The Practice of Punishments in Criminal Law in Russia in the 1760s

The article presents a study of the practice of punishments in the criminal law of Russia in the 1760s on the materials of property crimes without the use of violence. As part of the study of the structure of the court and investigation, the main types of punishments used at that time, the frequency and basis of their application, as well as the main trends of their changes associated with the reforms of Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, as well as the level of influence of the ideals of the Enlightenment era are considered. The research is based on unpublished materials of the Moscow Investigative Expedition, based in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts that had not previously attracted the attention of researchers of the criminal law of Russia of the 18th century. The article analyzes the material from the corpus consisting of more than 300 investigative cases, from which cases for 1764 were selected for representation - 50 cases, 78 cases under investigation and 83 sentences in total. The study examined the practice of sentencing, execution, the specifics of punishments in relation to various social groups, the use of whips and lashes as corporal punishment methods and the frequency of the use of exile to penal servitude. The results of the study indicate the importance of transformations in criminal proceedings in the middle of the 18th century – first of all, the moratorium on the use of the death penalty, as well as changes in the procedural foundations of the trial of individual estates, became the most important stages in reforming the existing system of law, which during the reign of Elizabeth and Catherine II was under a high level of influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment.