“Our wives are loaded guns”: the Russian army and family-sexual culture (18th - first half of the 19th centuries)

The article analyzes the regular army’s growing influence on marriage, family and sexual relations in Russian society after Peter the Great’s reforms. The authors identify the major factors changing the forms and practices of sexual behaviour not only of the nobility, but also of common people. The main role was played by the regular army, a huge male cohort which, due to its high mobility and defiance of traditional forms of regulation in the marriage and family relations transformed the previous forms of sexual behaviour and created new ones. Based on archival documents, memoirs and folklore, the article indicates the corporative character of family and sexual orientations and behaviour models of the military men. It also reveals the influence of these relationships on the canonical type of church marriage. Comparing the phenomenon of “common people’s divorce” in Russia and England, the authors assume that the similarity of this phenomenon can be explained by the simultaneous interaction of the two factors: the formation of a regular army and the church reforms during Peter the Great’s time. The authors come to the conclusion about the deep influence of the army upon Russian society. The Russian Empire’s Army by way of its mere existence and its mode of existence facilitated the emergence of some signs of a civil union in the sphere of family and sexual relationships. The army, thereby, was a powerful driving force for modernizing the socio-cultural sphere.