medals as a costume, he goes to the Prince and tries to explain the essence of his case
to the important person. His abrupt and confused explanation is soul-wrenching, but the
official will not even listen to him: he is suffering himself at this moment – from
indigestion. Muromsky’s speech, which combines logical explanations, pleas and finally
a fiery denunciation of the system, shows a complete misunderstanding of this system’s
working principles. It is inevitably doomed to fail, in particular, because, so-to-speak, it
addresses the heart where there is only the stomach. The Prince’s response to
Muromsky’s plea is that he does not accept the eloquence of a petitioner: “Хорошо, даже
126
Remarkably, Sukhovo-Kobylin's characterization of the Prince, an official before whom Muromsky
pleads, as liubitel’ klubnichki (“man of pleasure”) implies that were the petitioner a pretty young woman,
the case could be resolved in this way.
127
He has the same military rank as Pushkin’s Captain Mironov.
115
красноречиво; только я просительского красноречия, сударь, не признаю”
(Sukhovo-Kobylin 112).
128
Sukhovo-Kobylin not only makes the petitioner male, but he also moves the scene
of petitioning from its usual climactic position. Receiving mercy of the magistrate is
neither a last hope nor the last resort of all unjustly wronged: the last resort is to submit
oneself completely to the system and to give it what it wants. At the finale of the play,
Muromsky brings a huge bribe to the high-ranked – yet not nearly as high as the Prince –
official Varravin, and only then does he reach the depth of his despair. Varravin secretly
takes the money, but not only does not dismiss the case against Lidochka, but he starts a
new one against Muromsky himself – for attempted official bribery! The petitioner, thus,
starts with a belief in justice and the judicial system, then he seeks humaneness in it and
finds none. Finally, he tries to deal with the system by bribing an official.
129
This could
have worked but, unfortunately for Muromsky, two of Varravin’s superiors appeared, so
that the latter had to defend himself against the charge of corruption. The Case, therefore,
shows the impossibility of both of the ways of dealing with legal issues offered by
Lotman’s cultural models. None of them can protect an individual against the system,
whose main task is to perpetuate its own existence.
130
128
“Very good, even eloquent; but I, Sir, am not susceptible to petitioners’ eloquence” (my translation).
129
It is useful to know in this context that, unlike the English verb “to judge” that derives from the Latin
“ius” meaning “right, just,” its Russian counterpart sudit’ has an Indo-European root, with the meaning of
“agreement, contract.”
130
Although Sukhovo-Kobylin finished the last version of his play in 1861, three years prior to the Judicial
Reform, it arguably reflects some features of the new judicial system, widely discussed in society and in
press as well. At least, as is demonstrated in the next chapter in connection with the short story “The Old
Genius,” for Leskov the reform marked a transition from the old way of settling legal matters, patriarchal
and more personal, to the new one – impartial and impersonal.
116
In his late tale “The Forged Coupon” (1904), also an influential example of Russian
“legal” thinking, although written primarily as an antireligious text, Leo Tolstoy gives yet
another twist to the traditional motif of petitioning. One episode in this cumulative text,
narrated in Chapters XXI and XXII of Part I, tells of a student, Tiurin, who is arrested
and imprisoned for having forbidden revolutionary literature. While visiting him in jail,
his comrade and lover Katia Turchaninova encounters all sorts of violations of the law,
including improper advances from a gendarme officer. She tries to complain to the chief
of police, but her complaints are ignored. Then she tries to make an appointment with the
minister, which is denied. Finally, Turchaninova goes to see the minister in his office
hours and shoots him twice.
It is truly impressive how she does this without saying a word, which resembles
Masha Mironova’s laconicism, taken to an extreme. Words cannot be trusted any more,
and yet more radical means are not better. Although the heroine misses both times, she is
put in jail and questioned repeatedly about the conspiracy in which she allegedly
participated; her mental health is affected. When after a while a relative of Tiurin and a
personal acquaintance of the minister asks him about Tiurin and Turchaninova, the latter
can only say that as an individual he forgives the poor girl, but as a state representative he
has certain duties: “Je ne demanderais pas mieux que de lacher cette pauvre fillette, mais
vous savez – le devoir” (Tolstoy vol. 14, 169).
131
Although both Sukhovo-Kobylin and Tolstoy revise the familiar motif of
petitioning dramatically, most noticeably, by making its ending tragic and offering a
131
“I would ask for nothing better than to let this poor little girl go, but you know – duty” (my translation).
117
pessimistic perspective on the judicial system and on attaining justice in general, it is still
possible to say that the motif of petitioning remains at the core of literature about law
throughout the nineteenth century. In a later period, it does not disappear either, and
retains all the characteristic features, as, for example, in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel,
Master i Margarita (The Master and Margarita, first published posthumously, in 1966-
1967). In this work, the title heroine agrees to be the hostess of Satan’s great spring ball
with the hope that this will help her learn something about her lover, the Master, who has
suddenly disappeared.
The novel is full of correspondences with the other literary texts analyzed in this
chapter. Like Masha Mironova, Margarita meets the figure of authority, Woland, in both
ceremonial and intimate situations
132
and, like Isabella, she learns to be merciful to her
enemies. There are numerous references to theatricality in the novel, such as Margarita’s
exclamation: “[с]огласна на все, согласна проделать эту комедию с натиранием
мазью”(Bulgakov, Master i Margarita 347).
133
Although nobody demands intimacy with
her, like with Isabella, Margarita is supposed to “yield up” her body, i.e. to welcome
guests, who are the most revolting creatures one can imagine, and she must be naked
during the reception and let them kiss her hand and knee. Even though the devil himself
acts as the magistrate, the novel parodies various elements of Soviet bureaucracy, such as
132
There are other minor similarities between the two novels, e.g. rural settings, mentions of lakes and
monuments, the fact that Margarita is accompanied to the ball by her housemaid Natasha and the neighbor
Nikolai Ivanovich, just as Maria Ivanovna in The Captain’s Daughter is accompanied to St. Petersburg by
her servants Palasha and Savel’ich.
133
“I agree to everything, I agree to perform this comedy of rubbing in the ointment…” (Bulgakov, The
Master and Margarita 229).
118
bribery and the separation of functions among different departments in the bureaucratic
machine.
At the ball Margarita meets a young woman, Frida, who had suffocated her
illegitimate baby, the produce of rape, by stuffing a handkerchief in its mouth and who
now has to wake up every morning to find the same handkerchief lying on her nightstand.
Frida entreats the queen of the ball to spare her from this torment, and the latter promises.
When after the ball, Woland asks Margarita whether she wants to say anything before
parting, which can be understood as an offer of a “payment,” the proud woman says “no.”
Woland is satisfied with her answer. He says, “Мы вас испытывали… никогда и
ничего не просите! Никогда и ничего, и в особенности у тех, кто сильнее вас. Сами
предложат и сами все дадут!” (Bulgakov, Master i Margarita 383)
134
– and promises to
grant the heroine her deepest wish. Instead of asking to be reunited with the Master as she
has planned, Margarita chooses to have Frida released from her punishment.
The episode had began, unexpectedly, with Margarita’s denial of asking Woland for
anything, which he approves. This would have destroyed the motif of petitioning, but this
apparent contradiction is not actually one at all. In fact, Margarita refuses to ask for a
reward as part of a contract, in spite of both Azazello and Behemoth suggesting such a
possibility. Woland’s “test,” understood in Lotman’s terms, is nothing but an examination
of Margarita’s readiness to give herself up completely and her acknowledgement of his
absolute power. The heroine realizes that no contract is possible between her and Satan,
134
“We’ve been testing you… Never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who
are stronger than you. They’ll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves” (Bulgakov, The
Master and Margarita 282).
119
for contract implies that both sides are equal, and precisely because of this understanding,
she is eventually granted what she wishes.
The comparative analysis of the English and Russian idea of law, justice and mercy
in this chapter has confirmed the two hypotheses stated in the introduction and revealed
two particularities in the Russian understanding of the “legal triad.” First, by eliminating
justice, it tends to reduce the “legal triad” to a binary structure with the two elements
strictly opposed to each other. Second, it shows more skepticism towards the verbal
sphere with its rhetoric and rational argumentation, which naturally reflects hostility
towards the judicial system and legal institutions such as the Bar and the jury. The study
of these national features will be continued in the following chapters.
120
Chapter Two
Adjusting Justice:
The Case of Nikolai Leskov
Nothing is impossible in Russia.
Nikolai Leskov
135
Nikolai Leskov is renowned as a quintessential Russian writer, famed as much for
his rich experience in all spheres of nineteenth-century life of the country, which he
captured in a variety of genres and character-types, as for his mastery of the Russian
language at its most colorful. It is therefore logical to assume that his treatment of the
concepts of law, justice and mercy also bears the mark of Russianness. Opposed to the
canonical depiction of the failure of justice – like The Captain’s Daughter, – Leskov’s
portrayal of attaining justice is, at the same time, markedly distinct from Pushkin’s and
the other writers’ examined so far. In his writings, Leskov replaces the authority’s
“vertical” mercy with “horizontal” Christian love (liubov’ k blizhnemu) and plays less on
the traditional motif of theatricality. Instead, he works “within” the law, using the verbal
trickiness of law to undo “justice” and to imagine a different kind of “mercy.”
Like most Russian writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, Leskov had
a keen interest in legal issues, both secular and religious, and this is reflected in a
significant number of his works. A knowing depiction of the clergy is a distinguishing
feature of the writer’s oeuvre. His characters – policemen, lawyers, prison and court
officials, criminals and convicts, clerics and church hierarchs – contend with civic,
135
This idea is repeated verbatim in “The Old Genius,” “A Simple Means” and The Spendthrift.
121
military and church issues such as judicial error, murder, embezzling, forgery, bribery,
arson, robbery, unauthorized exhumation, marriage, divorce, illegitimate children,
military recruitment, desertion, etc.
136
Moreover, they draw attention to the verbal play
with the letter of the law, using law against itself in a way absent from Pushkin’s
treatment of the theme.
Part I. Leskov’s Legal Masterplot
In one of his earliest works, written soon after the beginning of his journalistic
career in Petersburg, “V tarantase” (“In a Coach,” 1862), Leskov already engages the
theme of law.
137
The text, narrated in a typically Leskovian skaz manner,
138
revolves
around a few men travelling to a famous fair in the same coach. To pass time they tell
stories, and the starting point for their discussion is why there are so many thieves among
Russians. Two of the interlocutors, “Yellow Eye” Anfalov and the coachman, offer their
answers based on apocryphal stories. The first of them refers apparently to the crucifixion
when various nations offered to rescue Christ either by trading or fighting him in battle,
136
Leskov had a rich and diverse experience in the legal sphere. His first contact came through his father
who established a reputation as a gifted criminal investigator. In June 1847, Leskov joined the criminal
court in Orel as a clerk and was later transferred to Kiev, where he became an assistant in the army-
recruiting bureau. However, his legal experience was not limited to the role of an observer or a law officer.
In 1870, Leskov was sued by some landowners from Revel for inflicting bodily harm. The trial dragged on
for three years, when it was eventually heard in the Senate and ended with Leskov paying a small fine
(Andrei Leskov; McLean 321-322). All this acquired knowledge and experience in law undoubtedly had a
bearing
on the author’s literary work and journalism. Moreover, law-related topics allowed the writer to
give full expression to his unique worldview.
137
In this instance and subsequently, unless stated otherwise, English titles of Leskov’s writings are given
in accordance with McLean 753-760.
138
The term skaz defines “a written narrative that imitates a spontaneous oral account in its use of dialect,
slang, and the peculiar idiom of that persona” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
122
or by kidnapping him. The Russians, who propose the latter solution, receive the answer:
“Go forth and steal your whole life” (Leskov cited in McLean 104). This story conveys
the idea that “[i]n Russia, robbery is no mere by-product of misgovernment and poverty;
it is the hallmark of the nation’s soul” (McLean 104). The second apocryphal narrative
offers not an ethnographic, but a universal perspective on the problem. It tells how Moses
returning from the mount Sinai was so shocked by the people’s sinful conduct that he
dropped the law tablets. Smashed into pieces, some of the inscriptions lost their “not’s”
and were picked up by people in this form. Only a few men waited until Moses brought a
new copy of the “unbroken” law to start living according to it.
In a remarkable way, this second story undermines the significance of the law.
Indeed, it suggests that people who lived righteously before the law was given continued
living so afterwards, whereas the sinful majority, who were aware of their own
lawlessness and therefore afraid of the prophet, accidentally received an official
“blessing” for their crimes. Moreover, a necessary precondition for the corruption of the
law lies in the hardness and rigidity of the written word “set in stone.” These two ideas
make this minor episode from an early story symbolic of the entire Leskovian ethos
expressed in his “legal” writings, and they will provide a foundation for the following
analysis.
Leskov’s first biographer, Anatolii Faresov, perceptively defined Leskov’s path in
literature as going “against the current.” This characteristic describes not only the writer’s
personal and literary development but also his perspective on the concepts of law, justice
and mercy and the legal situation in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth-century.
123
Indeed, his writings consistently challenge many aspects of the Russian legal masterplot
outlined in the introduction. Thus, traditional legal pessimism is usually replaced in
Leskov’s work by an account of a triumph of justice culminating in a happy ending,
frequent yet capricious; and the contemplation of the “accursed questions” – by
employing the practice of “small steps” (Sperrle) and focusing on exceptions rather than
on general rules.
Leskov also undermines the traditional “hierarchy” of justice – be that its
conservative dispensation from above by the god-like figure of the good tsar or the more
radical achieving it from below, as in the case of a noble robber like Robin Hood or
Pushkin’s Dubrovsky. His trickster-heroes usually (although not necessarily) come from
a lower stratum of society but are part of the judicial system and remain within the
bounds of the law.
139
Even though hierarchical relations in patrimonial Russian society
are reduced to their lowest terms by everyone’s absolute powerlessness before the ruler,
examples of which may be found in art and literature as diverse as folklore and the
grotesque world of Sukhovo-Kobylin’s trilogy, Leskov goes even further in destroying
them. Moreover, in the author’s oeuvre, the soulless bureaucratic machine is sometimes
represented by a number of compassionate officials who sincerely want to help, up to the
point of jeopardizing their own posts, and who refuse bribes – a phenomenon unheard of
in Russian writing about legal matters. In his capricious poetic world, the sort of petty
139
One may explain Leskov’s fascination with the tricksters’ unlimited resourcefulness by the author’s own
helplessness in the situations of legal injustice, which he encountered while being on governmental service
(McLean 36).
124
clerks who were hated by people and called iabeda and krapivnoe semia, policemen and
even executioners occasionally do good deeds for people they barely know.
It should be noted that not all of Leskov’s works are equally subversive of tradition:
sometimes the writer remains within its boundaries, e.g. in his only play, Rastochitel’
(The Spendthrift, 1867). This signifies that Leskov, in his treatment of legal topics as well
as in other aspects, did not necessarily intend to contest or undermine the canon but rather
add something new to it and give it an alternative consideration, as Irmhild Christina
Sperrle claims in her monograph, The Organic Worldview of Nikolai Leskov (2002).
There is a body of texts, mostly short anecdotal stories, which reveal an invariant of
typically Leskovian legal thinking, which is the primary object of the following analysis.
The explanation for the deviations from the traditional Russian view of law and
order can be found in the idiosyncrasies of Leskov’s worldview, particularly in what
Sperrle calls its “organic nature.” In her monograph, the scholar analyzes three texts by
Leskov: the parable, “Chas voli bozh’ei” (“The Hour of God’s Will,” 1890)
140
; his most
famous novel, Soboriane (Cathedral Folk, 1872) and his last tale, “Zaiachii remiz” (“The
Rabbit Carriage,” 1894).
141
At the same time, Sperrle claims that the conclusions she
makes apply to the majority of Leskov’s writings, and indeed, the analysis of Leskov’s
law-related works presented in this chapter to a great extent coincides with her findings.
140
The idea for the story was given to Leskov by Tolstoy, who later, being greatly unsatisfied by Leskov’s
treatment of the plot, wrote his own version – “Three questions” (1903). Comparison of the two texts is a
departure point for Sperrle’s examination of the Leskov – Tolstoy relationship.
141
Although McLean translates the novella’s enigmatic title as “The Rabbit Warren,” here it goes by the
title Sperrle herself finds preferable.
125
It will therefore be helpful to repeat the main points of her argument and to highlight the
implications they have for the present study.
According to Sperrle, the “organicism” of Leskov’s worldview, which is reflected
in his poetics, style and language, implies a constant transition from death to renewal,
transformation and mutability, which are embodied in imagery and metaphors of the life
cycle, vital functions and processes. Therefore, the oppositions “openness vs.
closedness,” “flexibility vs. rigidity” and “heresy vs. self-justification,” with the first
member always marked as positive, are at the foundation of his poetic world. This makes
the figure of a “heretic” the writer’s positive type, and his confrontation with a “firm
believer” the central conflict of Leskov’s work. Characters who stick to certain rules or
beliefs and who claim to know the ultimate truth inevitably lose in Leskov’s world,
whereas those who do not have a “program,” who act freely and spontaneously, without a
plan or even thinking, win out, even if their victory is not met with a material reward.
142
Pavel Gromov and Boris Eikhenbaum provide a slightly different take on this
conflict. In their 1956 study of Leskov’s work, they characterize it, in connection with
Cathedral Folk, as “a collision of a living person with dead social ritual” (Gromov and
Eikhenbaum xxxv; my translation). Later in their research, while examining the
peculiarities of Leskov’s satire, they develop the same idea of the discrepancy between
dead social norms and the individual’s vital needs: “Leskov’s satire is based on the
142
Sperrle’s treatment of the “heretic vs. firm believer” opposition ideally fits her general conception but
appears debatable in the context of Leskov’s oeuvre as a whole. If such texts as “The Iron Will” support it,
some others, e.g. “The Monognome,” do not. The very title of the latter characterizes the protagonist as a
person who has found his way in life and will never change his course. According to Sperrle, the rigid and
inflexible nature of Ryzhov’s beliefs should have made him as ridiculous as Pektoralis, yet the Monognome
undoubtedly belongs to Leskov’s most positive type – the “righteous man.”
126
demonstration of a sharp discrepancy between dead canons, norms and stipulations of
one or another social institution and the vital needs of the individual” (Gromov and
Eikhenbaum li; my translation).
At the same time, – and this is a significant characteristic of Leskov’s organic
worldview – the very flexibility and fluidity of the writer’s ideological position and moral
evaluations undermine the rigidity of any oppositions and make the poles complementary
and organically inseparable rather than mutually exclusive (Sperrle 43). That is why
Leskov employs a complex system of narrators, none of whom are reliable but who all
together create a true kaleidoscopic – or, in Sperrle’s terms, “cubist” – picture of reality.
Other instances of this synthesizing tendency are Leskov’s refusal of direct authorial
statement, his rather vague moral assessments (which Dmitrii Likhachev called “faulty”
in his article “Lozhnaia eticheskaia otsenka u Leskova”), and his fascination with
neologisms that suggest numerous meanings and connotations.
“Organicism,” according to Sperrle, also characterizes Leskov’s moral ideal –
namely, active love and the “organic bond between people” (28; author’s italic). Sperrle
elaborates it further:
For Leskov the work of love is done through one’s position in life –
regardless of what position or skill that may be – by “making time” for
others. However, this help does not consist in deciding what is good for
others, driven by one’s desire to “give surplus,” so to speak, but in
recognizing and fulfilling the need of the other at the particular moment.
Thus Leskov’s notion of freedom is the temporary “release from the bonds of
one’s position and obligations,” which happens when a person takes small
steps to the side, small – and frequently inconvenient – decisions that may
have significant consequences. (30)
127
The above quotation refers, most obviously, to a specific type of righteous man found
among Leskov’s characters but appears also applicable to a wider range of his characters,
including those – not necessarily positive and sympathetic – found in the writer’s legal
fiction. Active love constitutes an obvious opposition to that all-embracing love that
usually ignores a real person while being obsessed with the abstract idea of humankind. It
implies concrete, constant, everyday help – however modest and insignificant it may be –
given to people who need it to endure hardship.
For Leskov, real growth and change comes from repeated small steps
sideways – not revolutions, but slight deviations from the norm. These
steps have great and tangible consequences since they can inspire others
and change people’s perspective. (Sperrle 149)
This strategy of “small steps” teaches one to do what one can in one’s limited area
of expertise instead of bewailing the inability to do more. Besides, Leskov’s “small
steps” often involve personal qualities like resourcefulness, which result in an act of
trickery and are therefore perfectly suitable for the writer’s favorite genre of anecdote. In
this respect, they also show a generic affinity to folk tales, specifically the narrative
function of a difficult task, one of the thirty-one defined by Vladimir Propp in his
Morphology of the Folktale. This link with the genre of folktale is what ensures Leskov’s
“extremely optimistic worldview,” particularly in its legal aspect, and “assigns personal
freedom a central place” (Sperrle 168).
Another characteristic of Leskov’s organic worldview, the pluralism and
heteroglossia of the author’s poetic world and his refusal to pronounce an unambiguous
and direct verdict, not only sets him apart from the cohort of major Russian writers of the
128
nineteenth century but also naturally foregrounds the problem of authority. In this respect
too, Sperrle states, Leskov appears to be true to himself: that is to say, by abandoning
traditional authorial despotism, he gladly introduces several authorities of different kinds
into his texts but only to manipulate them as he pleases.
143
Indeed, be it another one of his
unreliable narrators relating the events he once witnessed or merely heard of or a real,
well respected historical person, whose words are documented and thus preserved in a
canonical form, Leskov feels free to question or change their exact sayings – to make
them flexible and “unfixed.” One cannot underestimate the importance of this
observation for the present research once one replaces the general term “authority” with a
more specific term, the “law,” i.e. codified written law.
The tendency towards undermining any fixed, canonical meaning underlines
Leskov’s strong connection with national folklore – its collective creativity and oral
tradition. This connection has been noticed by many scholars but explored mostly on the
level of poetic language, imagery and plot. According to Sperrle, the skaz, famously
favored by the writer, represents his rebellion against the written word, which brings his
writing as close to oral storytelling and folkloric tradition as possible.
The opposition “written vs. oral,” which in Leskov’s world means “rigid, fixed and
dead vs. flexible and living,” appears especially productive in its correlation with the
letter and the spirit of law
144
. The Christian opposition between the written Mosaic Law
and the New Law, given orally in the Sermon of the Mount, is the most important
143
People who knew Leskov remembered his very liberal treatment of his sources: distortion of quotations
and constant variability of accounts of the same event (Andrei Leskov).
144
Sperrle touches upon this problem in Chapter Four of her book in relation to the Holy Scriptures rather
then the law.
129
prototype for the opposition “written vs. oral” in its legal aspect. Written laws, abstract,
general, universal and supposedly unchangeable under any circumstances, constitute a
constant target for Leskov’s criticism and wit. In Leskov’s “legal” writing, his “heretic”
protagonist often confronts not another person or people with a rigid set of values but the
letter of law itself and in each given situation he finds a way to trick a dead rule, as from
the “organic” point of view its finality is its greatest weakness.
The most striking feature of this conflict is the fact that Leskov’s intention is not to
criticize bad law and to expose its defects (for this his examples are too particular, too
singular) but rather to provide a necessary adjustment to it. Indeed, the abstractness and
universality of the law appears as simultaneously its strong and weak point: it never deals
with concrete situations, while only those occur in real life. This is what Leskov had in
mind when he said, “[w]e don’t need good regulations, we need good people” (cited in
Eikhenbaum, “Leskov (K 50-letiiu so dnia smerti)” 352). Obviously, this short statement
expresses more legal nihilism than the harshest criticism of the law and judicial system.
Let us summarize the core of Leskov’s legal vision based on his organic worldview.
Fixed laws do not correspond to real life. They can never cover all the manifestations of
life’s diverse and ever-changing organic nature. However there is a way to attain justice
in each concrete case: if one discovers a discrepancy between the requirements of real life
and the law (rule, tradition or conviction), one should take concrete “small steps” to
restore the balance in favor of “real life.” No matter how little one can do in one’s
130
humble position, even as a tiny cog in a mechanism, one’s initial action will push bigger
cogs, and the good will triumph.
145
Having outlined the writer's general perspective on law, justice and mercy and the
correlation among them, let us now examine how these ideas work in a concrete literary
text. The short story, “Pigmei” (“The Pygmy”), provides a brilliant example. It was first
published in the journal, The Citizen, in 1876 under the title “Three Good Deeds (From
the Past).” As it is often the case with Leskov, the telling of the actual story of the Pygmy
is prompted by a discussion of the increase of egoism and indifference in contemporary
society compared to the past. One of the interlocutors wants to prove the power of a
commoner and tells a story to demonstrate what the most insignificant person can do to
help his neighbor.
The first thing the reader learns about the protagonist of the story is that he is a
“little man,” and this is consistently stressed throughout the text: besides his telling
nickname, he is a “little old man” (starichok), who now, after retirement, lives on his
very small estate in the provinces, and before held one of the minor posts in St.
Petersburg police, namely that of public executioner. The protagonist himself admits his
own insignificance. He never played any important role, and yet once, out of a noble
impulse, he did something so big that it is hardly possible to believe.
It happened in St. Petersburg in 1853, when the political relationship between
Russia and France was strained because of the coronation of Napoleon III, who had
145
This ability, sometimes illusory, of an insignificant member of the bureaucratic system to produce a
noticeable effect, is an important characteristic of administrative narrative (Shcheglov), which will be
discussed further. See also footnote 148.
131
initiated the Crimean War.
146
As an executioner, the Pygmy had once received an order to
flog a young Frenchman for the attempted rape of an underage girl. For the protagonist
who has been at his post for years it is just another case and he prepares to perform the
task. However, when he meets the Frenchman simply to make sure that the latter can
physically bear the punishment he suddenly is struck by the sight of a living man instead
of a judicial dossier. The supposed criminal who already has spent three years in jail
waiting for the court’s decision looks so weak and pathetic, cries so desperately and
claims his own innocence so convincingly, that the executioner pities him. Nevertheless,
he promises the convict that he will receive what he deserves and orders the sentries to
take him back to jail. Not willing to lose his last chance and apparently having noticed a
sign of compassion, the Frenchman grabs the Pygmy’s leg so strongly that the latter
cannot get rid of him. Then, a mysterious voice whispers in the protagonist’s ear that he
should learn more about the case and protect the culprit.
The Frenchman tells the executioner that when he was working in a barbershop, a
woman who did laundry for him locked him in a room with her little daughter, having
previously taught the girl to scratch his face and cry for help. For everyone involved it
was a clear case of child abuse, so the Frenchman was convicted and sentenced to be
whipped and exiled. The Pygmy, however, notices that the scar on his face looks too
deliberate. The protagonist, having compassion for the criminal and doubts about his guilt
and being under the influence of some mysterious power or “inspiration,” decides to
commit what he himself calls “treason.” First, he asks the police about the girl’s mother
146
This is important to know since what was originally a purely criminal case gradually acquired political
connotations.
132
and finds out that she is a “scoundrel” who played the same trick with other men on
previous occasions. After that he “borrows” a French tutor from his friend and brings him
to the French ambassador to make the story known to the latter, for the Pygmy himself
does not speak the language.
The protagonist waits in a carriage outside the ambassador’s house, as the law
prohibits policemen to enter foreign embassies. While waiting, he suffers severely from
the thought of his “treason” and the fear of being punished for it, especially since he sees
a constable nearby. When the French teacher comes back, the Pygmy pretends that he
does not know him and flees back home.
147
Nevertheless, what is done is done, and the
execution is cancelled.
However, the story does not end here. Soon after the annulment of the flogging, the
Pygmy receives a thank-you letter, or rather just the phrase “thank you”, and 1500 rubles
from an anonymous sender. The protagonist recognizes the handwriting of the mysterious
giver, who turns out to be Emperor Nicholas I himself. Thus, the risky, if not perfidious,
operation of saving an unknown and insignificant French barber accused of a serious
crime involved not only a minor prison official, who set everything in motion; a French
teacher; the French ambassador and a number of couriers; but also the emperor of Russia.
This bond between one of the lowliest people in Russian society and its top is truly
remarkable and brings to mind the genre of administrative novel, on the one hand, and
the folkloric figure of the “good tsar,” on the other, even though Nicholas I was evidently
far from such.
147
This episode possibly refers back to the triple renunciation of Saint Peter.
133
Showing the bottom and the top of the Russian bureaucratic hierarchy, “The
Pygmy” contains in itself a germ of the genre of the administrative story, where the
protagonist’s personal files travel up the levels of a hierarchy, and his fate is decided
while he remains totally quiescent and passive. The genre was examined and defined by
Yurii Shcheglov by the example of Vladimir Voinovich’s satirical novel, Ivan Chonkin.
According to the scholar, in the genre of administrative novel,
государство и общество предстают как система взаимозависимых
инстанций, пронизанных субординацией и отчетностью. В ней
господствует строгое распределение функций между частями и
осуществляется централизованный контроль над всеми ячейками, от
высших уровней до низших. Всячески препятствуя передвижению
живых людей, эта система оказывается в высшей степени проницаемой
для циркуляции бюрократических сигналов. Неподвижная и ригидная в
своей основе, она беспрерывно пронизывается судорогами слухов,
доносов и поветрий, массовых кампаний и всякого рода “испорченных
телефонов”. Малейшее движение на вершине власти отзывается
разнообразными пертурбациями в ниже расположенных слоях, и
наоборот: даже незначительное происшествие, случающееся где-то у
подножия пирамиды, способно вызвать цепную реакцию,
докатывающуюся, со многими попутными разветвлениями, до самых
верхних ее этажей. В подобном мире даже у людей-“винтиков”, не
обладающих никакими реальными возможностями, может возникнуть
мистическое подозрение, будто они каким-то краешком своего
существования причастны к высшим судьбам громадного механизма и
могут “производить волны” наверху, не выходя при этом из собственной
комнаты…” (Shcheglov)
148
148
“[S]tate and society appear as a system of interdependent authorities connected by subordination and
paperwork. The strict division of functions among the system’s parts and centralized control over all cells,
from the highest to the lowest level, prevails in it. Strongly impeding the movement of real people, this
system is open to the circulation of bureaucratic signals. Immobile and rigid in its core, it is constantly
penetrated by rumors, denunciations and fads, mass campaigns and all sorts of ‘Chinese whispers.’ The
slightest movement at the top is echoed in a variety of disruptions on lower levels, and vice versa, even a
minor accident happening somewhere at the foot of the pyramid can cause a chain reaction that reaches,
with many bifurcations, its upper floors. In such a world, even people who are ‘cogs’ lacking any real
134
Leskov’s work provides famous examples of this genre, e.g. the short story,
“Chelovek na chasakh” (“The Sentry,” 1887),
149
but in “The Pygmy,” written eleven
years earlier, the author chooses not to focus on the mechanism of the bureaucratic
machine. The two short stories have numerous similarities with each other: in each the
protagonist betrays his official duties in order to rescue a man but whereas in “The
Pygmy” the story of rescuing constitutes the main plot line, in “The Sentry” it is just a
departure point for the development of an administrative plot. Unlike the Pygmy’s happy
ending, the sentry Postnikov who leaves his post outside the Winter Palace in order to
save a drowning man is flogged and another man claims and gets his reward.
In this last respect, Postnikov’s story parallels that of the accused Frenchman rather
than of the Pygmy. The intrusion of the Pygmy leads to the annulment of the flogging,
but the Frenchman is exiled from Russia and not allowed to return.
150
Even though, as the
narrator justly points out, it is highly unlikely that the Frenchman would have wanted to
stay in Russia after being unjustly accused of rape and after spending three years in
prison, from the standpoint of law and justice it is not an equitable solution. However,
none of the characters of the story show the slightest awareness of this fact – everyone
power may have a mystical feeling that they are somehow involved in the fate of the giant mechanism and
can “make waves” at the top, without even leaving their office…” (Shcheglov; my translation).
149
As demonstrated in Alexander Zholkovsky’s article “‘Chelovek na chasakh’ Leskova.”
150
The story continues for another four pages and deals with yet another of the good deeds announced in its
original title, but the rest of it does not directly touch on any legal matters. The ending of the story
describes the Pygmy’s personal trip to France a few years later, where he learns that the French barber has
become a rich and respected man and where, being confused for a beggar, he receives some alms from the
barber’s daughter.
135
seems happy with the outcome, nobody complains and the general tone of the narrative is
humane and optimistic as the innocent man has been saved.
As it becomes clear from the narrative, although is never stated directly, the reason
for annulling the execution is purely political. It remains unknown to the reader, as well
as to the characters of the story, what exactly the emperor discussed with the ambassador
in the Winter Palace before annulling the barber’s punishment, but one can be sure that it
was not the fate of the poor Frenchman or even the question of criminal justice and
judicial error. The fate of the young barber was accidentally implicated in a big political
game for a short moment in time, but this was enough to drastically change its course.
Thus, an old but still powerful motif of the good tsar’s mercy finds a new and unexpected
twist in Leskov’s text.
Actually, if one looks more carefully at the story’s plot, one will see that it unfolds
around the motif petitioning and the ruler’s mercy analyzed in the previous chapter – yet
altered to the point of being almost unrecognizable. Indeed, in “The Pygmy,” the same
tripartite system of characters is repeated: there is a victim, accused and convicted by the
law; a petitioner who tries to save the convict; and a high-ranked God-like person, who
grants pardon. What Leskov changes is that he distributes the role of the petitioner among
three different characters – the Pygmy, the French tutor and the ambassador – none of
whom is personally involved with the convict. He also removes the central episode of the
masterplot, namely the conversation between the petitioner and the authority. Leskov’s
treatment of the plot is closer to that of Walter Scott than of Pushkin: it gives the issue of
mercy a very practical and political dimension.
136
Having demonstrated how Leskov’s organic worldview expresses itself in the
writer’s view on the law, let us formulate its main elements using “The Pygmy” as the
basis. In general terms, Leskov’s legal masterplot can be described as a violation of the
proper order of things (here, a judicial error that leads to an unjust punishment) and its
subsequent restoration (the annulment of the execution followed by the happiness and
prosperity of the victim). This violation happens not as a result of someone’s ill-will, but
by an unlucky train of events and at first seems to be irreparable.
151
The victim is passive
and cannot do anything to improve his situation, which in “The Pygmy” is emphasized by
him being in prison, alone in a foreign country and with poor language skills. Therefore,
the happy ending is secured by a helper
152
(the Pygmy) who is, socially and
economically, an insignificant and powerless but humane and compassionate person.
The task that the helper has to accomplish is a very concrete and rather modest one:
to spare an innocent man an unjust corporal punishment. The issue of restoring justice –
through a full acquittal of the prisoner, annulment of the unjust verdict, punishment of the
perjurers, a reform of the investigatory and court systems so as to avoid such judicial
errors in the future, and so forth – never arises. Part of the reason why this is so is that
none of the participants ever expected to attain even that bit of justice they actually
received and were afraid of much more serious and undesirable consequences for
151
Of course, there is the quirky washerwoman in “The Pygmy,” who tries to take advantage of the young
Frenchman and bears false witness against him, although she obviously did not intend the barber to face
any criminal penalty, but merely wanted him to bribe his way out of trouble. However, the foreigner,
apparently unfamiliar with Russian legal “customs,” fell victim to a miscarriage of justice.
152
The reference to one of the eight character-types Vladimir Propp found in folk tales is deliberate in view
of the influence of folklore on Leskov’s oeuvre.
137
themselves. Moreover, the resolution of this problem outside the court allows the victim
to be rescued without publicly discrediting the judicial system.
Sometimes, what initialy appears to be adverse circumstances turns out to be a
“blessing in disguise.”
153
Besides the helper’s good will and resourcefulness, the victim
owes his rescue to chance, or rather to the complicated political relations between Russia
and France at the time and to political machinations. By virtue of his profession (as the
prison executioner) the helper is an opponent of the victim. On the other hand, it is
precisely his work experience, namely his knowledge of human evil, that makes him able
to see the truth: “бог знает, ведь есть такие проходимки; в полиции как послужишь,
так ведь на каких негодяев не насмотришься” (Leskov, “Pigmei” 37).
154
The central event is presented as exceptional, singular and impossible, which is
emphasized lexically by using words and expressions such as “once,” “almost impossible
to believe,” “have never seen before,” etc. Moreover, the past of the described events,
presented as a legendary time when the impossible was possible, is opposed to the
present when the story is told; this legendary past is what secures the story’s happy
ending. The “past” usually refers to the epoch of Nicholas I, generally considered to be
one of the darkest and most lawless periods in Russian history, while the “present” – to
the time after Alexander II’s liberal reforms, when the texts were written. Even though
the story is usually announced as a true one and contains an abundance of historical
detail, it also uses some traditional elements from folklore and medieval religious
153
Compare with the heroines’ faux pas in the scenes of petitioning discussed in Chapter One.
154
“‘…God knows,’ I thought, ‘what villains are there in the world. While working in the police, I saw all
too many such scoundrels…” (my translation). Remarkably, Gromov and Eikhenbaum describe Leskov’s
characters as people who have “broken out” of the milieu they belong to (same idea in McLean 357).
138
literature.
155
This helps to embed the elements of miracle into an otherwise realistic
narrative. Moreover, Leskov’s use of folklore and medieval literature establishes an
important correlation between the opposition of the legendary past vs. the prosaic present
and that of the oral and written word, which will be examined further.
The listed elements of Leskov’s legal masterplot adhere perfectly to the writer’s
conception of a “righteous man”
156
and illustrate two major ideas: first, that there is some
good in every heart, even in that of a prison executioner, and, second, that the most
insignificant person can accomplish a great deal if he or she really wants to help.
Strikingly, this moral, central for Leskov’s worldview, remains true for a large number of
the writer’s law-related texts, including those outside the “righteous men” cycle, that
revolve around some legal trick and featuring a trickster-hero. This rather strange
combination of the two character-types, the “righteous man” and the trickster, in a legal
context gives rise to a new hybrid type, which also derives from the folklore magic
helper. Let us call it the “righteous trickster.” It is not made explicit that the Pygmy
deliberately plays on the political complications between Russia and France and thus
belongs to this character-type, but he certainly suggests its development in Leskov’s later
work.
Valentina Gebel’ calls the abovementioned stories “tricky” tales, as their plot, based
on a favorable resolution of a problem to the satisfaction of all parties, is artificial and
155
In “The Pygmy,” those are the reinvented image of the good tsar (the protagonist always calls Nicholas I
“tsar,” not “emperor”); a number of folk proverbs and epithets; a passive hero who in the end attains wealth
and happiness thanks to a helper; numerous Biblical references and ecclesiastic dicta; mystical motivations
and obedience to God’s will understood as an internal imperative to help those in need.
156
This character-type, central for the writer’s oeuvre, has received thorough examination in Leskov
studies, e.g. in works by Gorelov and Khalizev and Maiorova.
139
hides the author’s bitter irony about the arbitrariness of happy endings (176). The scholar
coins this term with a clear reference to Leskov’s following self-description as a writer
with a “treacherous nature”:
Как-то в компании, в присутствии автора, зашел спор о лесковских
рассказах, и некто заметил, что я перехватил через край и что в моих
одобряемых рассказах нет даже вовсе настоящих добродетельных людей,
а есть только примиряющие добрые впечатления, но они являются как бы
без воли и направления… Еще несколько лиц поддержали, что в моих
рассказах будто действительно трудно различать между добром и злом,
еще даже порою будто совсем не разберешь, кто вредит делу и кто ему
помогает. Это относили к некоторому врожденному коварству моей
натуры. (Leskov cited in Gebel’ 176)
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However, as was previously pointed out, in addition to the famous ambiguity of
Leskov’s authorial position, the plot of the “tricky” tales unfolds around a certain trick,
often legalistic, played by a trickster-hero, which secures a happy ending. This happens in
the short stories of the 1880s “Otbornoe zerno” (“Choice Grain”), “Shtopal’shchik”
(“The Darner”), “Malen’kaia oshibka” (“A Little Mistake”) and “Staryi genii” (“The Old
Genius”) – all included in the collection Sviatochnye rasskazy (Stories of the Christmas
Season, 1886).
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In his introduction to the collection, Leskov defined the genre of a
Christmas tale as having the following characteristics: they describe events happening
between the holidays of Christmas and Epiphany, contain fantastic elements, carry some
sort of moral, even if merely exposure of a superstition, and end happily. All these
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“Once in society, in the presence of the author himself, a dispute arose about Leskov’s short stories.
Someone noted that I went too far and that there is no true virtuous people in my popular stories, but only
reconciliatory impressions, which appear seemingly without any [authorial] will and direction… A few
more persons agreed that it is really difficult to distinguish between good and evil in my stories and even
that it is really hard to understand who causes harm and who helps. This was attributed to the innate
trickiness of my nature” (my translation).
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Most of the stories were published separately before coming out as part of the collection.
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demands make the genre artificial and predictable and at the same time suitable for the
author’s goals. Now let us examine the amalgamation of the Christmas tale genre and
Leskov’s legal thinking through the analysis of “The Old Genius.”
In the story, an old lady from a provincial town gets into big trouble because she
had mortgaged her house to help a young and frivolous dandy from St. Petersburg with
his card debts. Like the Pygmy, she does so out of pure compassion and kindness, but the
rest of the story makes “The Old Genius” rather a reversal of “The Pygmy.” After
receiving the money, the young man returns to the capital and then simply disappears, i.e.
stops answering his benefactress’s letters and pleas, so that by the beginning of the
narrative the lady is about to lose her only place to live. She goes to Petersburg herself,
turns in a complaint against the offender, and the judge delivers a decisive verdict,
ordering the young man to pay the money back. The case is absolutely clear-cut; the
decision is quick and indubitably right. However, the judicial system fails to inform the
debtor of the court order, because they simply cannot locate him and officially serve him
a notice of the verdict. At this point, the triumphant march of legal justice grinds to a halt,
as by law, no official steps can be taken until the defendant is properly informed. Thus,
once again, the invariant Leskovian conflict of dead abstract rules versus live reality
underpins the story’s plot.
All officials involved are compassionate and sympathetic to the old lady, they curse
the young scoundrel and sincerely want to help but none can – for no matter what fee.
This creates a perfect moment for the “genius” to appear. His name is Ivan Ivanovich and
he is an old drunkard, probably a former petty court official – maybe retired, maybe even
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fired – who promises to serve the paper no later than the next day for the humble amount
of five hundred rubles.
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The next day is an ultimate doomsday, the payday for the
mortgage and the day of the young man and his rich lover’s departure for Paris, so the
victim is completely desperate and, seeing no other option, accepts Ivan Ivanovich’s
service. The genius then devises a tricky plan and for three hundred rubles hires another
drunkard, a former soldier, to perform some necessary physical action. The trickster
himself prefers to keep a low profile in the story for some unknown and most probably
improper reasons.
Next morning, all three of them, the old lady, Ivan Ivanovich and the former
soldier, go to the railway station, where they find the debtor and his mistress engaged in
drinking tea before boarding a train, and the soldier, already drunk but this time acting a
character, provokes a fight with the young man. As it happens in public space, the police
have to intervene, and the wrongdoer is finally obliged to identify himself. During this
shuffle, he receives the court ruling in presence of many witnesses. Now, by law, he is
not allowed to leave the country before paying his debt, so he does so promptly,
including interest. The impossible therefore becomes possible, the truth triumphs, peace
and order are restored, and the old lady may return home.
Quite remarkably, the gist of the trick in this case consists, firstly, in bringing the
decisive event from the private into the public sphere and, secondly, in turning the villain
into a victim of a public insult, who thus becomes the beneficiary of the indispensable
protection of the law. At the end of the story, the young aristocrat who for a long time
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The Old Genius’s name, Ivan Ivanovich, which is the duplication of a generic Russian name, recalls the
anonymity of the folk tale hero, rather than being a real person’s name.
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managed to stay “invisible” to the law, tries to avoid a scandal even at the cost of an
unavenged slap in the face; this, however, appears impossible as the law protects the
citizens as blindly and rigidly as it punishes them.
The plot of “The Old Genius” is overtly anecdotal, which is typical for Leskov,
especially in his later years, when he favored the anecdote and story à propos,
considering them a modern extension of the folklore tradition. He believed that, like
folkloric genres, they capture the spirit and state of mind of people living in a particular
location. For example, in “Starinnye psikhopaty” (“Ancient Psychopaths,” 1885), Leskov
mentions the differences between Ukrainian stories and Russian ones, specifically those
about St. Petersburg. If the spirit of Ukrainian folk tales is generally heroic, the plot of
the Russian ones usually unfolds around resourcefulness and trickery:
Так, например, в преданиях (или, пожалуй, в вымыслах малороссийских)
всегда преобладает характер героический… а в историях великорусских
и особенно столичных петербургских – больше сказывается
находчивость, бойкость и тонкость плутовского пошиба. Очевидно,
фантазия людей данной местности выражает их настроение и, так
сказать, создает сама себе своих козырей для своей игры… (Leskov, SS
vol. 7, 451; author’s italic)
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The affinity between the location and the nature of the plot and the characters,
established in Leskov’s mind, is remarkable. Indeed, many of the tricks he describes
occur in the capital,
161
and if honest and helpless victims often come from the provinces
160
“Thus, for example, in Ukrainian legends (or rather fables), the heroic character always dominates…
while in Russian, especially St. Petersburg, stories, resourcefulness, briskness and sophisticated trickery
appear more important. Apparently, people’s imagination in certain geographical areas expresses their
mood and, so to speak, creates the trump cards for its game” (my translation).
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As it is posed in “The Old Genius,” “А я с любопытством дожидался ее на следующее утро, чтобы
узнать: на какое еще штукарство изловчаются плутовать в Петербурге” (“With great curiosity I
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or from abroad, like the old lady in “The Old Genius” or the French barber in “The
Pygmy,” trickster-heroes usually belong to the intricate and sophisticated world of
metropolitan legal institutions. The first element of the opposition “provinces vs.
metropolis,” one of the most significant in Russian literature, represents the stable, old-
fashioned and unambiguous world, whereas the second one, the “capital,” appears more
complicated. It is a world with no landmarks, no firm structure or ethical code, where the
very same human qualities – resourcefulness, dexterity and quick mindedness – can
equally serve good and evil.
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The legal sphere is a perfect emblem of this world.
This opposition in Russian “legal” writing is seen not only in Leskov’s work but
also in a number of other texts. It is no accident that in Pushkin’s The Captain’s
Daughter, Masha Mironova meets Catherine the Great not in St. Petersburg, but in
Tsarskoe Selo – an imperial residence located fifteen miles to the south of the capital and
thus free of its cold and inhuman spirit. The same correlation is obvious in Sukhovo-
Kobylin’s trilogy, in which the strength of the satire and the grotesqueness of his
depiction of the macabre bureaucratic world increase dramatically once the plot moves
from the provinces to the capital. The first part of the trilogy, the comedy Krechinsky’s
Wedding, takes place in Moscow, where the Muromsky family arrives from their country
estate. Lidochka’s accidental involvement in the fraud attempted by Krechinsky provokes
awaited her coming next morning to learn what new artifices the St. Petersburg confidence men had
devised”; 316)).
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There exists a relationship between these specific “Petersburg circumstances” and the state of moral
confusion and uncertainty and inability to distinguish between good and evil in the heroine of the tale
“Voitel’nitsa” (“The Battle-axe,” 1866) (Stoliarova 42). McLean examines the negative role of the
“Germanic” Sankt-Peterburg, with its “officialdom and parasitic bureaucracy,” in the life of Princess
Varvara Protozanova in Zakhudalyi rod (A Decrepit Clan, 1874) (265-268).
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the Muromskys to move to Petersburg where they can petition in the case, which has
been initiated by the pawnbroker. Here they confront something much worse than
individual criminal intent – a robust bureaucratic mechanism devised specially for
constant self-feeding by extracting bribes. Contact with it eventually leads to old
Muromsky’s death at the end of the second part of the trilogy, The Case. Sukhovo-
Kobylin concludes his work with the grotesque image of a Petersburg bureaucrat-vampire
in Tarelkin’s Death.
In “The Old Genius,” the bureaucratic hierarchy is subverted and there is no such
figure as an omnipotent God-like folkloric “good tsar” to assist the helpless heroine. The
complainant goes to the lowest officials and is advised to refer to their superior. When
she does this, she gets exactly the same result, simply receiving another piece of do-it-
yourself advice: “find him, catch him, that’s your business, then the writ will be served
on him” (Leskov, “The Old Genius” 312). Note the significant difference between the
traditional treatment of the motif of petitioning when an omnipotent person is in the
position to either help, as in The Captain’s Daughter, or to refuse to help, as in The Case.
In Leskov’s poetic world, the top-ranking bureaucrats are just as helpless before the
problem as their inferiors, and when the top of the hierarchy does not possess more power
than the bottom, the hierarchy collapses. Even a bribe, this last resort of a desperate
litigant, does not help, despite the old lady’s offering as much as one fifth of the debt,
which is a considerable amount. Furthermore, the metropolitan legal world is unable to
deal with reality, since the abstraction of the law obstructs reality and overtakes it in
significance. According to the official information, the debtor is not in Petersburg, as he
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does not have property of his own there and is not registered in any hotel, and the fact
that the old lady just saw him with her own eyes is of no consequence and cannot be
taken into consideration.
No matter how universal and culturally and historically predetermined the
inefficiency of the Russian judicial system may seem, in “The Old Genius” Leskov finds
its cause in a concrete historical event – Alexander II’s judicial reforms of 1864. It is
exactly the rule of law and fidelity to the letter of the law that Leskov criticizes in “The
Old Genius” and a few other texts. According to the writer, they eliminate the human
element, as well as the “organic” elements of openness, unpredictability and chance from
the judicial system.
The terrible perspective of losing her home in the event of losing the case, the
failure of petitions and bribes, and the strangeness of the post-reform judicial system, all
make the heroine of “The Old Genius” nostalgic for the good old pre-reform court with
its clear-cut “principles.” It is true that it functioned according to the ethos, “who offers
more is right,” as it happens in Pushkin’s “Dubrovsky,” for example, but on the other
hand, it produced a very special type of official, no longer existent, who lived by the
mantra, “nothing is impossible in Russia.”
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The epithet “old,” one of the writer’s all-time favorites, in this context and generally
in Leskov’s oeuvre means “pre-reform”: “В лесковских сопоставлениях прошлого с
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It is truly striking that, according to recent polls carried out by the Levada Analytical Center, most
Russians still prefer this traditional way of dealing with all kind of legal problems. For instance, most
drivers consider it more reasonable to overlook a minor accident or bribe a traffic policeman in case of a
minor violation than to waste time on a proper legal proceedings. Interviews conducted by Hendley also
confirm this conclusion (“Varieties of Legal Dualism”).
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настоящим можно выделить несколько ‘слоев’… Но главным рубежом,
разделявшим в сознании писателя прошлое и настоящее, была эпоха подготовки и
проведения реформ, эпоха крушения крепостного права” (Viduetskaia 77).
164
“The
Old Genius” was written in 1884, and the narrated events happened “a few years ago,”
i.e. already after the reforms, even though this is not directly stated in the text. The Old
Genius, Ivan Ivanovich, belongs by training to the pre-reform period. He is (or used to
be) an official of the lowest, fourteenth, class and a person of “no reputation,” yet he has
“thoughts of genius in his head.” The opposition “pre-reform vs. the post-reform” court is
presented in the text through a system of other oppositions: “old vs. new,” “warm vs.
cold,” “concrete vs. abstract,” “a little vs. a lot (in particular, regarding fees and bribes),”
“individual, personalized vs. official, impersonal,” and “belief vs. certainty,”
respectively, with a clear positive value in the first member of each opposition. Indeed, as
Ivan Ivanovich states, he only takes hopeless cases and expects absolute trust from his
clients: “Кто хочет – пусть нам верит, потому что я всегда берусь за дела только за
невозможные; а кто веры не имеет, с тем делать нечего” (Leskov, SS vol. 7, 317).
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As the judicial reforms constituted the core of late nineteenth-century law-related
literature in Russia, it is necessary to study Leskov’s attitude towards it more thoroughly
before continuing analyzing of “The Old Genius.” In more or less detail, Leskov
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“There are a few ‘layers’ in Leskov’s comparisons between the past and the present… However, the
main boundary between the two, in the author’s mind, was the period of preparing for and carrying out the
reforms, the epoch of the abolition of serfdom”; my translation). The Nicholaevan past, as opposed to
Alexandrian present, is also the historical setting for “The Sentry” and about one third of all Leskov’s
writings (my translation).
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“Anybody who needs our help must believe me, because I only undertake impossible jobs. I can’t do
anything for people who have no faith…” (Leskov, “The Old Genius” 314).
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examines the opposition of the old and new judicial systems in a number of his literary
texts and essays, such as “Zagadochnoe proisshestvie v sumasshedshem dome” (“An
Enigmatic Event in a Madhouse,” 1884), “Senichkin iad” (“Senichka’s Poison,” 1883),
“Aleksandrit” (“The Alexandrite,” 1885), Smekh i gore (Laughter and Grief 1871) and,
most importantly, in his drama The Spendthrift.
Leskov’s “tricky writing” backfired on him when contemporary literary critics
accused him of attacking the judicial reform in The Spendthrift. Not unlike the situation
after his disastrous editorial about the Petersburg fire of May, 1862, appeared in The
Northern Bee,
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the writer tried to justify his position in a letter to P.K. Shchebalsky of
October 16, 1884:
In The Spendthrift I showed how unjust was the justice of the prereform courts,
and meanwhile everyone, headed by Suvorin and Burenin in Korsh’s
Petersburg News, wrote that I was ‘vilifying the new courts’ – although the
concluding words of the play are as follows: ‘So this is how the new courts
[author’s italic] have caught us.’ (Leskov, SS vol. 11, 294; cited in English in
McLean 172)
However, such attempts to defend himself failed again. To start with, the quotation given
by Leskov is not exactly the concluding words of the play, as McLean justly pointed out
(670).
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Yet more importantly, the old-fashioned, “eighteenth-century” manner of
introducing the new court as a deus ex machina in the play only serves to discredit it.
166
In that editorial Leskov discussed the possibility of the fire being a result of arson committed by radical
students and suggested that the police should investigate this further. Such a reactionary assumption,
leading to a witch-hunt, made the writer a literary and journalist pariah for years.
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This illustrates Leskov’s very liberal treatment of the written word, which will be an important element
of the further analysis.
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Moreover, Leskov leaves the finale of the play open: the villains are facing a trial by the
new court but who can possibly predict its outcome?
The Spendthrift tells the story of a thirty-year-old industrialist, Ivan Molchanov,
who is nice but weak and passive. As a result of a plot by Molchanov’s former guardian,
the old merchant Firs Kniazev, the new public court first removes the young man from
control over his property as a spendthrift and then declares him insane and sends him to
an asylum. All this – actually, much more – happens because years ago Molchanov’s
father appointed Kniazev guardian of his son and fortune in case of his death and was
soon afterwards killed by him. People talk about this murder, there are even two
eyewitnesses, but none of them dares to testify against the de facto master of the town.
However, what appears more dangerous to Kniazev is that, during the period of his
unlimited control over Molchanov’s estate, he squandered over two hundred thousand of
his rubles and now faces trial because Ivan has the documents incriminating him.
In the play, Leskov’s characterization of the judicial reforms is ambiguous. On the
one hand, the reforms may restrain minor officials, like the Duma secretary Vonifatii
Minutka, from corrupt practices, at least from grave ones, but on the other, it drives real
villains like Kniazev to commit reckless acts. So far, as the main character points out, the
only noticeable difference between the old and the new legal systems is that nowadays
one, nolens volens, has to give the impression of respecting the rule of the law even in
one’s most lawless deeds. “Закон!” Molchanov exclaims, “Не нужно мне читать
закона. Здесь дело не в законе. Ваши заботы не о том, чтобы обстоять закон, чтобы
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его исполнить, а о том, чтоб беззаконье сделать на законном основании” (Leskov
vol. 1, 438).
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Strictly speaking, The Spendthrift is about the reaction to the judicial reform in
Russian provinces rather than about the actual merits of the new court. It is true that
Kniazev and his accomplices are afraid of the new legal system but no more at the end of
the play than at the beginning, when the news of it drove them to new crimes. Along with
the description of post-reform reality, Leskov draws a sketch of the pre-reform court so
that the reader can compare the two. One of the play’s characters recalls how she once
stole a chicken from a deacon’s wife in order to feed her sick daughter. She was caught,
and the deacon brought her to the police station, appealing to the law. A policeman who
was in charge of that district of the town and who knew both people well struck the
offender with a rod twice and released her, saying that stealing food is not a sin.
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This episode of the play creates a vivid picture of idealized old-style patriarchal
justice shown with undeniable sympathy. Indeed, justice is attained appropriately and a
punishment is inflicted as retribution for an offence, yet it is adjusted to the situation by
the official in charge. Moreover, the low ranking policeman Nikanor Nikanorych
combines in himself all three major judgmental authorities: the state, society and God. As
an official he represents the state, no matter how low his rank is; as a neighbor to both the
complainant and the thief he represents public opinion; finally, he uses such terms as
“sin,” which makes him a keeper of religious morals. Thus, in the midst of one of
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“Law!” exclaims Molchanov, “No need to read the law to me. It's not about the law. Your efforts are not
about how to uphold the law, but about how to find a legal basis for your lawless acts” (my translation).
169
This episode inevitably evokes a parallel with Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, the main character of
which, Jean Valjean, is sentenced for five years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread.
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Russia’s darkest political regimes, Leskov creates an idyllic picture of patriarchal justice,
very similar to that in Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter, which expresses his ideal – so
to speak, a judicial system “with a human face.” No doubt, the author chooses the
Nicholaevan epoch to sharpen the contrast between historical settings and personal
goodness, but his treatment of the opposition “pre-reform vs. new court” also shows his
awareness of the “mechanization” of the post-reform system of justice and the
elimination of any human element by the soulless rule of law.
Having made these general observations regarding Leskov’s understanding of the
judicial reforms of 1864, let us resume the analysis of “The Old Genius.” The image of
the Old Genius as a miracle worker creates a significant, yet rather ambiguous parallel to
the righteous Pygmy, who also makes the impossible, or what seems to be so, possible.
Both Ivan Ivanovich’s and the Pygmy’s actions are somewhat questionable. The latter
“rebels” against official instructions in order to spare his neighbor an unjust punishment
and suffers mental anguish because of his supposed “treason,” while Ivan Ivanovich
plays a legal trick for a small prix fixe. In this case, nothing guarantees that he would not
have played the same trick for a guilty party. At the same time, the Old Genius’s
professional but expedient actions do not necessarily imply the ambiguity of the author’s
own moral position caused by his “treacherous nature.”
To understand this phenomenon properly one should consider the folkloric tradition
of trickster tales. Their protagonists often play cruel jokes on other people, but social
inequality serves as a redeeming factor. The tricksters are usually outlaws or socially
depraved men whereas their opponents are rich and powerful; Robin Hood and his merry
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men are an archetypal example of this kind of a trickster. Therefore, this sort of folktale
can be seen as the people exacting revenge against their oppressors, wealthy peasants,
priests or landowners. Not to forget that the sympathetic old lady herself resorts to
morally questionable means in order to reclaim her money, which can be excused by her
moral right. She attempts to bribe officials and bribes the debtor’s servants in order to spy
on him. Unlike the victim in “The Pygmy,” she is quite active and resourceful, yet gets
deadlocked, so that Ivan Ivanovich undeniably deserves the main credit for having justice
served.
The tricky uncertainty of what is good and what is evil in relation to the legal
sphere in “The Old Genius” brings to mind the consistently “double-edged” nature of the
bureaucratic approach to any legal case in Sukhovo-Kobylin’s trilogy (95, 200). There,
the crucial point in any case is not its content but the way it is presented. According to
Sukhovo-Kobylin, the possibility to proceed with a case in any direction – depending on
which party pays more – gave officials unlimited power over litigants. In “The Old
Genius,” Leskov creates a similar world without clear moral standards, but in the end, the
right cause wins.
As the analysis of “The Old Genius” demonstrates, its main plot elements coincide
with those of “The Pygmy.” In both stories, which describe historically concrete and
plausible events, order is restored thanks to a number of “small steps” (or tricks) without
any claim to abstract justice (the very word is never mentioned in these texts). Both
protagonists, the Pygmy and Ivan Ivanovich, are typical socially insignificant “little
men,” but with a good understanding of the legal sphere. The initial situation in both texts
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is presented as desperate and hopeless, which gives the eventual success the impression
of being a minor miracle, especially for the victims. This also allows the author to inject a
mystical dimension into the plot: voices, dreams and premonitions,
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and most
importantly, an unconditional belief in the miraculous nature of the resolution. Both the
Pygmy and the Old Genius belong functionally to the folk type of the helper, and the
alleged impossibility of what they accomplish, the unexpectedness of their intrusion (they
actively offer their help) and the stories’ somewhat mystical atmosphere reveal their
indebtedness to fairy tales.
In Leskov’s writings a “miracle” often comes out of what initially seem to be
adverse circumstances. Also, seemingly favorable circumstances do not always help. For
instance, the political hostility between Russia and France and the protagonist’s job as a
police executioner secure the happy ending in “The Pygmy,” while the sincere
compassion and incorruptibility of law officials do no good for the heroine of “The Old
Genius.” This reversal is characteristic of the author’s “heretical” world.
The differences between the two short stories, namely the Pygmy’s selfless
compassion and readiness to help compared to the Old Genius’s modestly paid
professionalism and ability to bend any rule to his advantage, are rooted in the genre: the
story about a “righteous man” vs. the “tricky” tale.
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Both very national types, one
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“Вообрази – предчувствие у меня, что-ли, какое-то, и сны я вижу, и все это как-то так тепло
убеждает довериться” (Leskov, SS vol. 7, 317), says the heroine of “The Old Genius” (“Just imagine, I
have a sort of intuition, I have dreams and everything tells me strongly that I ought to trust him”; 314).
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Indeed, most of Leskov’s Christmas tales repeat the same masterplot: a trick saves the situation that for a
rigid mind seems hopeless.
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saintly and the other roguish, serve the purposes of good and deserve the reader’s
admiration because they – each for his own reasons – refuse to accept the impossible.
There are a number of Leskov’s “tricky” tales in which the trickster-hero is on the
side of the establishment, for example, in the short stories “Zhidovskaia kuvyrkollegiia”
(“Yid Somersault,” 1882) from the same Christmas collection and “Administrativnaia
gratsiia (“Administrative Grace,” 1893, first published 1934). In the former, a quirky
private Mamashkin helps an officer to handle a problem with three Jewish recruits who
fall over every time they shoot in order to show that they are unfit for military service.
Like Ivan Ivanovich, he offers help and sets a very modest reward for himself; then he
arranges for a shooting exercise, in which the recruits stand on a very unstable deck in the
middle of a river. And this does the trick: however stubborn the resisters are they would
rather accept military discipline than throw themselves into the water.
In the sharp political satire, “Administrative Grace,” the high civic authorities of
Kharkov unite with the Church authorities in order to dispose of a popular dissident
university professor. The author of their cunning plan is a modest abbot, whose skills in
this sphere are well known to his superiors. Father Isikhii
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chooses to act indirectly
since the discharge of the unwanted professor could initiate student riots and turn him
into a political martyr. At the trickster-hero’s prompting, a gendarme colonel summons
another local public figure, one Parasol’ka, who famously envies the professor, and as if
by accident shows him a letter revealing the professor’s collaboration with the Third
Division. The letter is fake, but the psychology of envy that the gendarmes exploit
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The character’s name derived from Greek hesychasm (“stillness, rest, quiet, silence”) appears
meaningful in the context of the story and the larger context of Leskov’s “legal” writing.
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prevents Parasol’ka from asking for proof, and the rumors spread around the city. As a
result, in a short while, the professor becomes a pariah among his former followers and
eventually commits suicide. A little later, the public starts asking questions and learns
that the letter never existed, which ruins the unwitting slanderer Parasol’ka’s reputation
in the eyes of the people.
However, what is perhaps even more important is that after successfully carrying
out its dirty job, the Third Division remains “clean,” i.e. not directly involved. Something
that never existed, a chimera, appeared for a moment and then disappeared into oblivion.
It was a masterful hocus-pocus, and it is not accidental that circus imagery, first of all, the
metaphor of zahme Dressure, appears in the text. What makes this trick especially
striking for the reader is the role that the written word plays in it.
Part II. The “Oral vs. Written Word” in Leskov’s “Legal” Writing
The written – and “published,” i.e. “made known to the public,” – word serves to
label people and events, placing them into certain boundaries, assigning them a finite and
fixed meaning. As unchangeable and inexorable as fate and as unquestionable as a fact, it
is what makes the professor seem a traitor and the young French barber a criminal, not
their deeds. On the other hand, the absence of registration in Petersburg makes the
aristocrat from “The Old Genius” invisible and even non-existent for the police. This
explains why the Old Genius Ivan Ivanovich also persistently preserves his anonymity, as
a guarantee of the integrity of his protean nature and creative freedom. He catches other
characters in his webs, while remaining independent of any definition and limitation. This
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obviously makes Leskov’s trickster-hero an author-like figure. The writer’s personal
tricky and uncertain nature, noted by all biographers, for instance in regard to his political
sympathies, is reflected in his characters who serve both God and Mammon. The little
tricks they play are not magic, they cannot turn an elephant into a mouse, but they can put
the sign “mouse” on the elephant’s cage and watch how many observers will fall for the
trick.
As Sperrle justly pointed out in her book, Leskov struggles against the rigidity of
people’s convictions and superstitions and against the dead letter of the law. Ultimately,
however, he struggles against the fixed written word. Paradoxically he, as a writer, does
this by means of words. That is why he uses excessive neologisms, as well as
professional, dialectical and unusual expressions, i.e. words that are missing from
dictionaries or that only make sense in a given context. Leskov’s unreliable narrators and
numerous subtitles also serve to undermine the dictatorship of traditional genres.
This opposition of oral vs. written word that was crucial for Leskov’s oeuvre in
general and “legal” writing in particular has a long history in world culture and was
conceptualized already in Plato’s “Phaedrus” (circa 370 BC). In this dialogue Socrates
criticizes a speech of Lysias, a famous sophist and “logografos,” i.e. professional
speechwriter, and affirms, like Leskov, the superiority of the oral word over the written.
Such logocentrism, as Jacques Derrida called it in “La pharmacie de Platon” (“Plato’s
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Pharmacy,” 1968), is based on the assumption that the “presence” of the author in a
speech is meaningful, whereas his or her “absence” in written word devalues it.
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Socrates equates the opposition “speech vs. writing” to “philosopher vs. sophist,”
“original vs. copy,” “true vs. false,” “living vs. dead,” and finally “good vs. evil,”
respectively. In his argument, he praises the relationship between words and their
speakers as more direct and immediate than that between texts and their authors. Socrates
likens written words to illegitimate children, because they belong to whoever reads them
and thus do not bear their actual author’s personality.
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In comparison with oral speech,
written words eliminate the difference between production and reproduction. According
to Socrates, the key weakness of the written word is its inability to explain itself properly
and therefore to protect itself from wrong interpretations.
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In terms of Plato’s
mnemonic psychology, the written word is just a reminiscence of some meaning, a
reference to it and therefore an empty “shell.”
Walter J. Ong links the origin of the opposition in question to a historical shift from
an oral-aural to a literate culture, characterized by different understandings of memory
and truth. The foundation of literate culture is an illusion that the verbatim repetition of
someone’s exact words preserves the original meaning, that the same set of words always
expresses the same meaning. On the other hand, “[f]or oral-aural man, utterance remains
always of a piece with his life situation. It is never remote. Thus it provides a kind of raw,
if circumscribed, contact with actuality and with truth, which literature alone can never
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In Christian doctrine the same idea was used for criticizing Judaism for its literalism, which was
discussed in the previous chapter in connection with Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
174
Compare with Angelo’s remark on illegitimate children in Measure for Measure.
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This is already the root of Roland Barthes’s theory of death of the author.
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give…” (33). Therefore, the conflict of the spoken word with the written one turns into
that of actuality with timelessness. The two cultures, oral-aural and literate, could not be
further from one another: what one considers the best preservation of a meaning spells its
loss for the other.
At the same time, one should not forget that “Phaedrus” undeniably belongs to a
literate culture. As Ong justly points out, “[s]poken words are events, engaged in time
and indeed in the present. Plato’s ideas were the polar opposite: not events at all, but
motionless ‘objective’ existence, impersonal, and out of time” (34). A thorough analysis
of “Phaedrus,” in particular of an Egyptian legend discussed in it, in “Plato’s Pharmacy”
allows Derrida to “rehabilitate” writing. According to the legend, Thoth, the Egyptian
god of writing, offers King Thamus writing as a “remedy” (“pharmakon”) that can help
memory, but the latter refuses the gift on the grounds that it will only provoke
forgetfulness. By noting that the Greek word “pharmakon” has multiple meanings, from
“remedy” to “poison,” and is thus ambivalent, Derrida makes a statement that writing
itself cannot be reduced to the series of oppositional concepts that it precedes and
produces. In this essay, Derrida thus demonstrates the self-contradictory nature of Plato’s
defense of orality.
To whatever extent Plato’s – or anybody’s – text is open to interpretation and
revision, Leskov seems very consistent and unambiguous in his criticism of the written
word. Already the short apocryphal story from “In the Couch” presents writing as
potentially corruptible: as we saw, Moses drops the stone tablets and all the interdictions
lose their “not’s” and become their opposites. A very similar situation is described in
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Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, when Lucio mentions the “sanctimonious pirate”
who went to sea with the Ten Commandments but scraped one of them out, namely
“Thou shalt not steal” (act 1, scene 2). Both examples illustrate Plato’s idea of the
exposure, “unprotectedness,” of the written word that has lost connection with its author,
or the Author.
In his reading of Plato’s “Phaedrus” and Derrida’s “La Pharmacie de Platon,”
Alexei Glukhov emphasizes a political dimension of the opposition of “spoken vs.
written word.” He treats it in terms of “freedom vs. reglamentation” and claims that the
poles represent two different political situations and ideas of the truth. The written word
has to be authoritative, sovereign and unquestionable, otherwise it causes a conflict
between various equally probable interpretations. The scholar also points out a
fundamental duality of the judicial system in ancient Athens: the written word dominated
in legislation, whereas the oral word in legal proceedings. Oftentimes, litigants in a legal
case questioned written testimonies on the grounds that they can be easily forged,
mangled or deformed. In this respect, the Russian pre-reform judicial system was more
consistent as both legislation and proceedings existed in written form: all materials of a
case were presented to the judge on paper. On the other hand, with the introduction of the
Bar and the jury in the course of the judicial reforms, lawyers’ speeches, able to bend the
case in any direction, proved to be just as unreliable as ancient written testimonies.
A specific kind of word play underlies the plot of Leskov’s short diptych, “O
Petukhe i ego detiakh” (“About the Rooster and His Children”) and “Prostoe sredstvo”
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(“A Simple Remedy,” both first published in 1917), which is full of legal issues.
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The
serf Petr Terent’ev is sent by his owner, a brigadier, to Moscow to study culinary art and
after completing a course stays there and works at a club, regularly sending dues (obrok)
to his master. In a while he marries a French woman who, according to Russian law, even
though she is unaware of it, becomes a serf herself, as does their daughter Polen’ka.
Several years later, Petr’s new owner, the brigadier’s widow, brings him and his family
back to her estate, and soon after that the cook and his wife die. The young son of the
lady, Luka, falls in love with the delicate and pretty Polen’ka and wants to marry her, but
his mother would do anything to prevent this. She calls for a priest who advises her to
send the young man away on the pretext of arranging manumission for the girl and while
he is absent to force Polen’ka to marry the half-wit serf Rooster. This becomes the first in
a long line of tricks that shape the plot of the story.
This plan becomes known to the priest’s wife, and she decides that it would be
more far-sighted to watch over the young master’s interests rather than those of the old
mistress who is likely to die soon. The woman leaves home in order to meet Luka on his
way to the neighboring town and to warn him. Moreover, she takes a certain
precautionary step in order to prevent the evil plan from being executed, namely by
taking with her the two crowns that are necessary for wedding rites. The enraged Luka
goes back to the estate together with his friends and the crowns, where he interrupts the
ceremony that is in progress, and forces the priest to marry Polen’ka and himself.
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These stories are not listed in McLean’s monograph; on this occasion, the English titles are given in
accordance with Edgerton’s translation in the collection, Satirical Stories of Nikolai Leskov.
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Immediately after the wedding the lovers depart to Petersburg unaware of a third
trickster’s intervention. In the confusion of these events, the deacon of the church
officially registers the marriage between Polen’ka and the Rooster, not Luka. He reports
it to his mistress, and for a long period of time all parties live happily as they have
received what they wanted: the son – a lovely wife, the mother – a desired entry in the
registration book, and the tricksters – their modest material rewards, as usual in Leskov’s
work. However, this perfect balance is flimsy and already pregnant with potential
menace. It does not end the story but instead generates its further development.
What distinguishes the short story about the Rooster from Leskov’s other legal
narratives examined in this chapter is the complex system of tricksters that reiterates the
principles discussed above. In the three-part folk-like hierarchy – the priest, his wife and
the deacon – the lower one is, the better job he or she does. This acts as a compensation
for inferior social status.
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It is also maintained in the characterization of the tricksters.
Thus, the priest is described as “experienced” (v zhizni opyten), “reasonable”
(blagorazumnyi), but at the same time “understanding little” (malosmyslen) and lacking
the cunning of his wife. He acts openly and directly, and his plan, based on the deceitful
removal of Luka, although tricky, becomes known to the other participants and so does
not succeed.
The priest’s wife is smarter and craftier (lovchee) than her husband, and also more
far-sighted. She acts subtly, discretely, and manages to keep her plan secret from
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This social hierarchy is directly manifested in the text, e.g. when the priest teaches his sons to only
associate with other priests’ sons but not those of deacons or when the deacon refuses to take a horse as a
reward from the mistress in order not to rouse his superior’s envy.
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everybody as long as needed. Remarkably, even though she and her husband work for
opposite sides, she devises her plan not so much against his plan but, so to speak, parallel
to it, so that it does not directly interfere with and will not evoke the old lady’s wrath. As
she says to her husband, “[Т]ы свое, за что взялся, то и совершай, а я сделаю, что
надо полезное сделать” (Leskov, SS vol. 7, 348).
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Unlike the priest, his wife chooses
to manipulate symbolic objects rather than people, which is easier by far and less
dangerous.
Yet the deacon shows a superior kind of manipulation – a verbal one. He impacts
reality not by guiding events directly but by shaping them with the written word. As the
famous proverb cited in the text says, “что написано пером, не вырубишь топором.”
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With just one stroke of the pen he not only makes Polen’ka the wife of the Rooster,
whom she sees perhaps for the first and last time in her life, but also makes her and
Luka’s yet to be born children those of the Rooster. When Luka and his friends arrive at
the church and force the clerics to marry him to Polen’ka, the deacon does this in line
with his rule that “[i]n the world man must live so as to please everybody – then all is
well” (Leskov, Satirical Stories 195). Unlike the strong and powerful Luka and his
companions, he knows that a different match has been already registered in the book.
Leskov underlines the fact that the deacon acts without saying a word and only
when the deed is already done explains what happened, and this explanation is truly
remarkable. Let us examine more thoroughly how each of the three tricksters acts in the
178
“[Y]ou go ahead and do what you promised, and I will do what has to be done that’s useful” (Leskov,
Satirical Stories 192).
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“No axe can cut out what a pen has written down” (my translation).
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hostile environment of a pre-reform estate, a microcosm of the despotic Nicholaevan
state. Each of them finds him/herself “squeezed” between two opposite wills, those of the
old mistress and of the young master. In both cases, failure threatens to land them in
serious trouble. The priest choses to please the mistress and looks out for his personal
safety by arranging the young master’s departure and subsequently hiding himself in the
cellar. His wife, who places her bet on the young master, carefully conceals her part in
the plot from everyone. She creates an alibi for herself by, firstly, going away to visit her
sons in a seminary and, secondly, by letting her husband carry out what he promised to
the mistress. However, the deacon’s mastery is unrivaled as he finds a way, according to
his motto, to give each of the opposing sides what they want.
On the surface this appears to be impossible: Luka wants to marry Polen’ka
whereas his mother would do anything not to let it happen. However, as is usually the
case with Leskov, this revolves around the interpretation of a word. Like a skillful
lawyer, the writer makes the output of the case contingent on the reading of a term, no
matter how obvious its common meaning may seem. The young couple understands
marriage as being about loving each other, living together and bringing up children
confirmed by a proper church rite, and this is what they achieve. On the other hand, the
old mistress, who by no means objects to the sexual union of her son and her serf, does
not want this union to be legitimized and recognized by law. This is what she understands
to be the story’s resolution, given the explanation the deacon offers to her.
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Indeed, for a moment, Leskov’s trickster turns into a raisonneur, albeit of a very
unorthodox kind: not only does he instruct the old lady, but he also blackmails and nearly
scares her to death. After the young lovers escape to Petersburg, he says to her,
Ты же, о госпоже, сама властвуеши душами живых под державой твоей,
иже есть отблеск высшего права, и вольна ты во всем счастье и в животе
верных твоих, а того ради все, тебя бояся, многая правды тебе не
сказывают, но я худой человечишка и маломерный, что часишки твои
разбираю да смазываю, столь сия нощи думал о часах быстротечныя
жизни нашея, скоропреходящих и минающих, и дерзнул проговорить
истину. И ты не опали за то ни меня, ни других яростию гнева твоего, но,
обычным твоим милосердием всех нас покрыв, рассуди тихо и
благосердно, сколь душевредное из всего того может выйти последствие,
ибо от угнетенных нас тобою может быть доношенье властям в
губернскую канцелярию, что свадьба та по твоему приказу пета бяху
насилом над Пелагеею, и тогда все мы, смиренные и покорные,
пострадаем за тебя, а тебе, – как ты думаешь, - каково будет отвечать богу
за весь причет церковный? <…> Да еще и в сем веце тебе самой прейдет
некоторый меч в душу, и избудешь ты немало добра на судейских и
приказных людей, да еще они в полноте священной власти твоей над
рабами твоими могут сделать тебе умаление. Всего сего ради смилуйся,
ни с кого не взыскивай, чтобы и тебе самой худа не было… (Leskov, SS
vol. 7, 393-394)
180
180
“Thou, noble lady, dost thyself rule over the living souls in thy domain, which is a reflection of the
higher law, and thou hast full sway over all the fortune and lives of thy faithful servants, and for that reason
all of them, fearing thee, do not tell thee much truth; but I, partly sinner that I am and unworthy of notice,
who do take apart and oil thy clock – last night I did think so much upon the fleeting hours of our life,
which pass by and vanish so quickly, that I have made bold to speak forth the truth. And for this let not thy
wrath arise either against me or against others, but rather, having spread over us the cover of thy customary
benevolence, consider quietly and generously how harmful the effects of all that can be, for from us who
have been oppressed by thee there may go forth a denunciation unto the authorities in the provincial
government that this wedding was performed upon Pelageia [Polen’ka – A.K.] by force at thy command,
and then all of us, humble and obedient as we are, will suffer on account of thee, and as for thee thyself –
reflect upon it – how wouldst thou answer to God for the whole clerical staff of this church?” <…> And
even in this life a certain sword shall pass through thy soul, and though shalt be set free from no small part
of thy goods in favor of the scribes and judges, and it may come to pass that they will diminish the fullness
of thy power over thy slaves. For the sake of all this be compassionate and condemn not others, lest evil
should befall thee also…” (Leskov, Satirical Stories 197-198).
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What the cunning deacon says, in a tone that subtly mixes humility and menace, is
the following: as a landowner you possess power over your serfs, which is a reflection of
the divine power over mortals. However, the other side of unlimited power is
responsibility for those you rule and, as nobody lives forever, one day you will face your
Lord and will be judged by Him. Show mercy to your serfs, and He will be merciful to
you. If you are still not convinced and prefer to exercise you power by punishing us, your
humble servants, we could report to the provincial administration that you arranged a
forced marriage. We will probably not win the case, but the litigation will be a disaster
for all parties, and if we will be punished anyway, your property rights might be
restricted by a court decision.
Leskov’s deacon is yet another variation of the image of a petitioner – modified but
recognizable. Thus, he bases his discourse on the traditional opposition between the
concepts of law and mercy, both divine and human, without making any references to
justice. At the same time, he paradoxically makes the presumably corrupt old court serve
the purposes of justice by threatening his mistress with devastating litigation. Thus, in
Leskov’s poetic world, while the judiciary is not exactly the way it is supposed to be, it is
nonetheless an important tool in attaining justice. A trial in itself is scarier than any
verdict, so it would be more advantageous for a person to come to terms with an
opponent and settle the problem outside the court. This coincides with the idea that
“small steps” taken by a “little man” will be more successful in practice than any “big”
endeavors and can even do miracles. Leskov directly expresses this idea in one of his
articles:
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У нас есть люди, которые в буквальном смысле совершали и совершают
чудеса, свидетельствующие о необычайной способности русского
человека устроять изумительные дела не только без всякого содействия
властей, но даже при самом старательном их противудействии. В моих
долгих скитальчествах по России я видел немало таких людей, а о других
слыхал от очевидцев и как-нибудь вскоре расскажу несколько анекдотов,
которые могут успокоить тех, кто думает, что для нашего спасения нам не
остается иного средства, как требовать вмешательства правительства…
даже в дела нашей совести и религиозных убеждений. (Leskov, “O
svodnykh brakakh”)
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The second part of the diptych about Luka and Polen’ka, “A Simple Means,”
describes the events that arise from their messy marriage decades later, long after the old
lady’s death and the couple’s return to the country estate. When it is time to send the
children to proper schools, Luka and Polen’ka discover the unfortunate entry in the book,
which in legal terms means that they have never been married and their children are
illegitimate. Just as the old lady from “The Old Genius” and hundreds of other real and
fictitious characters, Luka goes to the capital in order to resolve the problem. There he
demands, asks and pleads before important people but all in vain: the law is
unambiguous.
When Luka reaches the point of despair, just as in a folktale or in Leskov’s other
“legal” writings, a minor clerical officer comes to offer his aid in this hopeless situation.
Once again, this clerk is poor, drunk and detestable, but he is the victim’s last and only
resort. Like Leskov’s other tricksters, he offers to solve a problem through a very simple
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“There are people in Russia who, literally, have performed and perform miracles, showing the
extraordinary ability of the Russian people to arrange amazing things not only without any assistance from
the authorities, but even with their most thorough opposition. In my long wanderings around Russia, I have
seen a number of such people and heard about others from eyewitnesses and sometime soon I will tell a few
anecdotes that may reassure those who think that for our salvation we have no other means than to require
the government’s intervention… even in matters of conscience and religious beliefs” (my translation).
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means, moreover, he explains why he will be a better help than any person of a higher
social rank: “[Т]ы, боярин, моим советом не пренебрегай, большие доктора простых
средств не знают, а простые люди знают, и я знаю простое средство помочь твоему
горю” (Leskov vol. 7, 397).
182
Indeed, for a very moderate fee the trickster brilliantly
resolves the puzzle and proves the maxim from “The Old Genius” that nothing is
impossible in Russia. His “simple remedy” consists in scraping the Rooster’s name out of
the book and writing it in again. The content of the note does not change, but it becomes
questionable and unreliable and consequently loses its legal status.
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Now, when the
documentary evidence is destroyed, the judicial procedure is to call on first-hand
witnesses who all honestly testify that Luka and Polen’ka’s marriage was solemnized in
the church.
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Thus, like Leskov’s Christmas tales, the short stories “About the Rooster
and His Children” and “A Simple Remedy” end happily as a result of a series of tricks.
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“No, good sir, do not neglect my counsel; great doctors do not know simple remedies, but simple people
do, and I know a simple remedy to help thy grief” (Leskov, Satirical Stories 200).
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The substance of the legal trick played in “A Simple Means” strongly reminds the intrigue of Agatha
Christie’s short mystery story, “Witness for the Prosecution” (initially published in 1925 as “Traitor
Hands”), later reworked into a play and brilliantly adapted into a film by Billy Wilder in 1957. In the story,
Leonard Vole is arrested for the murder of a wealthy older widow, Emily French. Since Mrs. French made
him her principal heir, things look really bad for the young man’s defense, especially when his wife,
Romaine, agrees to testify against him for the prosecution. At the trial she accounts for the facts murderous
for Leonard but does it in such a way that it turns the jury against her rather than against the accused.
Eventually, the proof of her unfaithfulness to her husband completely discredits her testimony and leads to
his acquittal. However, it is then revealed that Leonard Vole did actually kill Emily French, meaning that
Romaine, instructed by a lawyer that the testimony of a loving wife means very little in court, designed this
complicated and elaborate plan in order to save her husband. The irony lies in the fact that under oath she
tells only the truth, apart from writing a fake letter to expose her “adultery.” However, this one lie
discredits all she says.
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It should be noted that some circumstances of Luka and Polen’ka’s story find a parallel in the author’s
personal biography. Leskov’s father, Semen Dmitrievich, was granted hereditary nobility in 1825 but it was
not officially formalized until 1848. This carelessness affected the young writer upon entering employment,
because as a nobleman he could claim some advantages. However, when asked he was not able to produce
any documentary evidence to support his claim (Andrei Leskov vol. 1, 134).
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The contemptible clerk who saves Luka and Polen’ka’s marriage thus fits into the
tricksters’ hierarchy of the diptych and is, in fact, at the top of this hierarchy. This affirms
that in Leskov the lower one’s social status is, the more successful he or she will be and
that Petersburg tricksters are the trickiest. The clerk displays an even more brilliant kind
of manipulation than the other three tricksters. Like the deacon in “About the Rooster and
His Children,” he manipulates words, but, instead of creating a desired alternative reality
in a legal document, he “fakes a fake” and thus brings people back to the truth. Therefore,
as the deacon in his verbal activities already invites a parallel with the author, this last
trickster confirms it.
As even this brief retelling shows, legal matters, primarily concerning matrimonial
affairs, play an exceptional role in the texts: they drive the plot and give rise to the
complication and resolution. However, it is obvious that the diptych, written in a typically
Leskovian misleading and “frivolous” manner, is not just a narration of a series of legal
tricks, but addresses one of the major topics in nineteenth-century literature – marriage in
modern society. This subject was famously treated, for instance, by Nikolai
Chernyshevsky in Chto delat’? (What Is to Be Done?, 1863) and by Leo Tolstoy in Anna
Karenina (first complete publication 1878), “Kreitserova sonata” (“Kreutzer Sonata,”
1889), and The Living Corpse. The corruption of marriage as a social institution in the
second half of the century raised the question of the necessity of reforming matrimonial
laws and was widely discussed in the press and in governmental departments.
Leskov himself wrote a lot about this matter, both as writer and journalist, in
particular in “Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uezda” (“Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District,”
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1865) and “Pavlin” (1874).
185
However, in his treatment of the topic the writer mostly
refrains from offering the deep psychological analysis that is characteristic of realism.
Instead, he usually presents the story in anecdotal form with an air of scandal. Leskov
devoted a whole work, Russkoe tainobrachie (Russian Cryptomatrimony, first published
in the newspaper Novosti in 1878-1879), to the phenomenon of secret marriages, i.e.
those that were solemnized by a priest despite legal impediments such as close kinship.
This narrative presents a number of true stories fictionalized in the form of a
conversation between a somewhat naïve narrator and a worldly-wise priest. Most of the
stories unfold around the trick a priest plays on a bridal couple when he performs the
ceremony for a fee but does not register the marriage in a consistory book.
186
This way,
the priest both earns money and does not break the law. The author mildly criticizes the
corruption among Russian clergy, the spread of nihilistic tendencies in society, and the
lack of piety and respect for marriage. However, his main goal is to illustrate his major
idea by using this obscure yet undeniably compelling material: to show how the deft
intrusion of an insignificant person can correct the rigidity of the law – at least on a small
occasion.
It is not among this chapter’s goals to analyze all instances of illegal marriages in
this text, so let us focus instead on a number of the narrator’s direct statements about the
place of law in Russia. Russian Cryptomatrimony opens with the general assertion that
the Russian cannot help circumventing the law on various occasions: “Наше положение
185
The latter essentially repeats the plot of Chernyshevsky’s novel and Tolstoy’s play The Living Corpse.
186
Leskov metaphorically calls this “to sew without knots,” meaning that the work is done but no “seam”
(or trace) is left.
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таково, что мы как бы не можем обходиться, не обходя закона” (Leskov, SS vol. 6,
578).
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The state of affairs that causes this national peculiarity is the result of two things:
first, the notorious strictness and rigidity of Russian laws (the “harsh austerity of the rigid
law,” “our law is very fierce”) that conflict with the weakness of human nature; and
second, the fact that illegal practices have become universal currency (“all-Russian
trickery and shamelessness”).
However, not all priests marry people illegally out of greed; sometimes they do so
out of pity and compassion, and in this case the author is completely on their side. He
uses the traditional opposition of law vs. grace made famous by Metropolitan Hilarion as
justification for this practice:
Роковые случаи, представляющиеся на практике при венчании пар,
которые не могут быть повенчаны с разрешения начальства, почти все
совершенно не возмутительны, а некоторые из них так трогательны,
что надо иметь мертвое, “почившее на законе” сердце, чтобы не оценить
благодати, движущей сердцами живыми, которые ласково усыпляют
закон, вместо того чтобы самим азартно уснуть на нем. (Leskov, SS vol. 6,
611)
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Besides the high Christian virtues of mercy and kindness, a few more factors speak in
defense of such priests: first, the fact that a humble parish priest knows more about the
lives of his parishioners than laws and lawyers, and also cares more about them, e.g.
“Father Alexei knew more than any lawyer: as a confessor he knew sins of the parents”
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“Our position is such that we seem not to be able to manage without circumventing the law” (my
translation).
188
“Actual cases of marrying couples that cannot be legally wedded are almost never scandalous. On the
contrary, some of them are so touching that only those with a dead heart, fallen asleep on the law, will not
appreciate the grace that drives living hearts which gently lull the law to sleep instead of themselves falling
asleep on it” (my translation).
170
(Leskov, SS vol. 6, 592; my translation). This example resonates with Leskov’s practical
worldview expressed in the oppositions “concrete, real vs. abstract” and “small steps vs.
big heroic deeds.”
189
Second, in view of the corruption of the institution of marriage,
aggravated by the strong nihilistic tendencies in mid-century society, “seamless”
marriage corresponds perfectly to the demands of the time. As the narrator-priest says,
“И хотя я их методы без узлов шить в принципе и не одобряю, но знаю, что и это
иным впрок пошло” (Leskov, SS vol. 6, 612).
190
Using the narrator as his mouthpiece, the author leads the reader to the conclusion
that making secret marriages is a historic phenomenon and is to be judged as such,
objectively and sympathetically. Sometimes, priests who marry illegally are “useful and
necessary” in society because in their small domain they humanize the law and adjust it
to people’s real needs:
А поведите-ка все это через настоящие власти – какая бы кутерьма
поднялась, а путного ничего бы не вышло: потому что закон и высокое
начальство, стоя превыше людских слабостей, к глупости
человеческой снисхождения не могут оказывать, а мы, малые люди,
можем, да и должны. (Leskov, SS vol. 6, 622)
191
This statement can be extrapolated to Leskov’s views on law in general.
189
This “basic antitheoreticism, a cult of practicality, which remained with him all his life” might be read
as Leskov’s response to his educational inferiority (McLean 65).
190
“And although, as a principle, I do not approve of their methods to sew without knots, I know that it can
do good for some people” (my translation).
191
“However if one tried to do this through the proper authorities, it would cause such a great mess that
nothing worthwhile would happen, because the law and high authorities, being above human weakness,
cannot show any indulgence to human nonsense, while we, little people, can and must” (my translation).
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Part III. The “Righteous Trickster” in Leskov’s Hierarchy of Trickster-heroes
Leskov explores the fruitful topic of illegal marriages in his other work, Melochi
arkhiereiskoi zhizni (Trifles from the Life of Archbishops, 1878).
192
Let us conclude the
present analysis of Leskov’s “legal” writing with the examination of one episode from
Chapter XII, which is the crowning achievement of the writer’s stories about tricksters.
Most critics agree that one of Leskov’s main literary accomplishments is the creation of a
“positive hero,” which is such a rarity in classical Russian literature (Gebel’, Gorelov).
As was demonstrated previously through the example of the Pygmy, sometimes Leskov’s
unorthodox righteous men appear to be very close to tricksters – by their function in a
text, modus operandi and the circumstances under which they act. Chapter XII of Trifles
from the Life of Archbishops gives an excellent example of such a “righteous trickster,”
whose trick is so brilliant and so special that it can only be called a trick figuratively.
The book recounts the everyday life and activities of Russian Church hierarchs and
mostly presents sharp criticism of them, but the chapter in question is designed as an
apologia of Polikarp Radkevich, Archbishop of Orel in 1858-1867. It thus constitutes a
contrast to the main narrative and reads like a positive exception to the negative rule, as
most of the archbishops are described as ignorant, vain or petty. The chapter starts with a
reference to the discussion of reforming marriage legislation, in particular of divorce, at
the Holy Synod in 1878, started by the then Chief Procurator, count Dmitrii Tolstoy.
193
192
Leskov republished the stories from Russian Cryptomatrimony as an appendix to the second edition of
this book (1880).
193
Before 1918, all questions of marriage and divorce between Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire
were under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastic court. The only reasons that gave one a right to divorce were:
proven adultery; bigamy; a disease preventing marital relationships; when one of the spouses is missing for
172
The proposition failed because of resistance by conservative members of the Synod,
which provoked much debate in the press and in society, as well as a growing
dissatisfaction with the official Church.
After briefly discussing the imperfections of marriage and divorce legislation and
the social ills they cause, including murder as sometimes the only way to end an
unwanted marriage,
194
the author proceeds to narrate the true story of the Tin’kovs, a
wealthy gentry family of Orel province. Although Tin’kov and his wife were first cousins
and could not therefore legally marry, a local priest who knew both as good people
wedded them. In spite of the illegal status of their marriage the couple lived happily
bringing up children: “Несмотря на их непозволительный по степени родства брак,
они были обвенчаны и жили так благополучно, как будто на союз их самым
законным образом низошло самое полнейшее божеское благословение” (Leskov, SS
vol. 6, 484).
195
Here, in a way similar to the story of Luka and Polen’ka but in a more
articulated manner, Leskov contrasts human with divine law.
However, it turns out that the happiness of the Tin’kovs rested on a rather flimsy
foundation. One day a local sexton, a poor drunkard who constantly badgered Tin’kov
a long time (more than five years); a conviction of a grave crime, including exile and deprivation of rights;
and if one of the spouses takes the veil. Besides, the special permission of the Holy Synod was required,
not to mention serious financial expenses. Moreover, when divorce was granted the guilty party was not
allowed to remarry by law (Beliakova). All these factors made divorce only possible for the higher social
stratum. In 1870, Chief Procurator Tolstoy established a special committee for reforming the ecclesiastic
court in accordance with the judicial reform of 1864. Irreconcilable disagreements among the committee
members doomed it to fail. Leskov had a strong personal interest in this matter, as his marriage with Olga
Smirnova was a catastrophe; they separated about ten years after getting married but formally remained
married until Leskov’s death in 1893 (McLean).
194
Leskov mentions the murder of doctor Koval’chukov in Kharkov in 1877, as an example.
195
“Even though marriage between close relatives is not allowed by law, they got married and lived as
happily as if their union had legitimately received the fullest divine blessing” (my translation).
173
about hay, grain and the like, after getting a refusal, denounces their unlawful marriage to
the consistory. This sets the bureaucratic machine in motion, and soon afterward the
marriage is annulled and their children are officially adjudged illegitimate. In a usual
pattern, the “ex-husband” goes to Petersburg and starts petitioning, hoping to restore the
status quo, but without any success. The official recommended to him by the well-
meaning archbishop Polikarp demands an enormous bribe, up to a half of their whole
estate, and all this for not even resolving their problem, which is impossible by law, but
for just suspending the case sine die (polozhit’ pod sukno), or in practice until a new
complaint is filed.
The whole situation, complete with petitioning and attempted bribery, once again
gives Leskov an opportunity to compare the old and the new state of the laws:
Дело это происходило лет двадцать пять – двадцать шесть тому назад, и
учреждение, от которого оно зависело, было не в нынешнем составе; но,
однако, уже и тогда в нем появлялись новые отважные люди,
заменившие старинных подьячих, бравших “помельче да почаще”.
Преосвященный Поликарп, конечно, и не знал этого нового типа
облагороженных взяточников, перед которыми прежние “хапунцы аки
бы кроткие агнцы”. Притом же делец стоял на почве законности и, стало
быть, мог никого не бояться. (Leskov, SS vol. 6, 485)
196
This quotation offers a view of the judicial reform similar to that in “The Old Genius”
and The Spendthrift, examined earlier in this chapter. If previously, before the reform,
bribery was universal but moderate and more humane, later on, it became the lot of the
196
“This happened about twenty-five or twenty-six years ago, and the institution on which it depended was
not the same as now. However, already back then a new kind of bold people had appeared, who eventually
replaced the old scribes who took ‘smaller bribes but more often.’ Of course, His Eminence Polikarp did
not know about this new type of refined bribe-takers compared to whom the former ones seemed ‘like
meek lambs.’ Besides, the official stood on the ground of law and order and could, therefore, fear of no
one” (my translation).
174
chosen few, who brilliantly managed to make illicit fortunes while remaining within the
boundaries of admittedly stricter laws.
After hesitating between an unwillingness to pay that much and a desire to have the
status quo restored, Tin’kov orders his wife, who is still in the province, to sell part of
their property. The desperate woman goes to the church, where archbishop Polikarp sees
her, and he decides to help. He invites her to his chamber and gives her a piece of advice
that eventually saves the couple. The situation is complicated by the fact that as one who
is highly placed in the church hierarchy he cannot directly say what he thinks; this is why
Polikarp shapes their conversation in a form of the Socratic dialogue. This dialogue
constitutes the core of the story and its moral. Step by step, through the understanding of
the fact that as long as the absolute impediment, namely the close kinship between the
spouses, exists their marriage can never be lawful and they cannot possibly pay everyone
who tries to take advantage of knowing this secret, the archbishop leads the woman to the
realization that the formal annulment of the marriage does not actually change anything
in her familial relationship. The “magic” word he pronounces in response to her concern
about the public denunciation is ne doveriaite (“do not trust”) – regardless of what the
documents, officials and other people say.
Once again, instead of circumventing or criticizing the extant laws, Leskov’s
“righteous trickster” personally “reforms” the legislation by adjusting it to real people’s
needs, to the concrete situation. Initially, Tin’kova understood the situation as the
following: before the sexton’s information, her marriage was legal and she was happy,
and now, after it was annulled, she is unhappy. The archbishop offers her a very simple,
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if hard to understand, solution: since in the eyes of law her marriage never existed, it was
not the legal status that made her happy or unhappy. Consequently, the family could live
happily again as they lived before. If in the story about Luka and Polen’ka their marriage
could gain legal status, which was accomplished, here it was impossible and thus the best
solution was to abandon the pursuit of a chimera and to focus on what really matters. In
essence, the author’s idea is that the initial situation was justified by a law superior to the
state’s law, and therefore it needs no correction.
This moral aligns the Tin’kovs’ story with the short story, “Nekreshchenyi pop”
(“The Unbaptized Priest,” 1877).
197
In this text, a Ukrainian village priest, Father Savva,
is denounced to the Ecclesiastic Court as one who has never been properly baptized. This
is indeed the case, as due to ill fate the proper rite of baptism was never performed, and
the one responsible for this negligence did not tell anybody about this until her death.
Once again, the main conflict in Leskov’s work is between empty form and true content,
which is “heretical” in relation to the form: the protagonist of the story is a Christian in
the highest sense of the word, yet formally he does not even belong to the church. Upon
discovery of this fact, Father Savva can no longer perform his duties as a priest, to the
great chagrin of his peasant parishioners, who love and respect him.
The official decision about this scandalous case is to be made by the local
archbishop, who, like Archbishop Polikarp in the Tin’kov’s story, is a kind and wise man.
However, he must maintain his obligations as a member of the church hierarchy. In spite
of the protests of the priest who denounced father Savva, the archbishop decides not to
197
The text is based on a true story, also mentioned by the author in “Eparkhial’nyi sud” (“Diocesan
Justice,” 1880).
176
act on the information. Resourcefully and wittily, he justifies his decision in a way
characteristic of the British judicial system, namely by appealing to precedents which he
finds in the Scriptures.
198
“The Unbaptized Priest” makes curious use of the literary motif of meeting a
powerful person in humble disguise, considered in the previous chapter. Similar to Masha
Mironova in The Captain’s Daughter, Father Savva’s parishioners, who go to the
archbishop in order to petition for their priest, tell their story to a stranger whom they
accidentally meet near the monastery. Predictably, he turns out to be the archbishop
himself, even though the peasants never realize this, or maybe refuse to realize, believing
the person to be none other than Saint Savva, the heavenly patron of the unbaptized
priest. As in Pushkin’s novel, this meeting allows the “judge” to understand the problem
he has to judge, so to speak, “from the inside.” Moreover, although the concealed identity
of a powerful person lowers his or her actual social status on a surface level, it can also
suggest, as demonstrated explicitly in “The Unbaptized Priest,” a much higher position.
Thus, Leskov’s treatment of the motif illustrates – quite literally – how an act of mercy
makes one similar to a saint or God.
Both stories, that of the Tin’kovs’ marriage and of Father Savva’s baptism,
illustrate Leskov’s concern for the danger of overzealous fidelity to the letter of the law.
The writer believes that what is morally just, even if it contradicts official regulations,
needs not be altered in order to conform to the law. In other words, one should respect the
198
This kind of mercy shown by a judging magistrate
reminds us of Kollmann’s argument regarding
instances of adjustment of overly severe laws analyzed in her article “The Quality of Mercy in Early
Modern Legal Practice.” See footnote 3.
177
spirit, not the letter of the law and whenever a discrepancy between the two occurs, one
should neglect the latter in favor of the former.
The above analysis of Leskov’s “legal” writing brings us to the following
conclusions about the place of law, justice and mercy in the author’s worldview. The
three concepts received an original treatment in the writer’s creative work that, in most
general terms, can be seen as organized around the opposition between the dead abstract
rule and vital reality, which is always more complex than ready-made ideological
schemes admit. The written word often represents the first member of the opposition, the
dead rule, thus adding to it a new, artistic, dimension. In regard to this, Leskov’s
signature skaz and orientation towards folklore become his weapon against the
dictatorship of the written word. In contrast to the classical national tradition, in Leskov’s
texts the second member of the opposition usually triumphs, and justice – not abstract
justice of global significance but what is right in each concrete case – is attained.
In order to secure this happy ending, the writer often employs a trickster-hero
whose “mission” lies in circumvention of the rigidity of laws, rules, interdictions and
convictions by means of personal wit and resourcefulness. Among his tricksters, Leskov
establishes a certain hierarchy in which the skillful manipulation of words occupies a
high position. Usually, this does not require any linguistic mastery, as the word of law is
in principle unchangeable, but rather practical manipulation of the objectified written
word. However, transcending the word of the law and public opinion, not verbal
dexterity, is found at the very top of the hierarchy, as demonstrated in the figure of His
Eminence Polikarp. In Leskov’s view, laws and regulations inevitably fail in Russia
178
because they are too strict and abstract; this however does not mean they should be
abolished. Instead, they should be humanized and adjusted to each concrete situation. The
writer’s practical ethics finds its realization in the strategy of “small steps.”
The Great Reforms of Alexander II, in particular, the judicial reforms and attempted
reforms in the ecclesiastic court, occupy an important place in Leskov’s “legal” writing.
One of the constitutive oppositions to his poetic world, “the past vs. the present,”
contrasts the pre-reform to the post-reform epoch. It is truly remarkable, however, that
Leskov, who was active for thirty plus years after the introduction of the judicial reforms,
did not create a detailed picture of the new court with its rule of law, jury trials and the
Bar, as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky did. Rather, the writer’s depictions concern themselves
with the dark Nicholaevan regime because it gives him an opportunity to demonstrate the
significance of personal initiative and to show how much a “little man” can do when he
really wants to help his neighbor. For Leskov, the distortion of good order is an
indispensable precondition for movement and growth: “[a]n exception or distortion
initiate change by indicating the weakness of the original position, thereby subverting to a
certain degree the old rule” (Sperrle 42-43).
Between the options that the pre-reform and the post-reform judicial systems offer
him, Leskov constantly chooses the former as most suitable for his literary goals. The
new court might have afforded the writer an opportunity to focus on the very process of
trial and litigation, which was suddenly made public, yet instead he fixed his attention on
what happens after the verdict. The post-reform legal system would have allowed him to
examine the very specific and artistically promising verbal performance of professional
179
lawyers, but he remained primarily interested in small deeds, concrete and definite, and in
the objectified written word of pre-reform legal documents. Finally, the newly introduced
institution of the jury, cooperative and consultative, might have been held up as a unique
example of the emerging public sphere in Russia. However, Leskov preferred to present
justice as attainable by the work of a single compassionate person – a trickster. Instead of
creating a large picture of contemporary reality, the writer chose to focus on particular,
exceptional and concrete deeds of an insignificant individual who appears to be able to
work “miracles” with the help of his resourcefulness and Christian love.
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Chapter Three
Mikhalkov vs. Lumet:
Russian Mercy against Western Law
A Russian person can’t live according to the
law.
Nikita Mikhalkov (Juror #9), Twelve
In 2007, exactly fifty years after the release of Sidney Lumet’s legal classic, Twelve
Angry Men, Nikita Mikhalkov presented a remake entitled Dvenadtsat’ (Twelve).
Although, according to the director, it was only “twelve percent remake” (Grinkrug, “7
voprosov”), its connection with and indebtedness to Lumet’s work is “beyond reasonable
doubt.”
199
However, considerable changes were made to the original plot and the
characters, most noticeably by adapting them to contemporary Russian reality. Through
adopting the plot, the characters and the development of the arguments in the legal
discussion, Mikhalkov manifestly undermines the main idea of Lumet’s film with the aim
of proving that the democratic values of law, civic-mindedness and collegial decision-
making that work in the Western societies do not – and perhaps never will – work in
Russia.
Indeed, the original American story of the jury deciding a young man’s fate could
not have been transformed more radically in order to become a demonstration of the
“unique Russian path.” It is revealing that both films were nominated for an Academy
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At a press conference, the director said, “This is only twelve percent a remake. Sidney Lumet’s great
picture served as an impulse for us, rather than an attempt to retell it anew. The impulse was the desire to
see twelve people, a slice of our society, deciding about the fate of a complete stranger” (my translation).
181
Award: Twelve Angry Men as best film, i.e. something quintessentially American, and
Twelve as best foreign film, i.e. something quintessentially non-American but treated in
terms comprehensible to the American audience. Arguably, this is at the heart of the
major difference between the two works. In his Twelve, Mikhalkov “produced a remake,
i.e. a form of mimesis, only narratively, but created a nemesis (‘a formidable rival or
opponent’), politically and ideologically” (Smorodinska 164).
Mikhalkov’s ambition to portray the Russian mentality and to outline a political
schema for the country’s future development in Twelve makes the choice of Lumet’s film
– which is quintessentially American in the values it “airs” and far removed from the
Russian reality of the 2000s – rather surprising. On the other hand, the fascinating
interplay between, or rather subversion of the American ideas of law, justice and mercy
through the lens of traditional Russian legal nihilism and patrimonial justice makes
Twelve a perfect object of analysis for this dissertation, even though the artistic quality of
the film is questionable. Moreover, as the director perceives himself as an heir – albeit
cinematic – to the great “mentoring” tradition of classical Russian literature that
culminated in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (Paramonov), it is natural to complete this
dissertation with Twelve. The analysis of Mikhalkov’s ideas about law and justice in
Russia expressed through an appropriation and reworking of Lumet’s cinematic story, as
well as their correlation with the invariants of national justice identified in the previous
two chapters, constitute the goal of this last chapter. As this dissertation considers the
Russian idea of the “legal triad” as a cultural phenomenon, both Twelve and Twelve
Angry Men are examined as
texts, without going into formal cinematic analysis.
182
Mikhalkov is undoubtedly one of the best-known Russian directors, inside the
country as well as internationally, – renowned, repeatedly awarded, prolific, established
and influential. He also runs his own production company, TriTe, with a publishing arm
called “Russian Archive.” Apart from his creative activities, Mikhalkov has occupied and
continues to occupy several important positions in Russian cultural politics, such as
government advisor on cultural issues, chairman of the Filmmakers’ Union and
subsequently – ex officio president of the Moscow International Film Festival. He is also
actively involved with the UNESCO Commission for Culture and the Russian Culture
Foundation. It would seem, however, that his ambition goes far beyond just filmmaking
and participation in Russia’s cultural politics. Indeed, his later oeuvre can be seen to be
highly ideologically-driven; a fact which – in tandem with his overtly pro-Putin political
views – has turned a large section of the Russian audience as well as intellectuals against
him.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhalkov has been involved with a variety
of parties and political organizations; he even openly considered standing for the
presidential elections in 1995 and 2000. Birgit Beumers – the author of a number of
academic studies on Mikhalkov – defines his political views as enlightened conservatism
(same in Condee 86) and observes that his political alliances have been made for personal
and financial, rather than ideological reasons (8, 9). The scholar comes to a conclusion
that the director “seeks the public arena and likes to cast himself in roles of power,
although the positions he achieves do not always hold the power they seem to promise…
Whenever Mikhalkov has sought positions of real power, he has failed” (Beumers 6).
183
Therefore, in spite of active public life and the considerable accumulation of power in the
cultural sphere, Mikhalkov’s ability to influence large sections of Russian society is
limited mainly to his artistic work.
Thus, the main theme of his films of the 1990s and 2000s, Burnt by the Sun (1994),
The Barber of Siberia (1998), Twelve (2007) and the two-part sequel Burnt by the Sun 2
(2010, 2011), is, no more nor less, the destiny of Russia. The consistency of Mikhalkov’s
“Russian idea” expressed in these films, which appears strikingly similar to the
nineteenth-century Minister of Education Count Uvarov’s famous slogan, “Orthodoxy,
Autocracy, and Nationality,” along with some shared subthemes, artistic symbols and
tropes, encourages the examination of each of them as a part of a larger metanarrative.
The opposition of Russia and the West is naturally an important constituent of this
metanarrative, and in most of his works the author deliberately uses the achievements of
western cinematography (Karakhan). However, of all his films, only Twelve is a declared
remake of an original American plot.
In addition to his duties as director and a scriptwriter, Mikhalkov also plays lead
roles in his later films, even though in The Barber of Siberia the significance of his part –
Emperor Alexander III – is symbolic and autobiographical rather than narrative.
200
As a
matter of fact, all Mikhalkov’s roles, Alexander III, Colonel Kotov in Burnt by the Sun 1
and 2 and anonymous juror #2 in Twelve, appear to be easily recognizable variants of the
same invariant – that of Russia’s savior. This cinematic role is arguably a straightforward
200
In the promotional campaign for the film, Mikhalkov himself insisted on the connection between his
role as the beloved Tsar and his potential as a presidential candidate. “What is a President? It is a person
who is loved. <…> The task of a President is to create an atmosphere in the country, to direct the
atmosphere of the nation” (cited in Beumers 12).
184
metaphor for the director’s artistic mission in society as Mikhalkov sees it. In his speech
to the fourth Filmmakers’ Union plenary congress in 1998, Mikhalkov made his thoughts
about the social function of cinema very clear. He argued, in Beumer’s words,
for the need to instill hope in the cinema audience, and dwelt on the need to
create the myth of Russian national hero in order to regain the spirit of
patriotism that bonded the Soviet Union in the past, and that bonds the United
States in the present. He perceived the function of cinema as to perfect reality,
to create the perfect future by transforming the here and now. (10)
This myth of the national hero, which unites Soviet and American cinema in the
director’s mind, is of primary importance for the present analysis of Twelve.
The film must be treated as an integral part of a “Russian masterplot,” written and
adopted for the big screen by Mikhalkov, in which the author himself represents a hero
who can save Russia. This marks the first significant difference between Lumet’s
masterful adaptation of Reginald Rose’s play, Twelve Angry Men, and Mikhalkov’s
personal, artistic and political credo project, Twelve. In the former, the director’s role is
subordinate and instrumental, while in the latter it is autocratic and determinant.
Another major distinction follows from the first one: unlike Rose and Lumet’s
work, Mikhalkov’s film, apart from its strong legal and political message, also contains a
statement about art. The director’s presence not only “outside” his film (on the set), but
also “inside” it (in the frame) turns the familiar narrative of jury deliberations into
something different – the story of an artist. Legal, political and artistic meanings of
Twelve are inextricably linked, as well as the religious one manifested in the film’s title
implicitly referring to the twelve apostles, – and the figure of juror #2 is the key to all of
them.
185
In this late work the filmmaker’s logic is taken to its ultimate conclusion: the
state omniscient in ways available only to God and the FSB, is made flesh here
as artist-director, leading the very legal process that governs the viewer's civil
life. (Condee 94)
As Nancy Condee noted (93-94), Mikhalkov plays four roles “inside” his film: that of
juror #2 and the foreman of the jury, elected for his experience in legal proceedings (the
legal constituent of the plot); that of an amateur painter – this is how he introduces
himself to his fellow jurors (the artistic element); that of a retired officer, presumably not
an Army officer but one from State Security (the political meaning); and finally, that of
the savior – an omniscient sage (he knows all details of the case and speaks Chechen) as
well as an omnipotent God-like figure (the religious element).
201
To the four capacities listed by Condee one more can be added, implicitly present in
each of the others – that of a paternal figure. In both Twelve Angry Men and Twelve, the
opposition between father and son, the theme of patricide and the motif of the protagonist
“adopting” less mature characters and educating and governing them until they are ready
for independent living are crucial to the main idea. In Mikhalkov’s film, the motif of
“adoption” is literalized in the images of the Chechen boy’s two adoptive fathers: a
murdered officer whom he used to call “uncle Volodia” and juror #2, who wants to be
called “uncle Nikolai.”
202
In the Russian context, this emphasis on the importance of
kinship signifies traditional patrimonialism in the legal sphere. The tendency towards
literalization and the excessive clarification of the author’s ideas coexist in Twelve, given
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Arguably,
even the way Mikhalkov’s character looks in the film – especially his snow white long wavy
hair – suggest his likeness to God, especially in the icons of the Savior Made without Hands.
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For more information on the importance of the opposition “familial vs. official” in the context of
Russian legal thought, see Zaslavsky’s article on The Captain’s Daughter.
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their rather abstract nature. Remarkably, Lumet’s symbolic father figure, juror #8, is
actually the father of three, while Mikhalkov is silent about juror #2’s children.
Returning to Mikhalkov’s roles inside his film, the likening of the artist to God is a
literary topos rooted in Romantic philosophy. The transformation of a commanding
officer into the jury leader also seems natural and customary.
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However, creating a
hybrid character who is both an artist and a chekist
204
is quite unique. In Russia, where
one of the missions of intelligentsia has traditionally been to stay in opposition to the
state, such a merger of the two incompatible social roles seems strange and in bad taste,
yet this is exactly what Mikhalkov himself tries to accomplish. The combination of all
five roles – political, social, artistic, religious and familial – defines the director’s ideal of
the national hero. In contrast to Lumet’s film, whose principal character is collective,
Mikhalkov’s Twelve praises the individual.
Part I. Jury in Life and Cinema
Before proceeding to the comparative analysis of Twelve Angry Men and Twelve, a
few words must be said about the category of law-related cinema that both films
generically belong to. Most scholars agree that this unity cannot be defined by a single
genre based on the mere presence of lawyers or other references to the judicial system
and related issues. In his monograph The Celluloid Courtroom: A History of Legal
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It is so natural that it even gets subverted as an obvious cliché in Runaway Jury. John Cusack’s
manipulative character neutralizes the juror-officer’s claims to leadership by nominating a blind juror for
the foreman. Political correctness overpowers military pressure resulting in the caricature image of the
blind leading the not very well sighted.
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Chekist – originally, an officer of Cheka, the first Soviet state security organization, and subsequently –
unofficially – all following organizations of the same kind, e.g. KGB, where Putin himself served.
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Cinema, Ross D. Levi defines legal films as those “that intend to present some
commentary on… the criminal or civil legal system, or at least have the effect of leaving
a significant impression with the viewer about the efficacy of the adversarial legal
process or players within it” (xvii) and that use “the adjudicative process specifically to
try the justice system itself” (xx). At the same time, since the judicial system is an
inherent part of the government structure, legal cinema can use court material for dealing
with non-legal issues and for expressing political messages, as both Twelve Angry Men
and Twelve do to a different extent. Indeed, the former is about the jury system as the
quintessence of American democracy, while in the latter the jury system is important, not
in itself, but as an emblem of Western democracy – representing a possible future path
for political development in Russia.
It goes without saying that the tradition of legal cinema is different in various
countries, just as their judicial systems vary. A search on the Internet Movie Database
reveals over three hundred and fifty American, English-language films whose plots
feature lawyers, and about fifty that mention the jury in the plot summary (Levi xi-xii).
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These numbers increase dramatically if TV movies and series are included in the search,
especially detective and legal ones, such as Snapped or Law and Order. By way of
comparison, the same search by the words “jury” and “juror” gives only four Russian
films, three of which are adaptations of Tolstoy’s last novel, Resurrection, and the fourth
is Nikita Mikhalkov’s Twelve – the focus of this chapter. While these statistics are
preliminary and superficial – they do not even account for the most famous Russian jury
205
By expanding the search to non-American films, there are about seven hundred law-related films
(Greenfield, Osborn and Robson 41).
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trial in literature, that of Dmitry Karamazov in the last Dostoevsky’s novel, – they
nonetheless strongly suggest that American films attribute a much higher importance to
the jury than their Russian counterparts.
Indeed, as the cornerstone of American democracy and a part of every citizen’s life
– the compulsory participation in juries – the trial by one’s peers is a predictably popular
and important subject matter in American cinema from courtroom dramas to romantic
comedies. Most of them – no matter if they are apologias or critiques of the jury system –
equate the jury with society as a whole. This equation is obvious in Twelve Angry Men.
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The same idea of the jury representing society as a whole is seen in Twelve, but, in
Mikhalkov’s view, this does not help one to attain justice.
The situation is completely different in Russia, where the jury remains on the
margins of the legal system and social conscience.
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This marginality makes
Mikhalkov’s choice of the subject for his film surprising, since Twelve was undoubtedly
created as a film with a message to an all-Russian audience. Moreover, the two most
famous portrayals of jury in Russian culture – in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
206
In fact, the jury system is so essentially American that in one of its recent cinematic treatments, Gary
Fleder’s Runaway Jury (2003), the euphemism “being patriotic” is used for defining jury manipulations by
both the defense and prosecution.
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The institution of the jury does not exist in all regions of the Russian Federation. The number of jury
trials in the country remains small, at about six hundred per year, out of about one million trials (Barry).
Only the United States and Canada make routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases.
Other common law legal jurisdictions use jury trials only in a very select class of cases. For example, the
percent of jury trials in England and Wales is also small, less than ten percent (Greenfield, Osborn &
Robson 144), yet even this is overwhelmingly bigger than Russia’s 0,06%. Moreover, according to opinion
polls, only sixteen percent of Russian citizens are ready to fulfill their jury duty, while seventy-eight per
cent seek to avoid it, despite the fact that more than one third of the population has more trust in the jury
than in professional judges (“Verkhovnui sud ogranichil prisiazhnykh”).
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and Tolstoy’s Resurrection – treat it unambiguously negatively, while Mikhalkov
chooses to make an adaptation of an obvious apologia.
Actually, despite the jury being an inherent part of American judicial system and
present in the majority of the country’s legal films, there are only a handful of films that
focus on the task of the jurors. Although almost all law-related films feature at least one
aspect of the trial related to the jury – either the process of its selection (voir dire), or the
jurors’ deliberations, or the pronouncement of the verdict, – scholars of legal cinema
agree that the jury remains “missing in action” and has had “limited cinematic exposure”
(Greenfield, Osborn and Robson 144). There are a few reasons for this neglect of the
jury. First, there is very little information about what happens in the jury room as no
observer or recording device is allowed in there. Second, as Greenfield, Osborn and
Robson state, “the limited visual coverage of the jury and of their discussions stems from
the assumed fact that the ‘real’ jury is us, the audience” (154). Third, it can be explained
by filmmakers’ desire to preserve the “myth” of the jury, which is usually presented as
“an idealization of pure, fair decision making” and as “an enigma that almost magically
creates justice in the form of a verdict” (Levi 72). Finally, the jury might be deliberately
shown as virtually invisible in the cases when justice has not been done, like in the
opening and closing sequence of Presumed Innocent (1990) (Levi 69).
Among the few films where the narrative focuses on the jury, such as The Juror
(1996), We, the Jury (1997), and Runaway Jury (2003), Twelve Angry Men is
indisputably the most prominent and influential example. At the same time, “[i]ts shadow
has been long enough to inspire awe, but almost no other stories centering on jury
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deliberations other than a comedy ‘tribute’ have resulted” (Greenfield, Osborn and
Robson 152).
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In spite of its position in the canon of legal cinema, Lumet’s film is in
many ways “atypical of the portrayals of the jury in popular culture” (Greenfield, Osborn
and Robson 154). First of all, it represents the jury neither as idealized, impartial,
inhuman or superhuman, nor as a silent and passive entity – “an almost invisible
presence, giving the proceedings legitimacy but never having an identity unto itself”
(Levi 63). In the chapter of his book devoted specifically to the jury, Levi states that
in the drama of the legal cinema, the jury is the silent Greek chorus. Nowhere
is the conscience of the audience, and thus society as a whole, more
represented in film than in the jury… the people and their societal sense of
right and wrong are given voice in the cinematic trial through the jury. (61-
62)
209
Sometimes, this association of the jury with common values and beliefs allows
filmmakers to praise the law by people’s moral approval as well as to criticize it by their
disapproval.
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The latter happens in cases when law fails to satisfy the common sense of
justice, like, for instance, in A Time to Kill (1996), in which the defense attorney overtly
instructs the jurors to forget about the law and to judge according to their hearts. In the
American judicial system, a situation when a jury gives a verdict that clearly goes against
the letter of the law is known as “jury nullification.” As Harriet Murav demonstrates, in
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The mentioned comic “tribute” is Jury Duty (1995), although there exist many more references to
Lumet’s classic in both movies and television films, none of which, however, comes close to the original in
either ideological or artistic respect.
209
Not only does the cinematic jury represent the audience, but sometimes the audience is cast as the jury.
Consider, for example, its treatment in None Shall Escape (1944) (Greenfield, Osborn and Robson 146).
This happens, of course, in literature as well, for example, in Alexei Pisemsky’s tale “Vinovata li ona?” (“Is
She to Blame?” 1855), whose very title invites the reader to pass a verdict.
210
Both in the USA and Russia, although a judge can change a guilty verdict if it was not supported by the
evidence, he or she has no authority to override a verdict that favors a defendant.
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Russia, the jury’s function is frequently understood as counteracting the law and
neutralizing it, rather than punishing the criminal or the crime (84).
Sometimes, filmmakers put the camera directly in the jury box, thus emphasizing its
association with the audience. This association between the jury and the audience is more
difficult to make in Twelve Angry Men, as well as in Twelve, because the jurors are
diverse and not passive, i.e. they are not just spectators. With the Russian film, the fact
that the jury still remains a rare, unfamiliar phenomenon also widens the gap between the
jurors and the audience.
Another thing that is also extremely unusual about the portrayal of the jury in
Twelve Angry Men is that the action takes place almost exclusively in the jury room.
First, this lifts the veil of mystery from jury deliberations and, second, creates a serious
challenge for the filmmaker, who risks boring the audience. The latter challenge is an
important obstacle for all potential followers and “disciples” of Lumet. Mikhalkov’s
answer is to not limit his cinematic narrative to jury deliberations regarding the evidence
presented in court. However, his massive additions to the original story are also outside
the tradition of legal cinema. The stories told in turn by almost every juror in Twelve are
just vaguely related to the case, while pictures of wartime Chechnya go far beyond the
boundaries of the jury room. All this, together with the introduction of real-life figures
such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin into the film’s exposition, proves the
broader framework for the “legal triad.”
Was the choice of the jury plot on Mikhalkov’ part yet another attempt to apply
Western ideals to Russia and to demonstrate their inevitable failure? Or conversely, to
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show that they have a future and certain potential in Russian culture? It is noteworthy that
Twelve had a considerable success with the Russian audience and was widely discussed
by film critics and moviegoers. Uncovering the director’s reasons for such a choice and
examining its outcome constitute one of the goals of this chapter, but before proceeding
to a comparative analysis of Lumet’s and Mikhalkov’s films, a brief summary of the
history of the Russian jury system
211
in comparison with that of the United States is
necessary.
212
The jury system was first introduced to Russian society as a result of the judicial
reforms of the 1860s, i.e. about eighty years later than in the United States. At the same
time, something similar to the jury trial was already mentioned in the first Russian legal
code, Russkaia pravda, as early as in the ninth century (Il’iukhov 14). The possibility of
introducing the jury had already been considered by Catherine the Great, and later, in the
1800s by Mikhail Speransky. The Decembrists also included the jury in their project for a
Russian Constitution. Finally, Alexander II’s reforms marked Russia’s transition from the
old system of estate-based justice to a European-type state based on the rule of law, i.e.
with, at least de jure, the equality of all subjects before the law and the limited authority
of the monarch. The jury court was understood by the authors of the judicial reforms as
the “palladium of the personal liberty and political independence of the people”
(Foinitskii cited in Baberowski 349). In general terms, the reforms were expected to
“make universal the legal consciousness of the enlightened officials,” to overcome the
211
The following account of the historical development of the Russian jury system is mostly based on
Alexei Il’iukhov’s monograph Sud prisiazhnykh v Rossii (2009).
212
American jury legislation, which may differ in various states, is presented in its most common, universal
form.
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“heterogeneity of the empire” and to “turn peasants into citizens” (Baberowski 347, 349).
These desired functions of the reforms appear consistent with Mikhalkov’s “enlightened
conservatism,” propagating strong, centralized government and patriotic pathos.
After some fifty years, on November 22, 1917, the institution of the jury was
abolished by the Council of People’s Commissars’ Decree 1 on the court. In the Soviet
era, from 1937 to 1989, its function was to a certain extent transferred to “people’s
assessors,” who had a passive role in court. The jury system was reintroduced in Russia
in July 1993 – in the course of a new wave of big reforms, which were similar in many
respects to those of the 1860s. By a resolution of the Supreme Court, it was decided that
jury trial be introduced to the Russian Federation gradually, beginning with its
establishment in five regions of the state and still continuing (Il’iukhov 36).
In the United States, every person accused of a crime punishable by incarceration
for more than six months has the constitutional right to a trial by jury. In Russia, the list
of the crimes treated by jury is significantly more limited, and there is a noticeable
tendency towards limiting it even more by the withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the
jury all cases of rape, kidnapping and banditry (“Verkhovnyi sud ogranichil
prisiazhnykh”). Nevertheless, the Constitution of Russia guarantees that all defendants in
a case that may result in lifetime imprisonment are entitled to a jury trial. In cases
specified by the law, a defendant needs to apply for a jury trial, or otherwise, the case will
be considered by a judge. This discrepancy between Russian and American law
concerning the jury highlights a significant difference between the initial situation in
Lumet’s and Mikhalkov’s films. If Lumet’s defendant is subject to a jury trial by law, in
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Mikhalkov’s case, it is presumed to be his or his lawyer’s conscious choice, thus showing
faith in the jury system, belief that a jury will be less likely to show racial antagonism
towards a Chechen.
Moreover, in the United States, the jury must reach a unanimous verdict in criminal
cases, and the jurors’ inability to do so will result in a hung jury and possibly a
subsequent retrial. In Russia, the jurors are supposed to return a unanimous verdict during
the first three hours of deliberations, but if this does not happen, a simple majority will be
enough for making a legitimate decision and only six votes – for an acquittal; the notion
of a “hung jury” is thus absent from Russian jury legislation (Il’iukhov 184). This
specificity of the Russian jury law is potentially damaging for the dramatic conflict,
symbolism and the main idea of Twelve: if the jury decision has only to be unanimous
within the first three hours of deliberations, the whole case turns into a matter of patience.
Mikhalkov does not explain this aspect of the Russian jury legislation, leaving the
audience – generally more familiar with the American jury system through Hollywood
films – to suppose that Russian jurors are also required to turn in a unanimous verdict.
This deliberate withholding of information serves to preserve the dramatic effect and the
sense of unity among the jurors at given moments during Twelve. Also, it confirms that
the national legal system is not Mikhalkov’s main subject matter.
Another legal nuance that sets the two films apart is the mandatory death penalty
for a first-degree murder in 1950s New York. Normally, the jury does not assign a
punishment, leaving this to a judge. Although jurors may request leniency in sentencing,
its prime responsibility is fact-finding, i.e. to establish the defendant’s guilt beyond a
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reasonable doubt based on the facts and arguments presented in court. However, in
Twelve Angry Men, the jurors are aware that in the case of a guilty verdict the punishment
for the defendant will be the electric chair. This responsibility for a man’s life prompts
Fonda’s character to stand alone against the other jurors and to initiate deliberation. In
Twelve, the jury and the audience are informed that if the defendant is found guilty, his
sentence will be life imprisonment, which was the heaviest possible punishment in 2000s
Russia and in this sense is akin to the death penalty in the original play.
The Russian director also changes the initial reason why juror #1 (Sergei
Makovetsky) votes “not guilty” in the beginning of the film and thus initiates discussion
among the jurors. Unlike his American prototype, this character opposes the others, but
instead of giving a reason he merely promises to join the majority if in the second ballot
everybody votes “guilty.” This is an example of “washing one’s hands,” i.e. participating
in a communal wrong while rejecting moral responsibility for it. Therefore, the similarity
between Fonda’s and Makovetsky’s characters is largely superficial. The latter is not the
author’s moral ideal but rather belongs to the traditional character-type of an intelligent –
weak, self-doubting, incapable of any positive action, and self-destructive through
endless self-reflection.
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This character-type, despised by Mikhalkov, as well as by many other Russian
authors and readers, appears to be the antipode of his favorite character-type of a strong,
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Even when, at some point, he resolves to commit suicide, an episode he recounts to the fellow jurors,
juror #1 chooses to leave its execution to other people: he tries to provoke them to killing him or beating
him to death. This character-type was also portrayed in the director’s earlier films, such as Unfinished
Piece for the Player Piano (1977) and A Few Days from the Life of I.I. Oblomov (1980), which are loose
adaptations of classical literary texts by Anton Chekhov and Ivan Goncharov, respectively.
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authoritarian – often military – man of action. Apparently, the director introduces the
type of an intelligent into the American original script, where it is absent, as a counter
example and a specifically Russian type. Besides the listed features, Mikhalkov imbues
him with other national traits, such as drunkenness and self-pity and the masochistic
enjoyment of sufferings combined with suicidal tendencies; all this is evident in juror
#1’s first long speech about his life story, recounted with the aim of convincing the other
jurors to change their original negative votes and to give the defendant one more chance,
as he himself was once given. Thus, the director creates a character bordering on
caricature, yet still somewhat sympathetic in his cartoonish kindness, empathy and
vulnerability. Other characters, meant to present Russian society in its wholeness, are
equally cartoonish; some of them are even recognizable parodies of Russian TV-
producers and politicians (Karakhan).
To return to the question of the jury legislation underlying both films, it is
noteworthy that, like Mikhalkov, Lumet also disregards it at times with the aim of
enhancing the dramatic effects of the plot. Admittedly, there are a few legal flaws in the
original play as well as in Lumet’s picture. First, the circumstances of the case presented
in the text would not be enough for a first-degree murder charge. Second, as Readings on
“Twelve Angry Men” state, by law, jurors are not allowed to conduct their own
investigation and bring to the court any clues they found during such investigation. This
means that the discovery of a knife identical to the murder weapon by Fonda’s character
and subsequent spectacular manipulations with it by jurors #3 and 5 could not happen in
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real life, at least, not legally.
214
This also concerns Twelve. Finally, the statistical data
shows that never in the history of the American jury system have deliberations beginning
with one vote against eleven undergone a complete reversal (Readings on “Twelve Angry
Men” 136-137).
215
There is safety in numbers for “people want to identify with and be
part of the majority” (Readings on “Twelve Angry Men” 136). These deviations from the
actual law, in both American and Russian films, serve to increase the dramatic tension of
the plot and contribute to the accused’s eventual acquittal. However, the abundance of
such deviations in Twelve makes the film too abstract and “loose,” in contrast to a much
“tighter” Twelve Angry Men, and it loses verisimilitude.
Part II. Twelve Angry Men vs. Twelve
The history of Twelve Angry Men began in 1954, when the New York playwright
Reginald Rose wrote a short television drama for Studio One, after himself serving as a
juror on a murder case and discovering the great social potential and theatrical
possibilities of the topic (Readings on “Twelve Angry Men” 37). Following the
performance, which was a hit, actor Henry Fonda approached Rose about turning it into a
full-length feature movie. Thus, the two men became the producers of the 1957 film –
Fonda also famously played the main role – and invited Sidney Lumet to be its director.
This was Lumet’s first feature film after a few films made for television. The genesis of
Twelve Angry Men is more than merely a set of facts: just like the verdict in Rose’s play,
214
Otherwise the jury would be dismissed.
215
Recent American researches (e.g. Anwar, Bayer, and Hjalmarsson), however, refute this statement: one
person appears to be able to change the outcome of a case if this person is an African American.
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it is a product of collaboration among, primarily but not exclusively, Rose, Fonda and
Lumet. To the contrary, Mikhalkov’s film, although involving a big crew, is much more
of an authorial, personal project, a part of the author’s bigger idea.
Mikhalkov’s choice of story for his “credo” film was indubitably well thought out
and based on personal preference. As he stated in an interview, “I think at that time it just
got under my skin and was sitting there, accumulating all these years” (Olsen). Indeed,
his interest in Rose’s play about a jury’s deliberations arose long before 2007, while he
was still a student studying acting at the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute. This is what
“that time” refers to. Back then, he staged Twelve Angry Men as a diploma work with
fellow student Nikolai Burliaev in the main role. The production was somewhat
“underground,” as by the time of its release Mikhalkov had already been expelled from
the institute for missing classes because of his frequent engagements as a film actor
(Razzakov).
After being expelled, Mikhalkov enrolled in the All-Union State Institute of
Cinematography to become a director, like his older half-brother Andrei Konchalovsky.
Thus, Rose’s play – certainly, not the most obvious choice in theatrical repertoire –
appears to be an important element in Mikhalkov’s artistic biography: it marks
Mikhalkov’s transition from theater to cinema and from acting to directing. It also
“frames” his artistic evolution: from an apprentice’s faithful following of the original in
its theatrical adaptation to a substantial revision and reworking of it in the later work.
Moreover, it is not only Rose’s play that becomes an object of revision in the 2007 film,
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but also its canonic cinematic adaptation by Lumet as well as, perhaps most importantly,
the artistic vision, mastery and ideas of the young Mikhalkov himself.
Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men famously takes place almost exclusively in a small jury
room of a New York court. Twelve citizens are summoned on jury duty and must decide
the fate of a poor eighteen-year-old Latino boy accused of murdering his father. These
anonymous men are meant to represent American society. Nowadays this seems highly
problematic as the jury is entirely white male, but admittedly this was the common case
in the 1950s. Surprisingly for a legal film with strong detective overtones, Twelve Angry
Men leaves the characters and the audience in the dark about whether the defendant
committed the murder he is accused of or not. Indeed, discovering the truth is not the
center of the story. Instead, it focuses on the notion of reasonable doubt, which underlies
the jury’s work and guarantees the objectivity and impartiality of the law. Through
logical examination of all details of the case, such as facts, testimonies and clues, as well
as through a process of rationalization whereby the jurors admit their own biases and
prejudices, they come to the unanimous decision that the boy’s guilt was not proved
beyond reasonable doubt.
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Despite the prominent role of the angel-like juror #8 played by Henry Fonda, who
leads the other jurors to this verdict, the ultimate idea of the film is not quite the typical
American celebration of individual. It could have been so, if the brilliant juror had
manipulated his fellow jurors by threatening or coercing them or by using more humane
216
As the question of actual guilt or innocence of the defendant remains beyond the scope of the play and
the film, so does the question of justice. Twelve Angry Men, therefore, is a story about law and its social
functions.
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strategies as does Joanne Whalley’s heroine in Trial by Jury (1994), Demi Moore’s in
The Juror (1996) or John Cusack’s character in Runaway Jury (2003).
217
Instead, the
spirit of collectivism and collegial decision-making constitutes the main idea of Twelve
Angry Men, whose plot coincides strikingly with the masterplot of the Socialist Realist
novel as defined by Katerina Clark, namely an individual’s progress from “spontaneity”
to “consciousness” and transformation of anarchic, uncoordinated people’s masses into
disciplined, organized and civic-minded collective. Rose and Lumet make sure that every
single juror, and not only the charismatic leader, contributes to the final triumph of law
and democracy.
In 1997, forty years after Lumet’s film and ten years prior to Mikhalkov’s, the cable
channel Showtime remade Twelve Angry Men – directed by William Friedkin and starring
Jack Lemmon.
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In this version, the script remained essentially unchanged, although
Rose updated cultural references and made the jury racially mixed, so that black juror
#10 (played by Mykelti Williamson) is a racist character. The possibility of introducing a
woman into the jury was discussed, but as this would have demanded significant changes,
the filmmakers eventually abandoned the idea, thus preserving the original title (Readings
on “Twelve Angry Men” 127). Nevertheless, one woman was added to the cast – the
judge in the opening sequence. Remarkably, Mikhalkov also cast a woman for this role,
although in Twelve, she is not the only female character. The female witness who claimed
217
All three characters are loners and shape the jury’s decision for overtly personal reasons. In sharp
contrast to them, Fonda’s character, although kinder and more thoughtful and responsible than his fellow
jurors, is just a part of the society, and the authors believe that any American jury would have at least one
person like him.
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Rose rewrote Twelve Angry Men for theater, and since 1964, it has also existed on stage.
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to have seen the murder from the window of her bedroom, although never shown in
Lumet’s film, appears on screen and receives more elaborate treatment in Mikhalkov’s
picture.
The main reason for remaking Lumet’s film, according to Friedkin, was the O.J.
Simpson murder trial in 1995 (Readings on “Twelve Angry Men” 126). It is not an
exaggeration to say that this trial, the most publicized criminal trial in American history,
changed the perception and presentation of the jury in film radically and forever.
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Thus,
Lemmon wanted to try a completely different from Fonda’s approach to playing juror #8,
stating that whereas Fonda “[felt the kid was not guilty],” he himself “didn’t honestly
know [if he was innocent]” (Readings on Twelve Angry Men 126). After this landmark
jury trial, most law-related Hollywood films focusing on the jury depict it in a way that is
strikingly different from Lumet’s film – their shared premise is: the jury does not work in
the way it is supposed to; prejudices and biases, not logic, drive the jurors, and these can
be and often are manipulated by lawyers or fellow jurors. Justice is still attained in the
majority of legal films, but this happens in spite of, rather than because of the system of
justice, which makes them yet another variation of a familiar “individualistic” American
master plot. This skepticism about the jury in particular and the legal system in general
means that recent American legal cinema is closer to Mikhalkov’s Twelve than to
Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men.
219
To retell briefly the main circumstances of the case, in 1994-1995, the former American football star
O.J. Simpson
was put on trial for murdering his ex-wife, N. Brown Simpson, and her friend, R.L. Goldman.
He was eventually acquitted as his high-profile defense team managed to convince the jury that there was
reasonable doubt about the DNA evidence, which at first seemed irrefutable, and about the circumstances
surrounding other exhibits. However in 1997, Simpson was found liable for these two deaths in a civil
lawsuit initiated by the Brown and Goldman families (“Confusion for Simpson kids”).
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Collective vs. Individual
In the broadest terms, Mikhalkov follows the plotline of Rose’s play quite
faithfully. In Twelve, a young Chechen boy is put on trial for killing his adoptive father,
the “Russian officer Volodia.”
220
Presumably, his fate is just as indifferent to his “judges”
as that of his Latino prototype in Lumet’s film. The jury in Twelve is more diverse in its
ethnic composition than in the original, in tune with the spirit of the time, although
women are still not admitted into the jury room. After long and passionate deliberations
initiated by one of the men, twelve Russian jurors also grant an acquittal to the defendant.
However, in a marked difference from the original, this happens not because of
reasonable doubt but because the jury miraculously manages to establish his innocence
by finding out who the actual murderers are. Thus, in a sharp contrast to Twelve Angry
Men, in its legal aspect, Mikhalkov’s Twelve focuses not on the concrete question of
proper judicial procedure and the notion of reasonable doubt, but on the more abstract
problem of retributive justice. This appears a serious distinction between Twelve and
Twelve Angry Men, especially as investigating the crime is not the jury’s responsibility
and when the jury does it, the judicial system fails – even if justice is attained.
221
220
Boris Paramonov parodied this sentimental and blatantly inauthentic formula in the title of his
publication about Mikhalkov – “Russian Director Nikita.”
221
There exists a whole tradition of American courtroom drama in which the lawyer finds a criminal during
the course of a court trial, e.g. the Perry Mason series. On first appearance, Twelve might seem to belong to
this tradition but it is not so. In the Perry Mason variety of stories, the lawyer’s investigation forms the
focus of the plot and it consists mainly in questioning witnesses and thus finding out new information and
“holes” in the prosecution’s case. To the contrary, in Twelve, the miraculous discovery of the actual
criminals is not the result of a rational process. Of course, jury deliberation has some elements of
investigation in it, and yet it does not attempt to establish the truth – only to decide about reasonable doubt.
Remarkably, some contemporary Russian legislators share with Mikhalkov the idea that trials have to
“establish objective truth” (Abarinov).
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Mikhalkov’s story, however, does not end there: the foreman, juror #2, continues
defending and protecting the Chechen boy after the trial, outside the court. As Tatiana
Smorodinska accurately summarizes the legal plot of the film,
[a]s a wise father, Mikhalkov's character lets his children (the jurors) first
search for the truth independently. But then he takes them from one level of
the game to another by introducing new complications: first, he tests them on
the level of law, and they acquit the boy according to the law; now he tests
them on the level of mercy. He explains to the jurors that freedom carries a
deadly threat to the boy: he would live longer in prison, whereas he would be
immediately killed by the mob if he were to be acquitted. (165)
Therefore, unlike Twelve Angry Men, Twelve is not a celebration of the legal system
protecting society: there is nothing to celebrate if the innocent needs protection, which
neither the state nor society can provide. A triumph of justice turns out to be its failure:
the innocent is set free, but according to Mikhalkov, his freedom makes him helpless and
vulnerable in unruly Russian reality, and the detection and capture of real criminals can
only be carried out by a vigilante. Therefore, it is not law or even justice that constitute
the pathos of Twelve, but the idea of the strong personality, not least political, leading the
weak and helpless through the chaos of contemporary Russian reality.
The pronounced political constituent of Twelve marks the difference between
Mikhalkov’s treatment of legal matters and the generally apolitical Russian
understanding of law, justice and mercy examined in the previous two chapters. Unlike
Leskov’s “rightful trickster,” an insignificant cog in a huge administrative machine who
nevertheless proves able to save another person out of compassion by applying “simple
means,” juror #2 is not a commoner. Similarly, his image and actions do not fit into the
image of the authority, who in spite of his or her high position remains true to his or her
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values, like Pushkin’s characters. He remains the most mysterious member of the jury as
by the end of the film we, the audience, know only a little more about him than in the
beginning. We do not know his life story, although one can guess that it was more
eventful and more significant than anyone else’s in the jury room. Of the three ways of
attaining justice outlined in the introduction, Mikhalkov’s juror #2 represents that of the
noble robber (vigilante) whose mission is to protect and avenge the weak. At the same
time, this image differs noticeably from previous representatives of this heterogeneous
literary type, such as Robin Hood, Michael Kohlhaas and Dubrovsky. Thus, it appears to
be influenced by the figure of the epic hero or, more specifically, the modern-day comic-
book and cinematic superhero.
Juror #2’s motives for saving the Chechen boy are not explained in the film, but it
seems as if he acts out of an officer’s sense of duty as much as out of charity and
compassion. Until the very last moment, he does not try to convince the other jurors, to
explain his position to them, and does not really try to lead or manipulate them. Instead,
he acts, so to speak, “over their heads,” which on a symbolic level annihilates the results
of their collective decision. In response to Rose and Lumet’s celebration of democracy,
Mikhalkov praises a strong personality who knows what is the right thing to do and will
do it with or without help of others.
Therefore, as one notes with some irony, Mikhalkov’s film appears more
“American” than Lumet’s: in terms of the protagonist, the opposition “collectivism vs.
individualism,” and also in terms of the visual style and cinematographic tradition in
general. Remarkably, it should be mentioned that Boris Kaufman who worked as a
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cameraman of Twelve Angry Men was the younger brother of Dziga Vertov, one of the
most prominent and radical Soviet avant-garde filmmakers. Although he emigrated from
Russia after 1917, first to Poland, then to France and eventually to the USA, the influence
of Soviet cinematic avant-garde is obvious in his films. The monumentalism, defined by
the sharp “geometrical” contrast of light and shadow, bold close-ups, etc. in Twelve
Angry Men – all these are signs of this influence. On the other hand, Mikhalkov’s
cameraman in Twelve (and also in Burnt by the Sun 2) Vladislav Opelyants is mostly
famous for his commercials and music videos, considered to be Western genres in the
1990s Russia. This training undoubtedly had an impact on the aesthetics of his feature
films, characterized by self-evident, easy-to-read, clichéd, glamorized, pop imagery. In
accordance with this aesthetic, the lengthy Twelve features flashy, dynamic, disconnected
images and is noticeably broken into shorter pieces.
In spite of the legal subject matter of the film, Mikhalkov’s “Russian thought” in
Twelve as well as in other films previously mentioned is predominantly political (Condee,
Paramonov, Smorodinska), even though it can be understood without taking into account
its political dimension. Most prominently and importantly, this is revealed in the figure of
the jury’s foreman, who is arguably associated with then-President Vladimir Putin. Near
the end of the film, the audience learns that this character, who at first humbly introduces
himself as a retired man drawing watercolors on his dacha, is an ex-officer who fought in
Chechnya. Here, in Twelve, as well as in The Barber of Siberia and Burnt by the Sun, the
officer is perceived as a paragon of virtue whose life has been guided by a code of honor
and the notion of duty. So when juror #2’s credibility as an ex-officer is put in doubt by
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another juror, the character says – with tears in his eyes – that “there is no such thing as a
former Russian officer.” This episode, mawkish, phony and arguably one of the weakest
in the artistic respect, evokes a known statement by Putin, repeated on a few occasions,
that “there is no such thing as a former chekist” (Grinkrug, “7 voprosov”; Paramonov;
Smorodinska).
The celebration of Russian officers, the Volodias and Nikolais, together with the
military salute, inexplicably performed by civilian juror #1 at the end of the film, adds
militarism to the significant characteristics of Mikhalkov’s “Russian idea.” This,
arguably, also appears consistent with the current state of Russia’s political system.
According to the sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaia, a quarter of the country’s senior
federal bureaucrats are from the siloviki and have backgrounds in the armed forces and
security services (“Russia under Putin”). The word siloviki, sometimes literally translated
as “men of power,” refers to security ministries and is derived from the Russian word sila
(“force, strength”), and it becomes an icon of Mikhalkov’s desire for “strong,”
authoritarian rule for Russia.
Twelve Angry Men also has a strong political constituent irreducible to the simple
glorification of the jury system as the cornerstone of American democracy. However,
unlike in Twelve, the political dimension in it does not have primary importance and
remains less pronounced and obvious. The original teleplay was written in the middle of
McCarthy hearings that began in April of 1954, which marked the beginning of the end
of McCarthy’s political influence. The script was indubitably a response to the preceding
“witch-hunt” against Communists and their sympathizers, in particular in Hollywood
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(Readings on “Twelve Angry Men” 60-66, 115).
222
Arthur Miller’s legal play The
Crucible, an Aesopian reflection on the HUAC and the McCarthy hearings on the
material of 1692 Salem witch trials, appeared only a year earlier. In 1995, Reginald Rose
acknowledged, “Issues that bother me are issues concerning people who want to impose
their beliefs on others… In a way, almost everything I wrote in the fifties was about
McCarthy” (cited in Readings on “Twelve Angry Men” 24).
223
Ironically, Mikhalkov
with his “enlightened conservatism” and authoritarian ideal could be – more than other
directors – perceived as one of the “people imposing their beliefs on others.”
The opposition “collectivism vs. individualism” is encoded in the films’ titles.
Lumet’s film, as well as its 1997 remake, bears the same name as Rose’s original play.
The title Twelve Angry Men, which describes the characters quite accurately, does not
directly suggest a jury-related topic – only by allusion to the symbolic meaning of
number twelve. In major world mythologies twelve is a number of collective authority:
the twelve principal Olympian gods of the Greek pantheon; the twelve sons of the Norse
god Odin; twelve sons of Biblical Jacob who were the progenitors of the twelve tribes of
Israel; the twelve early leaders of Islam, legitimate successors of the prophet Muhammad;
222
In 1954, Joseph McCarthy, then the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, accused
the Secretary of the Army, Robert Stevens, and senior US Army officers of concealing foreign espionage
activities. Shortly after, he himself was charged with corruption. The case was obviously meant to discredit
the indefatigable persecutor of the Communists.
223
Peter Biskind offers a more particular political reading of the film. He treats the jury’s eventual coming
to a unanimous decision in Twelve Angry Men as a symbol of corporate (juror #4) and liberal (juror #8)
American centrists forming an alliance by overcoming political extremists (jurors #3 and 10) and together
dominating the political landscape of the 1950s through pluralism and consensus-building (Readings on
“Twelve Angry Men” 60-66).
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and, of course, the twelve apostles of Christ.
224
Notably, in all of these examples except
for the first one
225
a hierarchical father – son relationship is established, which can be
based on true blood kinship, as well as on an affinity of principles and ideas. In other
words, the numeric symbolism of twelve can imply the superior thirteenth element – the
leader, the teacher – above the twelve who are equal among themselves. The importance
of the motifs of moral guidance, on the one hand, and of democratic equality and
collegiality, on the other, both associated with the number twelve, is undeniable in both
Lumet’s and Mikhalkov’s films.
Mikhalkov reduces the title of the story he borrows to just one word, thus
intensifying its symbolic and, in particular, religious meaning while still maintaining a
connection with the original. Moreover, the change of the title serves to “Russify” the
American plot, which coincides with the main direction of the remake in general. Thus,
Mikhalkov knowingly repeats the title of a classical work of Russian literature – the
poem “Dvenadtsat’” (“The Twelve”) by Alexander Blok, one of the first poetic responses
to the October revolution.
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In this extremely controversial text, written in 1918, Blok
likens a military patrol of twelve Bolshevik soldiers to the twelve apostles. The group is
described as marching through a fierce blizzard around the streets of revolutionary
Petrograd under the leadership of an invisible Christ. Allusions to religious imagery,
224
The number twelve can also be motivated by duodecimal system of calculation, still relevant in
Anglophone world.
225
Indubitably, Zeus is the supreme god in the Greek pantheon, while still a younger brother of Poseidon,
Hades, Hestia, Demeter and Hera.
226
Unlike Blok’s poem, the title of Mikhalkov’s film always appears on posters as a number, not a word,
perhaps as a matter of distinction.
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political subject matter, as well as criminal plotlines – in the poem, the murder of a
prostitute by a patrolman, her lover – constitute important parallels between the two texts.
The two “Twelves,” therefore, “frame” the Soviet period in Russian history: Blok’s
poem marks its beginning and Mikhalkov’s film – the beginning of its rehabilitation
under Putin. They both embrace the crystallization of order from the chaos of pre-
revolutionary and post-Soviet reality respectively, or at least a possibility of it – although
in different ways. In Blok’s poem the order is established thanks to the subordination of
the personal to the common, collective. On the contrary, in Mikhalkov’s film, the
consensus reached at the end of jury deliberations is shown to be a false, inadequate
solution. A true solution consists in having recourse to the individual, although not just
any one, but rather the strong and experienced “superhero.”
The image of a snowstorm also links the two texts. Mikhalkov introduces it in
Twelve instead of the summer heat that erupts into a storm at the end of Twelve Angry
Men, thus easing the tension. In Russian literature and art, the snowstorm appears as a
symbolically loaded topos, which can signify Russia and Russianness in general; the
revolution as a natural force (predominantly in Symbolist writings, for example, in Blok’s
“The Twelve” and Boris Pilniak’s novel, Golyi god (The Naked Year, 1922)); or a state of
extreme (moral) confusion leading to a sudden spiritual revelation, such as in Pushkin’s
The Captain’s Daughter and “Metel’” (“The Blizzard,” 1830) – in the latter it receives
ironic treatment – or in Tolstoy’s “Khoziain i rabotnik” (“Master and Man,” 1895).
Mikhalkov’s film inherits – to various extents – these traditional meanings of the symbol
but, most importantly, employs it as a member of the set of related oppositions “inside vs.
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outside,” “warm vs. cold” and “safety vs. freedom.” This set of oppositions – rather than
Rose’s “personal prejudices vs. equal justice for everyone” – underlies the conflict in
Twelve. Through it, the director sets a moral dilemma for the jury and the audience: is it
better to die at large or to survive in prison?
Finally, a mysterious dog, which appears several times in the Chechen segments of
Twelve carrying a severed human arm with a glittering ring on one of its fingers,
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might
have its prototype in a hungry stray dog following the military patrol of the poem and
possibly awaiting some charity or on the hunt for prey. Commenting on the image of the
dog in his interview to Los Angeles Times, the director himself did not mention any
parallels with Blok: “I think the main message of this movie is if we don’t learn to listen
to each other, to not only listen but to actually hear each other, no money, no diamonds,
will save us from the dogs pulling our bodies apart. We need to learn to hear each other”
(Olsen). In spite of this barely convincing explanation, it seems plausible that in this
image, as well as in those of the twelve apostles and the snowstorm “inherited” from the
poem, the director depicts the ultimate end of the October revolution portrayed by Blok.
The Temple vs. the Gym
Although the dialogue with Blok’s “The Twelve” allows Mikhalkov to place his
story into a Russian and Soviet historical context, his main “interlocutor” is Twelve Angry
227
This dog might be the defendant’s grown up puppy, which he supposedly left behind after moving to
Russia with his foster father. Also, the wild dog can be interpreted as a symbol of people’s worst instincts
“unleashed” during times of war.
211
Men. Lumet’s film famously opens with a view of the New York State Supreme Court.
228
It is presented as a noble, solemn, monumental building – as unshaken and immutable as
the notions of law and justice upon which it is founded. Indeed, the courthouse is shown
as a modern-day temple, which, apart from contributing to the apologia of the American
law and justice system, might be inspired by Rose’s personal feelings about participation
in the trial. First, the court is filmed from outside, and the camera gradually “ascends”
from the high steps of the building through classical marble columns to the pediment
bearing the words, “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good
government.”
The symbolic meaning of the whole sequence is indubitable and straightforward,
like the global message of the film. This framing not only predicts the future
development of the plot – the jurors’ ascent, upon entering the temple of law, from their
petty mundane biases to the truth and civic-mindedness – but also expresses the notion of
communal spirit in the graphic image of a number of pillars supporting one pediment.
Moreover, the connection between justice and government, made explicit in the engraved
phrase, establishes a link between the legal and political spheres. The spirit of solemnity
is maintained by the near complete silence of the sequence.
About half a minute later, the camera enters the courthouse, whose stately interior
perfectly corresponds to its temple-like exterior. There is more diversity inside: busy
people crossing the lobby in different directions, people exiting and entering elevators
228
It is a visual convention to signal the beginning of a courtroom phase by having an external establishing
shot of the exterior of the court building (Greenfield, Osborn and Robson 54). Besides Twelve Angry Men,
such prominent legal films as Philadelphia (1993) and Class Action (1995) open this way.
212
and phone booths – some faces express joy, while others are neutral or upset. However,
this variety of movements and emotions does not leave an impression of chaos and
disorder but, on the contrary, emphasizes order and efficiency. The sign tells which
hearing is in which room, the elevator door opens immediately after a man approaches it,
and other movements are well choreographed. As in the outside shots, sounds of people’s
voices, footsteps and opening and closing doors are muted, and when they suddenly
become improperly loud, a policeman on duty in the corridor immediately admonishes
the unwitting violators of public order. This interior sequence is intended to create a
sense of significance of what is happening in the “temple of law” and to inculcate high
standards of civic responsibility both in the participants and the audience. People in it are
first shown from above, which underlines their subordination to the glorious concepts
both the building and the film represent.
The beginning of Mikhalkov’s film differs radically from that of Lumet’s. Twelve
starts with alternating shots of wartime Chechnya and of a person – presumably, the
Chechen boy, although only legs are shown – running down stairs, out of a building, into
a snowy Moscow night. They are crosscut with the opening credits. After that, an obscure
epigraph by the fictional thinker B. Tosia, “Не следует искать здесь правду быта,
попытайтесь ощутить истину бытия,” appears on the black screen. The translation
provided in English subtitles, which reads “Seek the truth not in mundane details of daily
life but in the essence of life itself,” with an emphasis on where to seek the truth, is not
quite accurate. In fact, the director calls on the audience to seek the existential, not
mundane truth in the following story. Despite the foreign-sounding name of the invented
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philosopher, the opposition between existential truth (istina) and mundane truth (pravda),
with precedency of the former over the latter, is an essential part of the Russian
worldview, and in particular of the Russian idea of justice (Jessica Wilson 197).
The introduction of an epigraph into a cinematic text is rather unusual; and even
more so is the aphorism by the same writer that concludes the story. It signals, most
importantly, that the film should not be taken at face value – as a courtroom drama and a
remake of an American classic – but understood as a symbolic expression of a higher
truth. In Platonic terms, the epigraph serves as a reminder to the audience not to dwell too
long on the phenomena, but instead to focus on the ideas. On a more concrete level, it can
be read as Mikhalkov’s direct response – the mysterious B. Tosia is yet another of the
director’s masks – to the original Twelve Angry Men.
229
In Twelve, Mikhalkov implicitly
contrasts his istina to Rose-Lumet’s pravda and in doing so opposes his overloaded
cinematic narrative to laconic realist aesthetics.
However, the aforementioned opening sequence and epigraph are not the only
compositional elements to frame the main plot of Twelve. After the epigraph, there
ensues an extremely dense “polyphonic” montage of the courtroom scenes immediately
preceding the jury’s retirement to the jury room; images of pre-war and wartime
Chechnya, presented presumably as the defendant’s flashbacks; and a grotesque summary
of Russia’s transition from the Soviet past to its democratic future.
230
This is shown by
229
There is an ingenious hypothesis among Internet reviewers of Twelve (unfortunately, it appears
impossible to identify the author) that B. Tosia, in Russian “B. Tos’ia,” is a contraction from “to est’ ya”
(“i.e. me”), or even from “Bog, to est’ ya” (“God, i.e. me”).
230
After learning some details of the jury foreman’s past, the audience realizes that the flashbacks could be
his, as well as the boy’s.
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way of a strange mix of images: Gorbachev and Yeltsin giving speeches in the middle of
empty fields and Russian soldiers falling dead under a big banner with the words
“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” on it.
231
These diverse visual images appear on screen
accompanied by shooting; the judge’s interrupted and almost indistinct instructions to the
jury in Russian and in Chechen; and the Chechen boy’s asking his mother – killed at war
but presented as if she were alive – to speak Russian, not Chechen. This second sequence,
shot in black and white and following the epigraph – overloaded with details and
pretentious symbols, most of which are only loosely connected with the main plot – is
emblematic of Mikhalkov’s artistic style in Twelve. This is in opposition to the
harmonious simplicity of Lumet’s film with its “tone of almost classical stateliness and
rationality” (Readings on “Twelve Angry Men” 74).
Thus, simply by comparing the opening scenes in the two films one can highlight
two main and interconnected differences between them. First, Mikhalkov consciously
opposes the chaos, disorder and the malfunction of the Russian judicial system to
Lumet’s glorification of the perfect order and efficiency of an American court. People in
the courtroom are reminiscent of a choir singing discordantly: they were not focused on
the case during the hearing and do not know what to do now that the jury must retire to
deliberate. Second, the contrast of the films’ ideas is reflected in their visual style: the
excessiveness and extravagance of Mikhalkov’s aesthetics deliberately counter the
harmony and simplicity of Lumet’s work. In Twelve, the director employs a medley of
various unconnected details, symbols, images, cinematic techniques and sounds.
231
Both the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the first President of
the Russian Federation are presented as almost indistinguishable, with national flags behind their back.
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As in Twelve Angry Men, in Twelve, architecture provides the most important
symbol of the judicial system, but unlike Lumet, Mikhalkov shows it with a “minus-
device,” i.e. a meaningful absence instead of presence. The fact that the courthouse is not
shown in the Russian film, except for a short moment, and that jury deliberations take
place in a neighboring school’s gym because the jury room is still being renovated is of
undoubted importance. The absence of the magnificent “temple of law” symbolizes the
absence of the law, or more accurately, its dysfunctional state. It goes without saying that
the renovation stands for (democratic) reforms, which, according to Mikhalkov, only
create chaos and obstruct the administration of justice.
The structure that Mikhalkov shows instead of the “temple of law” is a multi-
faceted symbol itself. While Lumet uses a claustrophobic jury room to create an
atmosphere of gradually increasing tension, the Russian director prefers to use a spacious
gymnasium that literally allows for much more action (Graham). First of all, by using an
old, Soviet era school premises, Mikhalkov brings past, present and future together. To
some jurors this school reminds of the one they attended a few decades ago, while others
compare it to better modern schools they know. The audience is also invited to make
personal observations and conclusions. Indeed, while only a small percentage of
spectators would have been in a courthouse, all of them are familiar with school. Second,
the gym – on the whim of the director – is filled with objects that one would never expect
there, which provides the jurors with props to facilitate their interaction and the space
216
needed for recreation of the crime scene.
232
Third, as a sports arena, the gym underscores
the battle of various view points and the competitive nature of the adversarial legal
system. Also, as Seth Graham notes, “the gym… with its large windows and the
snowstorm whirling outside them… is a microcosm of the hothouse society that was the
Soviet Union.” Finally, the venue informs the audience that the whole story offers an
important lesson.
The extended architectural metaphor is developed further in the film when juror #9,
played by Alexei Gorbunov, draws everyone’s attention to an exposed ugly heating pipe
under the ceiling of the gym. This kind of disorder was not caused by the recent reforms,
and so points to the original and permanent state of mess in Russia. Apparently, the pipe
was improperly installed in the gym – as a temporary measure – in the mid-1960s, yet it
has outlived the Communists, perestroika and Yeltsin, and it appears that there is no
reason why it should not stay in its place for another fifty years.
233
The architectural metaphor in Twelve Angry Men brings to light the importance of
Fonda’s juror #8’s profession. He is not simply a middle-class liberal intelligent, but an
architect who bridges the gap and constructs consensus among the jurors and brings
American society to perfect agreement with the harmonious law and order shown in the
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It is mentioned in the film that occasionally the gym is used for school discotheques, which, in
particular, accounts for the big mirror-ball, bra and syringe found there.
233
In addition to this general symbolism, the heating pipe creates yet another parallel with Twelve Angry
Men. In a New York Times interview, Lumet mentioned that as a strategy of avoiding boredom of a one-set
shoot and “jazzing up” the film someone introduced an idea to move jury deliberations to the basement –
on the grounds that all regular jury rooms are occupied. This would have allowed then to shoot “the
exposed pipes and maybe the furnace in order to provide pictorial contrast” (Readings on “Twelve Angry
Men” 80). Whereas Lumet declined this advice as an unnecessary trick that would distract the audience
from the main conflict, Mikhalkov adopted it.
217
film’s opening sequence. To use the image from the film’s opening sequence, Fonda’s
character turns fallible and antagonistic human beings into Corinthian columns
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upholding the law. He builds the temple of law out of imperfect human minds and bodies.
In response to Lumet’s hero-architect, Mikhalkov introduces his juror #1 – an
engineer and “false hero.” In contrast to the original and as an illustration of the director’s
personal idea of a political solution for Russia, this character is incapable of saving the
country: partly because he does not have an ideal to strive for and partly because he is too
much of a typical intelligent – afraid of making a mistake, of “soiling” or discrediting
himself and, therefore, incapable of action. The true hero is neither an architect nor an
engineer. He is a strange hybrid of artist and chekist by profession, as well as a director
by virtue of his function in the narrative. Created and embodied by Mikhalkov himself,
the jury foreman is the director’s alter ego; he “plays his special games with the jurors,
just as Mikhalkov – the director – plays games with his viewers” (Smorodinska 165).
Like juror #1, juror #2
235
is also lacking a real-life example to follow: Russia has
never known its own efficient system of justice, and imported ones are doomed to fail.
However, he has a plan and he is not afraid of getting his hands dirty. His plan is to hide
an innocent man in prison so that the actual killers, whom he can identify, do not harm
him. The foreman, thus, is going to let the judicial system fail again and to put this failure
to the use for its victim. In other words, administering justice inside the courthouse does
234
In this “legal-architectural” context, it makes perfect sense that particular kinds of classical columns,
such as Doric, Ionic or Corinthian, are called “orders.”
235
Numeric symbolism transparently points out that it will be juror #2, not juror #1, who will laugh last.
218
not make sense and is even dangerous if there is no justice outside; a double injustice is
not the same as justice but, at least, it can provide safety.
Juror #2 fails to convince his fellow jurors to share his vision: it is too radical.
Moreover, they are already “infected” with the “virus” of American democracy and, after
all, it is getting late and they all have got things to do, rather than taking care of the
Chechen boy. They have fulfilled their civil and moral duty, acquitted the innocent and
are now ready to follow the example of their American counterparts – to go home,
leaving the rest to the judicial system. This is not the case, however, for Mikhalkov’s
character. He propagates a Russian vision of personalized justice: first, by symbolically
adopting the boy, becoming “uncle Nikolai” for him; second, by promising the boy to
find the hit men who killed the “Russian officer Volodia” and to protect him from his
enemies – whatever it may take. One serious defect in this approach, apart from its
reliance on an elitist cult of strong personality, is that after the hero is gone there is
nothing left – no “temple” that stands for centuries as an example or lesson for future
generations.
Objective vs. Subjective
As the architectural imagery makes clear, what distinguishes Russia from the US is
its lack of a strong judicial tradition represented in the image of a courthouse. Mikhalkov,
however, in a very Russian manner, does not seem to think it is necessary; at least, he
considers such a system impossible in the current state of affairs. Juror #9 acts as the
director’s spokesman in explaining the Russian perspective on the law: “Why [can’t a
Russian live by the law]? It is because he is bored living by the law. There is nothing
219
personal in the law, and a Russian without personal relations – [is] a barren flower.”
236
This statement is, once again, a direct inversion of Lumet’s idea, as expressed by his juror
#11: “This… is a remarkable thing about democracy. We are… notified by mail to come
down to this place to decide on the guilt or innocence of a man we have never heard of
before. We have nothing to gain or lose by our verdict. This is one of the reasons why we
are strong.” In a way similar to Leskov’s criticism of the liberal judicial reforms of the
1860s, Mikhalkov’s characters criticize democracy because its collegial spirit minimizes
the personal sphere.
This “personal touch,” which for Mikhalkov defines the Russian approach to the
law and justice, is apparently responsible for corruption, blat and the numerous other
ways to settle disputes out of court that exist in the country, and yet it is the national idea
of law and justice. Vigilante justice is personal, while the jury system is not, although it
can be adjusted to the Russian need to be personally involved. Even in Twelve Angry
Men, “[w]hat we have is a mixture of rational evaluation of evidence and prejudice.
Jurors change their minds both as a reaction to the evidence and as a reaction to their
fellow jurors” (Greenfield, Osborn and Robson 151). Twelve preserves the instances of
“rational evaluation of evidence” by the jury from Twelve Angry Men, while the duration
and significance of personal reactions expand dramatically and noticeably surpass those
of the original.
A graphic example of how subjective emotional reactions and personal stories
overshadow and overturn objective evidence is found in the transformation of the image
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Thus, the audience of Twelve, unlike that of Twelve Angry Men, learns the personal names and
biographical details of the defendant and the victim.
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of a female witness for the prosecution from Lumet’s to Mikhalkov’s film. In Twelve
Angry Men, this woman testified in court that she had seen the defendant stabbing his
father from the open window of her bedroom right opposite their apartment through the
windows of a passing elevated train. The “guilty”-voting jurors, albeit significantly
decreased in number by that moment, consider this testimony paramount and irrefutable,
until juror #9 recalls that the witness bore particular marks on the sides of her nose, the
kind that could only be left by spectacles. Her eyesight is questionable, therefore, which
creates reasonable doubt in the jurors’ minds and eventually leads to the accused’s
acquittal. In Lumet’s film, the woman herself never appears on screen; the jury only
evaluates her testimony and the general impression she left – a woman who in her forties
tries hard to look like she is thirty and who, for this reason, does not wear glasses in
public.
In Twelve, the counterpart character first appears before the audience in the fourth
minute of the film, and thereafter a few more times. She is very noticeably wearing
glasses, so that the whole question of the veracity of her testimony is voided, and the
issue becomes that of what her personal interest was in saying what she said. For Rose
and Lumet this episode serves to illustrate the maxim errare humanum est: the woman
saw something, interpreted it in a certain way under the influence of personal biases and
prejudices and believed her own story. Anybody could make this mistake, so that it
becomes the jury’s duty to weigh all testimonies and evidence on the scales of reason. In
Twelve, the female witness is turned into a conscious liar. She makes up the whole story,
and thus commits perjury, in order to take revenge over the boy who unwittingly
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prevented her marriage to his foster-father. The jury investigates the photographs she
presented to prove her familiarity with the boy and the man and discovers – in a truly
mysterious and absolutely inconceivable way – that she has long been in love with the
officer, arranged his divorce from his first wife by possibly slandering her in a letter, and
after his return from Chechnya with a little boy, began hating the latter.
The main difference between the treatment of the female witness in Lumet’s and
Mikhalkov’s films is, however, not the transformation of a vain and fallible woman into a
vicious jealous monster. It is the transformation of a piece of evidence: a mere fact to be
rationally considered true or false is changed into a developed personal story. The
witness’s questionable eyesight is enough for the American jurors to disregard her
testimony, but not for their Russian counterparts. The latter has to “reconstruct” the
woman’s whole personal story, full of details and passions, to understand her objective
and motives. Strikingly, her bad sight alone is not considered sufficient. This
transformation makes the whole final argument in Twelve a matter of a story, not a fact.
The identical thing happens to the motivation of the final acquittal: what in the
American film was a logical result of reasonable doubt, in the Russian becomes a victory
of one narrative over another. The Chechen boy is released not because his guilt was not
properly proven in court – although indeed it was not, – but because a hypothetical story
of how a savage Chechen murdered a Russian officer offered by the prosecution is less
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compelling and probative for the jury than a story about how a Moscow property mafia
ruthlessly drives people out of their apartments.
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The same reliance on personal attitude and on totalizing anecdotal narratives rather
than on solid facts is shown in the episode of the second ballot. In Twelve Angry Men,
after the first ballot, when the votes were split eleven to one, the ensuing discussion of the
evidence leads juror #8 to present a switchblade knife identical to the murder weapon. He
claims he bought it the night before, near the defendant’s home. As the prosecution
insisted on the uniqueness of the weapon, everybody in the jury room is struck by such an
obvious disproof of this particular fact. Immediately after this discovery, Fonda’s
character suggests another ballot, this time secret, and wins an additional supporter, juror
#9. Apparently this is a direct result of this discussion, which proves, first, that it was
possible, even if not very probable, that somebody else could kill the boy’s father with a
knife similar to the one the boy bought shortly before the murder. It also shows, more
generally, that the case is not as simple as it seems and that the prosecution’s version of
events is not without holes.
In Twelve, the first vote is also initially split eleven to one but the sequence of the
secret second ballot that changes the balance to ten to two and the appearance of a knife
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The focus on the jurors’ excessive storytelling during deliberations and especially on the decision
making after listening to the two alternative presentations of the same sequence of events brings Twelve
close to the narrative approach in the Law and Literature movement. The goal of this approach is to “make
oppositional narratives – the stories of those regularly excluded from legal power – audible” (Stone Peters
447). Although the white male majority of the jurors in Twelve is not excluded from legal power in the way
that women and ethnic minorities are, but the personal stories they tell do not belong to the sphere of law.
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identical to the murder weapon is different.
238
Juror #1, who purchased the knife, calls the
jury to the second ballot before presenting the weapon. His strategy for influencing his
fellow jurors is not logical, but psychological: with the second vote he shifts the
responsibility for his decision to the other jurors. As juror #12 (Roman Madianov)
accurately summarizes this approach, “The fact is you’ll do what we’re all doing, but at
the same time you’ll be able to think that your hands are clean.” In other words, for
Russian jurors, at least for one of them, the question of personal moral responsibility
alone, without any positive evidence such as a knife, appears to be enough to provoke
changing his mind about the defendant’s guilt. As a matter of fact, the second knife
makes its first appearance in Twelve in the fifty-seventh minute of the film, compared to
the twenty-ninth minute of Lumet’s movie. Mikhalkov’s jurors, therefore, spend almost
thirty minutes more than Lumet’s on ungrounded talking before any positive proof is
produced.
The emphatic significance of concrete personal elements and personal stories
explains why Mikhalkov’s Twelve is an hour longer than Lumet’s film. Half of the jurors,
#1, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9, are given solo performances by the director, during which they tell
their personal stories. Moreover, one of them relates a fictional story, which he makes up
in order to bully juror #6 (Yurii Stoyanov) so that he change his “not guilty” vote. The
variety of life stories told during deliberations, most of which have only a very remote
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Mikhalkov changes the knife from a switchblade weapon used in street fights to a military knife,
typically used by Chechen guerillas. Apart from the obvious political implications, this change introduces
the motif of justice as retaliation into the narrative. The murder weapon bears initials, which allows the
audience to identify it as the very knife belonging to a Chechen fighter who is apparently responsible for
the death of the defendant’s real parents. The boy finds it in a basement, while hiding from shooting, on the
dead body of the guerilla.
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connection with the case in question,
239
contributes to the general impression of the film
as a potpourri. The jury in the film – at the end of it as at the beginning – are not a team,
or an orchestra, to use a musical metaphor, but rather twelve independent soloists.
In Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men, only one juror, #3 played by Lee J. Cobb, is granted
an autobiographical story explaining his relationship with his estranged son, which is
essential for the understanding of his reluctance to acquit the accused. He sees the alleged
patricide by an unknown Latino boy as a logical conclusion to his own son’s rejection of
his fatherly authority and wants to avenge himself by the “guilty” verdict. Moreover, by
“convicting” his son, juror #3 seeks to prove himself innocent of the parenting error. The
fact that in Mikhalkov’s film more than half of the twelve jurors perceive the story of the
defendant through the prism of their own lives once again highlights this important
difference between the idea of law and justice in the American and Russian films.
An engineer tells how he nearly drank himself to death but was saved by the sincere
compassion of a random fellow traveler on a train; a taxi driver (Sergei Garmash)
narrates his complex relationship with his little son after his wife left them, complicated
even more by his new girlfriend; an elderly Jew (Valentin Gaft) recounts his father’s
falling in love with the wife of an SS officer during World War II; a simple old man from
Metrostroi (Alexei Petrenko) tells about his uncle who in a state of drunkenness and
despair took hostages to pay his gambling debts but was neutralized and personally
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In both Rose’s play and Tolstoy’s Resurrection, which, unlike The Brothers Karamazov, recreates a jury
deliberations in detail, jurors at some point start telling their stories. These stories, however, are recognized
by other jurors as unrelated to the case and therefore interrupted. In Mikhalkov’s Twelve, in accordance
with the opposition of existential and mundane truth announced in the epigraph, the random narratives told
by the jurors are implicitly presented as relevant on some higher level. In fact, the more diverse the stories
are, the more universal truth they are supposed to “capture.”
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forgiven by the local chief officer of the militia; a cynical comedian (Mikhail Efremov)
recalls the only smile he ever fully deserved for his performance – that of his dying
grandmother; and a director of a cemetery (Alexei Gorbunov) tells the jurors about a
method of extortion practiced in Russian cemeteries and how he gave this dirty money to
charity.
There are a few similarities between the stories, despite their diversity and
arbitrariness. All of them are meant to be parables rather than mere genuine personal
recollections and, at the same time, to provoke an emotional reaction rather than logical
reasoning. In consonance with the invariant plot of Leskov’s short stories analyzed in the
previous chapter, Mikhalkov’s stories demonstrate how one person can make a big
difference, how through “small steps” one can help another person out of compassion,
kindness and empathy. At the same time, Leskov’s texts are ironic and “tricky” whereas
those told in Twelve are sentimental and sensational.
Even more importantly, Leskov’s narrative is directed against talking and glorifies
simple deeds, and although Mikhalkov’s film also arguably follows this path, the way it
is done is significantly more controversial. Indeed, in contrast to other jurors and
especially to his American counterpart juror #8, Mikhalkov’s foreman maintains a
remarkable silence almost throughout the entire film. Only near the end does he reveal to
the fellow jurors his knowledge of the circumstances of the case and tries to convince
them to convict the defendant. If in Twelve Angry Men, the most talkative juror wins, in
Twelve the “mute” one is promoted as hero, the strong man who – we are made to believe
– will protect the innocent and restore justice. On the other hand, all this is only yet to
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happen, and the only guarantee we have that there will be a happy ending is merely the
man’s word.
The idea of talking and telling stories as the main working principle of the modern
legal system is commonplace in legal cinema and literature. As John Quincy Adams says
to a younger lawyer in Spielberg’s Amistad (1997), “Well, when I was an attorney... I
realized after much trial and error, that in the courtroom, whoever tells the best story
wins.” Criticism of the defense and prosecution’s use of fictionalization, instead of
strictly relying only on the facts of the case, appeared in Russian legal literature as early
as in Dmitry Karamazov’s trial. In his response to the defender’s closing speech, the
prosecutor Ippolit Kirillovich mentions various literary genres one after another:
Нас упрекают, что мы насоздавали романов. А что же у защитника, как
не роман на романе? Не доставало только стихов. Федор Павлович в
ожидании любовницы разрывает конверт и бросает его на пол.
Приводится даже, что он говорил при этом удивительном случае. Да
разве это не поэма? И где доказательство, что он вынул деньги, кто
слышал, что он говорил? Слабоумный идиот Смердяков, преображенный
в какого-то байроновского героя, мстящего обществу за свою
незаконнорожденность, – разве это не поэма в байроновском вкусе? А
сын, вломившийся к отцу, убивший его, но в то же время и не убивший,
это уж даже и не роман, не поэма, это сфинкс, задающий загадки,
которые и сам, уж конечно, не разрешит. (Dostoevsky, PSS vol. 15,
174)
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“…I am reproached with having woven a romance. But what is this defense if not one romance on top of
another? All that was lacking was poetry. Fyodor Pavlovich, while waiting for his mistress, tears open the
envelop and throws it on the floor. We ere even told what he said while engaged in this amazing act. Is not
this a flight of fancy? And what proof have we that he had taken out the money? Who heard what he said?
The weak-minded idiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic hero, avenging society for his illegitimate
birth – isn’t this a romance in the Byronic style? And the son who breaks into his father’s house and
murders him without murdering him – is not even a romance – this is a sphinx setting us a riddle which he
cannot solve himself” (Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 711).
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His opponent, the brilliant lawyer Fetiukovich, describes the fact that the defense resorts
to storytelling as a necessary ploy designed to destroy the unambiguous perspective on
the crime offered by the prosecution: “Повторяю, тут вся логика обвинения: кто же
убил, как не он? Некого, дескать, поставить вместо него” (Dostoevsky, PSS vol. 15,
163).
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In The Brothers Karamazov, Fetiukovich’s alternative version of events, in which
Smerdiakov, not Dmitry Karamazov commits the murder, although true, remains merely
a story, while in Twelve, the jury’s discovery of a property mafia’s involvement in the
case is presented as the ultimate truth. This explanation of events is not proven any better
than the initial one with the Chechen boy, so its acceptance by all the jurors – and
supposedly by the audience – is akin to a mystical revelation. This defines making a
decision in a court case as a matter of faith, not reason.
On the contrary, in Twelve Angry Men, a celebrated, yet atypical courtroom drama,
jury deliberation is presented as an analytical rather than synthetic process which can be
more readily compared to an act of – literary or film – criticism rather than to a creative
act. The jury’s task is to check whether the reconstruction of the crime offered by the
prosecution leaves any reasonable doubt about the defendant’s guilt, i.e. whether their
story is tight enough to withstand analysis. Mikhalkov, on the other hand, minimizes the
analytical dimension and strengthens the creative aspect of his narrative. In Twelve, an
all-synthesizing narrative wins out over separate solid facts that are generally
disregarded.
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“Here, I repeat, you have the whole logic of the prosecution. Who murdered him, if not he? There is no
one to put in his place” (Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 700).
228
Dangerous Freedom vs. Safe Restraint
As previously mentioned, in legal narrative, the jury usually represents the
audience, society, or even mankind. This is true for both Twelve Angry Men and Twelve.
At the same time, as Mikhalkov’s plot contrasts the author’s idea of the national hero
with the common, ordinary people his hero is designated to save, a new aspect is added to
this opposition. Namely, Mikhalkov also draws a parallel between the jury and the
defendant not in order to eliminate the gap between the alleged criminal and his judges
and to emphasize their equality as human beings, as one may expect. Rather, the director
uses it to convince the audience that not just a frightened boy, but Russian society as a
whole needs a savior similar to juror #2, i.e. Putin and Mikhalkov himself.
Mikhalkov skillfully uses parallel montage to visualize the similarity of the jury and
the defendant. Scenes of them leaving the courtroom appear side by side, as well as those
of them being locked in the gym and a cell, respectively. Later, one of the jurors, a
surgeon from the Caucasus (Sergei Gazarov), performs a “dance” with a knife in
juxtaposition to an episode from the Chechen boy’s childhood, when he danced with a
knife before a group of Chechen guerillas. To mention just one more parallel, the jury’s
attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events immediately following the murder to
double-check the old neighbor’s testimony, when they measure distances with steps, is
juxtaposed with the boy’s pacing back and forth in his cell.
The jurors are locked inside the jury room in Lumet’s film too – this is the rule, –
which underscores their isolation from the rest of the world until they reach a unanimous
decision. That said, this constraint does not imply non-freedom, restraint. The latter does
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happen in Twelve, where the jurors’ “imprisonment” in the gym mirrors that of the
accused in his cell through the visual images of protective grills on the windows, bars
protecting lamps and the nets of football goals near the walls echoing the grills of the cell
and the “cage” in the courtroom.
The state of physical and metaphorical imprisonment unites not only the defendant
and the jury but even inanimate objects in the world of Twelve; it is therefore truly
universal and totalizing. Soon after being locked in the gym, the jurors discover a piano –
also locked in a cage. It is not specified whether this “imprisonment” happened in
totalitarian or democratic Russia, which minimizes the difference between the two,
makes them indistinguishable. In their contemplation on whether “the poor thing [has]
done something wrong to be treated like this,” two of them, jurors #7 and 8, come to two
alternative conclusions: either the administration of the school has locked the piano in
order to protect it from children or in order to protect children from the piano. This brief,
jocular conversation highlights the two faces of imprisonment – restriction and
protection. In principle, the judicial system seeks the imprisonment of criminals to protect
law-abiding citizens, whereas juror #2 wants to hide the innocent boy in prison from the
corrupt businessmen who tried to frame him for murder.
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242
One could think that such an unusual view of the use of the penitentiary system is merely one of
Mikhalkov's personal extravagancies, yet this does not seem to be the case. In 2013, an anonymous PSA
(public service announcement) cartoon entitled “V tiur’me on byl by zhiv” (“In Prison, He Would Have
Still Been Alive”) was uploaded on YouTube and provoked a passionate discussion among Internet users
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR5ZJlcJuvQ; retrieved on 13 March 2013). It remains unclear whether or
not the clip was broadcast on Dagestan television, as YouTube suggests. Its plot advertises the salutary
effects of prison: bribing a magistrate, a young criminal is acquitted and released from custody in the
courtroom. On exiting he is immediately killed by an unknown vigilante. The moral is made explicit: “By
encouraging corruption, we take risks.” Of course, unlike Twelve, the PSA conveys a legal rather than
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The jury foreman is not the only character in the film who conceives of prison as
having a protective function. When the defendant, waiting for the jury verdict in a cell,
complains about being cold, the guard responds, “Everybody’s cold. At least you have
double bars here [meaning double glazed windows].” Here, prison symbolizes protection
from the cold weather. As snowy winter is a traditional symbol of Russia, prison turns
into a metaphoric shelter where one can hide from the country’s national problems, at
least at the present time.
The foreman’s proposition creates a grotesque image of the world turned inside out,
where innocent people are imprisoned and criminals are at large, which – especially the
second part – is arguably a fair reflection of the current state of affairs. According to him,
this inversion is necessary because the world outside prison is “wrong,” corrupt and
perverse. Juror #2 promises that as soon as the proper order is restored or established
outside, prisons will be used for their intended purpose, but does not specify when
exactly this might happen. For a conventional legal story, such rejection of both the law
and justice – as this is exactly what Mikhalkov’s cinematic alter ego proposes by offering
to punish an innocent person – would be a serious lapse, or rather sacrilege of the genre.
In Twelve, these two principles are apparently ready to be sacrificed for mercy,
understood as saving the life of the defendant.
Mikhalkov’s reversed notion of the Russian penitentiary system and unorthodox
perspective of its usage should not disorient viewers: as the epigraph pointed out, the
political message and warns Russian society against vendetta and vigilante justice caused by the
dysfunction of the country’s judicial system, not against omnipotent gangsters. However, the idea of
protective imprisonment appears to be a product of the same law-justice paradigm.
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story is metaphorical, and the director’s thought is political, rather than legal. In his
parable, Mikhalkov teaches his audience the vital necessity of strong, autocratic political
power.
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Translating metaphorical legal language into implied political discourse, one
can paraphrase it as follows. Everyone who identifies with the helpless Chechen boy, i.e.
all ordinary people, should seek and rely on the protection of their adoptive father-
officers – uncle Volodias or uncle Nikolais. In more general terms, it can be rephrased
this way: after seventy years of Soviet rule, attempted democratic reforms and the
westernization of Russia have failed, the country is in a mess and is a dangerous place to
live. The two ways out proposed in the film are either to stay in a safe “prison,” or
“hothouse,” secured by a strong personality until Russian civil society matures enough to
ensure the rule of law, or to go “out,” into the “snowstorm,” straight away and fight to
survive by the cruel rules of the existing world.
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The ultimate expression of the opposition “safe restraint vs. dangerous freedom” is
seen in the symbolic image of a sparrow that finds a haven from the severe winter
weather in the gym. After deliberations end and the defendant is acquitted, juror #1
comes back to the gym to pick up the icon he left there at the beginning of the film –
which, presumably, enlightened the jurors – and sees the bird. Then, he solemnly declares
to the sparrow that it must decide for itself whether it wants to stay in the warm or to go
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One can point specifically to Putin, given that Mikhalkov famously signed a letter asking him to serve a
third Presidential term, contrary to the Constitution.
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The constant juxtaposition of war scenes with the jury’s deliberations suggests that the current state of
Russia can be characterized as a war-like situation, a situation which, obviously, demands a commander-in-
chief.
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back to the cold. The bird eventually flies out, while the decision of the audience remains
unknown.
Mikhalkov’s sparrow, therefore, appears to be an artistic “relative” of Pushkin’s
little siskin from one of the poet’s last poems, “Zabyv i roshchu i svobodu…” (1836;
Pushkin, PSS vol. 3, 349) – the birds even look similar. In his article, “‘Svoboda’ i
‘schast’e’ v poezii Pushkina,” Sergei Bocharov analyzes the text as the result of the
evolution of Pushkin’s views on these two concepts (21-24). The scholar contrasts it to
the writer’s early works, where happiness is identified with freedom and the two are
emphatically opposed to restraint. Unlike them, in the late poem about the siskin, the
relations between the worlds of freedom and restraint are not so unambiguous, and the
bird can be happy and creatively productive in its cage. A similar perspective on freedom
(svoboda/volia) is expressed in The Captain’s Daughter, whose main characters,
according to Zaslavsky, choose to operate within the existing constraints of the political,
social and judicial system, using its properties to their own ends rather than trying to
ignore or destroy it. Although in Twelve, the sparrow eventually flies away from the
warm gym, Mikhalkov’s view on freedom, apparently, corresponds to that of late
Pushkin.
In an interview with Izvestiia, the director confessed that the sparrow has a personal
– almost mystical – significance for him, as one flew to him while he was working on the
script of Twelve on the river Jordan – “a hundred kilometers away from the place where
the Savior was baptized” (Iampol’skaia). He called the bird the “thirteenth character of
the film: God sent it so it would not let the irreparable happen” (Grinkrug, “Ia snial fil’m
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‘12’”).
This brings us back to the two opposite numeric paradigms: the “democratic”
twelve vs. the hierarchical thirteen (twelve plus one). In agreement with the latter, the
image of the sparrow represents a higher viewpoint in the film, that of “a child and God”
and, a view free of any judgment and evaluation (Grinkrug, “Ia snial fil'm ‘12’”).
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The
director also pointed out that juror #1’s speech to the bird is, indeed, a call for
democracy, although not an outer political democracy (meaning of the American kind,
celebrated in Lumet’s film), but an inner personal democracy, a unique state of mind,
when “your personal freedom appears in harmony with the freedom of those around you”
(Grinkrug, “Ia snial fil'm ‘12’”; my translation).
In discussing the image of the sparrow in its moral and religious implications,
Mikhalkov revealed something important about his understanding of the creative process
and of his role as an artist. He said, “I needed a little sparrow as a kind of a message. To
remind us once again that there exist higher powers that see everything. If you noticed, it
[the sparrow] comes into play only when necessary” (Iampol’skaia; my translation). This
brief comment is highly controversial and/or presumptuous. The director starts by
explaining how he uses the image to convey a certain message and ends by saying that
the symbol he created miraculously gains independence and acts on its own. The
ambiguity of whether the word “necessary” refers to higher powers – “when necessary to
higher powers” – or to the director himself leads to the merger of the two. Otherwise, the
statement should be treated as the authorial acknowledgement of complete randomness
and “uncontrollability” of the artistic imagery and symbols in the film.
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In a similar function, a sparrow also appears in Mikhalkov’s Barber of Siberia.
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The political message of Twelve relies on the metaphor of the prison-shelter, which
is one more instance of the film’s architectural imagery, and the opposition of “dangerous
freedom vs. safe restraint,” as well as on the idea of the sameness of the defendant, the
jury and the audience (society). The director has a very definite vision of what Russia is
and “what is to be done” and repeatedly introduces the same set of ideas at various levels
of his narrative to make them abundantly clear to the audience.
Thus, a seemingly insignificant and unrelated episode in the middle of the film
confirms and clarifies the general meaning of the opposition “safe restraint vs. dangerous
freedom,” discussed above. In this episode, when everyone’s nerves are stretched to the
limit, juror #3 lights a cigarette. Juror #1, also desperate to smoke, asks him whether it is
permitted here, and the former answers, “Why not? We’re locked in here.” On the level
of mundane truth, which Mikhalkov calls us to disregard in his epigraph, the utterance
means either, “there are just us in here, all adults, so we cannot harm anybody,” or “as we
are locked in here we cannot leave to smoke in a specially designated area,” or both.
However on the more important level of existential truth, it teaches: restraint is freedom –
in a sense, rewriting George Orwell’s famous “Freedom is slavery” into “Slavery is
freedom.”
Word vs. image
Perhaps, in order to neutralize or “mask” the totalitarian threat of this and other
ideas, Mikhalkov prefers expression through visual cinematic images, rather than plain
words. This is another feature that distinguishes his film from that of Lumet. Despite the
superb work of Lumet’s cameraman, Kaufman, and Mikhalkov’s multiplication of
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narratives on account of the jurors’ life stories, Twelve Angry Men primarily relies on
verbal dialogue and arguments, whereas Twelve – on compelling visual imagery. The
simplest illustration of this statement is the fact that on numerous occasions Mikhalkov
shows the audience what Lumet tells: all we learn about the Latino defendant is retold for
us by the jurors; while in the Russian film, a substantial part of the young Chechen’s life
story is visually illustrated in a form of flashback recollections from his past.
This is not Mikhalkov’s only way of showing preference for the image over the
word. The director also downplays the significance of the words that are pronounced by
making the discourse a mere background for the mise-en-scene, as, for instance, juror
#3’s rant that at times becomes indistinct
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– as well as the running visual joke juror #8
plays on juror #7. The former pretends to be doping himself with cocaine, knowing that
the latter, who has lost his brother to drugs, cannot stand it. Furthermore, Mikhalkov
discredits words by making two of his jurors stutter (symbolically, the framing ones #1
and 12) and one more is almost inarticulate – the poorly educated juror #5 with a thick
Southern Russian accent and the inability to organize his thoughts into something more
coherent than separate combinations of words. These impediments do not deprive the
characters of the right to express themselves, but they shift the focus from the logic and
content of their arguments to their irregularity and suggestiveness. To complete the
picture of the anti-verbal world of Twelve, let us mention Mikhalkov’s symbolically
short-spoken alter ego, juror #2, and the Chechen defendant who barely speaks Russian
246
This is typical for Mikhalkov’s other films as well, e.g. when “extradiegetic music regularly overwhelms
the verbal register” (Condee 94).
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and is not allowed to speak a word.
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This shared “speechlessness” constitutes yet
another parallel between the defendant, the jury and the audience.
Thus, in one way or another, the director reduces the power of speech of about one
third of all characters in the film. There is a lot – in fact, too much – of talking in Twelve,
and yet what is said is not what really matters. Mikhalkov’s denial of the importance and
positive effects of public discussion opposes his political vision to democratic principles.
In his introduction to the collection of articles Russia and Its Other(s) on Film: Screening
Intercultural Dialogue (2008), Stephen Hutchings characterizes the most recent
cinematic trend in dealing with the question of Russia and the West as “Putin’s partial
rehabilitation of Soviet identity and rejection of Western-style democracy” (1). The
volume does not mention Twelve, although a few authors and Hutchings himself examine
Mikhalkov’s other films, in particular those united under the rubric of his “Russian
project.” Indeed, the quoted statement can be easily extended to Twelve, in which the
director chooses to use an American literary source and an American film genre in order
to subvert the essential American idea of democracy – not as pernicious but as unsuitable
for Russia.
The perennial rivalry between the word and the image in various arts, and in
particular cinema’s recurrent attempts to free itself from the dictatorship of literature and
literariness and to maintain its independent aesthetic status form a complex aesthetic
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Perhaps, Mikhalkov’s decision to replace the game of tic-tac-toe played in Twelve Angry Men with
poetry writing also serves the purpose of discrediting the word. Both activities are examples of jurors
fiddling around, not addressing their task with due respect, but if tic-tac-toe allows Lumet to introduce juror
#8’s didactic “It’s not a game,” juror #9’s nonsensical hunt for rhymes helps Mikhalkov to discredit
language activities.
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problem. The struggle has been especially acute in Russia – a traditionally word-centered
culture, – and as it is usually the case in Russia, it has gained a special meaning in the
context of the “Russia vs. West” opposition. Thus,
Dziga Vertov’s radical avant-garde KinoEye manifesto statement linked the
dominant role of literature in shaping early Western and pre-revolutionary
Russian cinema with bourgeois degeneracy. <…> Ironically, in a post-Soviet
inversion of this axiom, the traditional, high-budget, faithful screen
adaptations of the literary classic has reinforced an ideological commitment to
protecting precious Russian literary culture from the tide of visual trash
flooding into people’s homes from a Western provenance (Hutchings 6).
Of course, Twelve is a more complicated case, as it is not a typical adaptation and
moreover, one of an American play/film.
Mikhalkov’s preference for the visual element over verbal seems to have a number
of reasons – from technical to ideological. Most importantly, it relates to the traditional
opposition of the word vs. the image and literature vs. the visual arts that goes back to
Aristotle and Lessing. The word is considered logical and rational, while the image –
intuitive and irrational. Beyond any doubt, both Lumet and his characters try to convince
the audience and each other with strong arguments, whereas Mikhalkov and his jurors
rely more on emotions and the suggestive power of visual images. As Boris Paramonov
justly observes, although the Russian director is an artist, he is not an intellectual, which
makes visual images more appropriate for him to express his ideas. It can also not be
denied that Mikhalkov’s capricious and highly allegorical story does not work on the
level of logical, rational perception.
This fact, however, does not appear to bother the filmmaker in the least: he seeks to
influence not the reason of his viewer, but his heart; he does not want to convince, but to
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affect. The behavior of the jury foreman confirms this. Aside from personal
psychological motives, Mikhalkov’s reliance on the visual image has an ethnic
dimension. The reverse side of Russia’s famous literature-centrism and semi-religious
reverence of the word as an attribute of God Himself is an extreme skepticism towards it,
reaching its climax in the Romantic and Symbolist epoch. The degree of this skepticism
was predictably high in literature about law and legal matters, which can be seen in both
Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s descriptions of courtroom scenes. Mikhalkov’s rejection of
the word, therefore, finds its legitimate place in a long and powerful tradition of Russian
literature.
Lumet’s predilection for the word, compared to Mikhalkov’s for the visual image,
has a very practical explanation. An aspiring American filmmaker widely praised for his
cinematic adaptations, Lumet was specifically invited to make Twelve Angry Men by the
playwright/producer Rose and was obviously expected to respect the original. On the
other hand, with Twelve being Mikhalkov’s personal project from beginning to end, the
director was at liberty to privilege the cinematic constituent of his film to the detriment of
the literary. By doing so, Mikhalkov demonstrated his independence from his literary
source and, therefore, his preference for the Russian over American approach.
Finally, Mikhalkov’s predilection in favor of the visual over the verbal can be
related to his desire for total control over his work. Words said by characters belong to
them; their dissonant discourses and unconnected personal stories create a very diverse,
unruly, polyphonic picture of the world without one universal truth. On the other hand,
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the visual constituent of the film completely depends on the director and imposes his
totalizing presence and unshakable authority on the audience.
The ending of Twelve Angry Men refers back to its beginning and concludes the
film’s ring composition. After acquitting the defendant, the jurors leave the courthouse
with a feeling of fulfillment. They descend the high stairs and mingle with other people in
the street becoming indistinguishable from them. However, after the long confinement in
the claustrophobic jury room, there is a sense of a new beginning, of fresh air after the
storm, and combined with the glorious and triumphant musical score it suggests that a
significant transformation in the jurors and the audience has occurred. Supposedly, they
all have – directly, through their personal experience, or indirectly, through the film –
assimilated democratic principles and acquired civic-mindedness.
In contrast to Twelve Angry Men and in accordance with its own complex and
excessive nature, Twelve has four successive finales. The first is a realistic finale, which
coincides with that of the American film – the acquittal of the defendant. It, however,
does not leave the impression of an inner transformation in the jurors or the audience,
who still face the question of personal survival in hostile reality. Then, the level of
symbolism gradually increases. As the director said in an interview, “In the course of the
film, I’m trying to show the reality of what’s happening in Russia. In the end, I show
what I wish was true” (Olsen). Mikhalkov confesses that in the role of a juror, like most
of his characters, he would probably not be able to abandon his plans and ambitions in
order to do the right thing (“Russkii chelovek po zakonu zhit’ ne mozhet”). However, he
appoints his alter ego to do just that and to provide the example of a national hero.
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The second finale shows the symbolic act of the Russian (ex)officer Nikolai (juror
#2) adopting the Chechen boy so as to protect him and to punish his offenders. The
global, imperial significance of this adoption is obvious. As Hutchings pointed out in
connection with Vasily Pronin’s post-war Soviet film Syn polka (Son of the Regiment,
1946), “the hero’s orphan status – the image of the orphan is powerfully mythologized in
Russian culture – underscores the symbolic role of the nation as surrogate parent,
simultaneously infantilizing the viewer and thus the construction of Russian/Soviet
identity” (12). Although the Chechen boy is not adopted by a regiment, the succession of
two military officers as foster fathers makes the comparison with the venerable Soviet
classic more than justified.
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Apparently, Mikhalkov’s “what I wish was true” refers
primarily to this second finale of the film.
In the third finale of Twelve, Makovetsky’s character comes back to the gym to pick
up an icon of the Virgin Mary he put there before deliberations started. He also opens
windows to let the sparrow out and salutes – either to the bird or to the audience –
thereby adding himself to the “regiment” of Russian officers in the film.
Finally, the fourth ending of Twelve brings the spectator back to the ruined post-war
Chechnya and shows a close-up of a stray dog with a severed human hand in its teeth.
Immediately, another maxim by B. Tosia appears on the screen: “The law is paramount
but what should one do when mercy appears higher than law?” Mikhalkov answers this
central question for the Russian legal thought in a very Russian manner: to act in favor of
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For reference, in contrast to Mikhalkov’s young Chechen who is orphaned twice – first, after his blood
parents’ death and then, after the murder of his foster father, Rose and Lumet do not emphasize this status
of the accused. He is not a full orphan, his mother is mentioned briefly as not believing in him being guilty.
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mercy. At the same time, his answer is remarkably inconsistent: one should not let the
boy get killed by the bandits, yet if in prison he hangs himself out of despair or because
of the injustice – it is God’s will.
These four endings are supposed to untie all the plot knots and to unite all the film’s
disparate images and impressions into a holistic picture. Yet in spite of the certainty and
apparent consistency of the director’s views as expressed in numerous interviews,
Mikhalkov does not quite manage to control that much material – political, imperialistic,
legal, religious, moral, etc. Moreover, the director’s concern with istina bytiia (existential
truth) leads him to neglect details of pravda byta (mundane truth), thus discrediting his
entire message. In Twelve, psychological motivations are not always convincing, and the
situations are improbable. The director’s aspiration to create a national myth ultimately
makes the characters and situations look one-dimensional.
Mikhalkov’s “credo” film, Twelve, is a part of the director’s larger project dealing
with Russia, its past, present and future, as well as its unique path and role among the
world’s nations. In his work, the author deliberately borrows the story from an American
play to initiate a dialogue with Western culture, and thus to contrast its central values – of
law, democracy and rationalism – with an irrational, illogical and intuitive Russia.
Constructing Russia’s identity by opposing it to Western civilization is perceived as an
important national feature: “If intercultural dialogue is inherent to cinema, then this
function is foregrounded in the Russian cinematic tradition, thanks to cinema’s
contributions to the construction of Russian national identity in terms of its relationship
with homogenized Western (and Eastern) Others” (Hutchings 9).
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The Russian director turns the original narrative about people learning how to work
together as a group for the common good and to maintain proper social order by rising
above their personal prejudices and limitations into a story about a strong individual
being capable of protecting the weak whom the whole society fails. Each of the Western
values is subverted and replaced in Twelve by a Russian one. Democracy and collegial
decision-making are replaced by authoritarianism and patrimonialism; the law, by what
Mikhalkov calls mercy but what could be more accurately called “compulsory
protection”;
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and rational deliberation, by an unsubstantiated, intuitive, faith-dependent
insight into the truth.
Ironically, Mikhalkov Hollywood aesthetics and the cult of the individual/superhero
in order to express his conviction that Russia must follow its unique historical path, rather
than that of developed Western societies. The director does not see a contradiction in
doing so, which might be interpreted as an acknowledgement of Western supremacy and
the triumph of Western way of life. This is revealed – apparently unconsciously – in the
artistic language of the film, which contradicts its conscious message. On the level of
artistic form, Mikhalkov offers no alternative to the Hollywood filmmaking aesthetic and
the American value system it broadcasts so that, in some respects, his film appears more
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Indeed, the highly provocative alternative offered by juror #2, although intended to save the boy’s life,
can hardly be called merciful. What brings it close to the idea of mercy, especially in its Russian version, is
the motif of one’s complete dependence on someone else’s will. The strong one – whether artist-chekist or
the president – will protect and help the weak, on the condition that the weak recognizes his/its absolute
power over him/herself. In Twelve, the opposition of “strong vs. weak” is voiced by juror #9.
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“American” than Lumet’s original work. Twelve, therefore, raises the question of an
actual victory of American cultural imperialism in Russia.
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As Hutchings notes, “[o]stensibly a Cold War relic, anti-American sentiment in
Russia has found consistent expression in the post-Soviet period” (221), especially in
Putin’s years. Mikhalkov’s bringing together both American and Chechen “others” as
Russia’s Western and Eastern opposites which define the country’s singularity, reminds
us of the strategy Sergei Bodrov employs in his Kavkazskii plennik (Prisoner of the
Caucasus, 1996), a key film for the post-Soviet cinematic treatment of the theme of the
“other.” There, like in Twelve, the US becomes Russia’s double in terms of expansionism
and imperial ambitions. In his characterization of Prisoner of the Caucasus, Hutchings
notes,
[t]his film’s Hollywood intertexts map the representation of the Islamic other
onto that of Russia in its relationship with its American nemesis. <…> Bodrov
thus transforms his critique of Russian expansionism into an assault on
American cultural imperialism, positing Russia as victim as well as aggressor,
and establishing his film as a metacinematic commentary on the war film
genre. (17)
However, unlike Bodrov’s Prisoner, the equating of Russia and America appears in
Mikhalkov’s Twelve as an unplanned byproduct undermining the main idea of the film
rather than as an authorial statement. It would be more accurate to call Mikhalkov’s
remake not a “metacinematic commentary” on the legal film genre, but rather a
“Russification” of a genre that is essentially foreign to the Russian worldview.
Mikhalkov does not deny the value of the democratic principles and ideals celebrated in
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It is also addressed in the film through the image of juror #6 (Yurii Stoyanov), a Harvard graduate, who
feels a foreigner in his own country.
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Lumet’s film
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but questions their universal superiority. His criticism targets specifically
their application to Russia.
Mikhalkov stages his film in accordance with the topoi of the Russian idea of law,
justice and mercy – opposing law to mercy and celebrating the role of the strong
personality in patrimonial society. Moreover, he discredits the word in the legal
discourse, which becomes especially obvious in the comparison between Twelve and
Twelve Angry Men. If in the American movie truth, so to speak, is “born of arguments,”
in the Russian film truth exists before and above any discussion and is revealed rather
than established. The strong religious subtext in Twelve serves to secure the jury’s insight
into the truth, rather than to show the divine meaning of mercy. At the same time, as
demonstrated by the opening and concluding epigraphs, the written word preserves its
divine power in the film, in particular through its atemporal – especially in contrast to the
cinematic sequence – character. The question of the word in Twelve becomes, therefore, a
question of authority, as well as do matters of law, justice and mercy. Or, rather, the
question of authority becomes the ideological center of the film subordinating all other
themes and motifs.
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Remarkably, a reverence for the law and legal idealism are characteristics found not only in American
literature and film, but also in the country’s Law and Literature scholarship – in contrast to the British
tendency to “unmask its very emptiness,” for example (Olson 347).
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Conclusion
This dissertation has studied the Russian understanding of the “legal triad”
represented in works of literature and cinema from the beginning of the nineteenth
century to the early 2000s. This study has examined the national idea of law, justice and
mercy in comparison with the Western legal tradition and against the background of its
philosophical, religious, political and sociological treatment. The focus was on the
constants and idiosyncrasies of Russian legal mind that are present consistently
throughout the country’s tumultuous historical development over the past two hundred
years – through a series of revolutions, reforms and reactions. Each of these constants
plays a significant part of national identity today. Thus, the word sud (“judgment, trial,
court”) in Russian has the same root as sud’ba (“fate, destiny, lot”), which not only
illustrates the importance of the “legal triad” in Russian culture, but also reveals people’s
attitude towards it. According to Tatiana Iakusheva, this affinity of the two words implies
a fatalistic view of legal judgments and decisions of the court, which are perceived as the
defendants’ destiny, rather than the rational realization of justice (213). In other words,
the outcome of a trial does not follow logically from the circumstances of the case, and
often what in the West is seen as a tragic failure of the judicial system in Russia appears
to be its normal state of being.
Works as different as Pushkin’s historical novel The Captain’s Daughter, Leskov’s
short story about a “righteous man” “The Pygmy,” and Mikhalkov’s remake of the
classical American courtroom drama share certain topoi that define the Russian attitude
towards the “legal triad.” These texts differ in terms of genre, plot, characters, style, the
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authors’ background and mindset, as well as in their historical setting, time of creation
and artistic value, popularity and impact on society. What they have in common is the
motif of petitioning: in the first work, Masha Mironova pleads for her fiancé accused of
treason before Catherine II; in the second, the nameless executioner makes the case of a
French barber accused of raping an underage girl known to Emperor Nicholas I; and in
the film, the jury foreman “pleads” before his fellow jurors for the innocent person to be
convicted and thus rescued from his enemies.
The historical transformation of the motif is striking – each story refers to a
different source of authority, the outcome of the plea, as well as the definition of the
concept of mercy, which all petitioners seek, – and yet it remains recognizable. Thus,
Catherine the Great is presented as a hybrid of the traditional folk image of the good tsar
and that of the idealized enlightened sovereign that the Empress fancied herself to be. She
appears before Masha Mironova like a goddess in human form and bestows mercy on her
and Grinev because she is able to understand and embrace human feelings. Unlike this, in
“The Pygmy,” Nicholas I’s interference in the case of the insignificant French barber is
shown in an indirect and ambiguous manner; the convict’s indubitably unjust punishment
is canceled for political – not legal or humanistic – reasons but he is exiled from Russia
in order not to compromise the failed judicial system and bureaucratic machine in
general. The petitioner in this case is not personally related to the victim of the judicial
failure but acts out of pure altruism, while his modus operandi is very different from a
straightforward appeal for pardon. Finally, in Twelve, the protagonist – the character very
much removed from the traditional image of a humble petitioner – “pleads” for the
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defendant’s life before the jury, which represents authority in democratic society. Then,
for the first time, mercy is not granted, and this happens, according to Mikhalkov,
precisely because of the deliberative, democratic nature of the jury.
The texts selected for analysis in this dissertation differ significantly from the
Russian legal canon established by Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Sukhovo-Kobylin. As a rule,
the canonical masterplot never has a happy ending; it involves a very strong critique of
the inhuman law and the corrupt judicial system seen through the story of the individual’s
complete destruction by them. On the contrary, The Captain’s Daughter, Twelve and
Leskov’s legal stories end happily because their characters deal with legal matters
successfully by providing a necessary adjustment – mercy, compassion, cunning and
strong will – to the system of justice. They either know how to manipulate the system of
justice or are strong enough to live without its protection. Moreover, only those stories
end happily in which the characters try to find a solution to a concrete legal problem
instead of pursuing an abstract ideal of justice. In each case, the happy ending is secured
by the text’s generic attribution: folk tale’s elements in Pushkin’s novel, Leskov’s genre
of the trickster story and Christmas tale and Mikhalkov’s political parable about a
superhero. At the same time, despite all these differences, canonical and non-canonical
texts arrive at the same point: they express nihilism about the judicial system and
patrimonial views on justice typical of the Russian legal mind. Therefore, they appear to
be two sides of the same coin: one that presents the negative general rule and the other
that presents the positive exception from that rule.
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The most promising and productive finding of this dissertation was the discovery
that in Russian culture, there exists a tendency towards pruning the “legal triad” of law,
justice and mercy into a binary opposition by removing justice. Quantitative lexical
analysis of the three concepts, in particular, confirms this conclusion. The explanation of
this reduction of the ternary structure into a binary one can be found in Lotman’s
association of Russian culture – in contrast to the West – with the cultural model of “self-
giving” and with perceiving the world in strict binary oppositions. According to the
scholar, it is precisely Russia’s preoccupation with binary oppositions that leads to the
replacement of formal jurisprudence with ethical principles (Lotman, Kul’tura i vzryv
142).
At the same time, this research project has taken issue with Lotman’s statement that
in the Russian legal mind, mercy is opposed to justice (Ku’ltura i vzryv 143). As the
present analysis demonstrates, Fedotov’s opinion that in the national tradition, justice
“merges” with mercy is closer to the truth. Justice appears to be the most evasive and
hardest element to define of the “legal triad.” Iakusheva’s linguistic and etymological
analysis of the term confirms this indirectly. The scholar comes to the conclusion that in
Russian Orthodox culture, “the concept of justice forms a kind of a semantic gap, which
is filled according to a [concrete] situation, in its assessment. Neither custom, nor Church
commandments, nor laws can claim to be the standard, but an initiating action serves as a
reference point” (215; my translation).
Another constant of the Russian legal tradition is the strong emphasis on the
inhumanness of the law and its lack of moral basis in contrast to humane love, mercy and
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self-giving. The opposition “law vs. mercy” parallels that of “state vs. individual,” with
the former element having an overtly negative connotation. The obvious preference
shown to irrational and personal mercy over rational and impersonal law leads to the
predominance of “vertical” relationships and an increased inequality among people, for
mercy is always handed down from the superior to the inferior. This, according to
Zaslavsky (48), restricts the individual’s response to the control of the authoritarian
system to just three possible modes: ignoring the system (as the father Grinev does in The
Captain’s Daughter); rebelling against it (as Pugachev does); or using the specificities of
the system for one’s own benefits (as Masha Mironova and Grinev do). The first two
ways end in the characters’ death, social or physical, and only the third one gives a
positive outcome. Pushkin’s protagonists are not the only ones who know this rule;
Leskov’s trickster-heroes also use – in their own way – the specificities of the soulless
bureaucratic system successfully. Aware of this, the protagonist of Twelve also tries to
manipulate the jury, but when it does not work, finds another way to achieve his goal: he
himself assumes the protective function that the system fails to provide. This institutes
him as a superhero and thus an addition to Zaslavsky’s paradigm.
Moreover, in sharp contrast to their Western counterparts, Russian law-related
sources evince skepticism about the power of the word, reasoning and rhetoric in legal
issues. This skepticism is expressed by opposing the word to the deed, on the one hand,
and to silence, on the other, and through the opposition between the oral and written
word. As Lotman pointed out, in Tolstoy’s play The Power of Darkness (1886), the
tongue-tied uneducated peasant Akim is the character who speaks the truth and expresses
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the author’s moral values (Kul’tura i vzryv 143). This tendency is clearly present in all
analyzed texts: Pushkin minimizes his petitioners’ verbal appeal for mercy; Leskov’s
tricksters succeed in their activities without any words; and Mikhalkov’s film shows
skepticism towards the power of the word and public discussion and the visual image’s
prevalence over it at all levels of its artistic structure.
Weisberg specifically links the “failure of the word” with advancements of
capitalism and the realist novel – a “reflective stage” of European culture, when “the
mimetic artist took a step back and began to perceive law and legalistic reasoning all
around him” (7). However, in Russian culture, this phenomenon seems to have deeper
roots, as evidence of it is found long before the 1860s. Moreover, although the scholar
concedes that in spite of the protagonists’ resentment and verbosity that produce
injustice, “the use of words in the service of positive values” remains “a magnificent
possibility” (Weisberg 178), Russian culture presents a more pessimistic view on the
matter.
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Paradoxically, this disdain towards the word is the result of the word’s high
status in Russian Orthodox culture. The standard of the word is the Word that was “in the
beginning” and “was God” (John 1:1), and against this standard any other word
inevitably fails.
Lastly, a few words must be said about the relevance of this research project to
future scholarly endeavors. For the purposes of the present analysis, literary and
cinematic material was limited to three main authors, but this dissertation can potentially
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One should notice that none of the texts analyzed in this dissertation contain an explicit criticism of
lawyers’ verbosity producing injustice, like that expressed, for instance, in the images of Dostoevsky’s
Ippolit Kirillovich and Fetiukovich.
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be developed into a monograph with the national specificity of the Russian understanding
of law, justice and mercy constituting its core. By taking representative samples from the
last two centuries of Russian culture, this research has presented a generalized picture of
the national legal thought, correlating it with the Western legal tradition, on the one hand,
and the established canon of Russian legal writing, on the other. However, the scope of
analysis can and should still be taken further into the past as well as into the more recent
times and expanded to new authors, media and sociopolitical questions. For the future,
the most obvious and productive direction in the development of this research is its
further integration into the dynamic Law, Culture and the Humanities movement.
The 1990s and 2000s, the years of transition from the Soviet era to a new quasi-
democratic paradigm and to a reaction against it eventually leading to Putin’s growing
authoritarianism, are of a particular interest. In Russian society, this period, similar to the
1860s, was perceived as an opportunity for “reinventing Russian justice,” – to use
Murav’s words (71). Also, it gives an idea of the future development of the “legal triad”
in the country. Beyond literature and the visual culture of this time, the press and
coverage of high-profile criminal cases, such as those of Vitaly Kaloyev, Alexander
Taran, the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and the “Arctic 30” Greenpeace activists,
provide rich material for analysis. The question of the influence of such trials as those of
Stanisław Kronenberg, Vera Zasulich, Rosalia Oni, the Gimer family, etc. on classical
Russian literature has been studied in depth, and it is time now to examine the
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correspondences in the spheres of law, literature and media in very recent texts.
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How
the present-day legal reality is reflected in Russian literature and film: are there any
changes in the nation’s legal mind or does the old stereotype still dominate it?
Nowadays, the rule of law plays a crucial role in the evaluation of a country and for
its image in the world; it affects politics, economics, international relationships, tourism,
etc. In all the latest polls and surveys conducted by national and foreign organizations,
Russia has constantly shown high results: high levels of corruption, high crime rate, high
investment risks, and a high resistance to the rule of law. All these features, obviously,
slow down Russia’s integration into the world community and widen the gap between
Russia and the West. This demonstrates the ultimate importance of analyzing and
understanding the existing national legal tradition, its power and persistence. What
Jessica Wilson called Russia’s “cultural aversion” to the rule of law cannot be explained
simply by the inefficiency of its judicial institutions and procedures, which leads to
people’s preference for settling legal matters outside of the judicial system, or by
“circumventing” it. Russian legal thinkers offer a possible explanation for why Russians
accept the existing situation and generally do not try to change it and for why all attempts
to do so – initiated from above – have failed. According to Paramonov, “Russian people
are apolitical… they don’t want to participate in politics… in Russian understanding, any
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At the time of writing this conclusion, the news provides numerous examples that prove that the Russian
idea of law, justice and mercy is alive and well. On December 18, 2013, the Russian parliament passed an
amnesty law concerning mainly first-time offenders, minors and women with small children. This amnesty,
backed by President Vladimir Putin and timed to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Russia’s
constitution, among other prisoners, sets free Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from Pussy
Riot and the Greenpeace activists (currently on bail) charged with hooliganism. Without doubt, amnesties
happen from time to time in all world countries, yet the proximity of the Olympics and a rather selective
application of the amnesty law lead the media to treat it as an instance of supreme mercy.
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authority is sinful, and the justification for the authority is in the fact that it takes the sin
upon itself. It turns out that a tyrant is very similar to Jesus Christ. Here are the limits of
the Russian collective unconscious” (my translation). Russian legal thought is thus both
apolitical and politically-determined at the same time.
Apart from the possible application in social sciences and in educating society, the
findings of this dissertation make a contribution to Law and Literature studies,
specifically with regard to Russian culture. The Law and Literature movement is
relatively new to Russian literary and film criticism, and this research goes some way to
expanding the field both in terms of methodology and the material covered. Moreover,
this dissertation’s comparative approach and references to the groundwork done by
Western scholars help to integrate Russia into the existing discipline of Law and
Literature, and this is to be continued.
Finally, one should not forget that the Law and Literature movement still
interconnects with studies of literature and cinema, and traditional literary and film
criticism can benefit from a new – “legalistic” – perspective on old and often-studied
texts. For this reason, Law and Literature studies can be successfully incorporated into
the academic curriculum of Russian and Slavic departments. It cannot be denied that
sensational criminal cases and national legal problems – in real life as well as in art –
tend to attract considerable public attention, and inevitably arouse interest of students of
Russian culture.
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-------. “Pigmei.” In his Sobranie sochinenii v 12 t. Moskva: Pravda, 1989. Vol. 2. 34-46.
Print.
-------. Satirical Stories of Nikolai Leskov. Trans. William B. Edgerton. New York:
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Zholkovsky, Alexander, and Yurii Shcheglov. Raboty po poetike vyrazitel’nosti.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Krivoruchko, Anna
(author)
Core Title
Justice and how to attain it in Russian literature and film
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Publication Date
04/15/2014
Defense Date
03/16/2014
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries