Snokhachestvo

According to legal historian and specialist in medieval law V. Abraham, snokhachestvo was interpreted as a remnant of some form of polyandry that existed among the Slavs before the adoption of Christianity. The exact nature of that form is unclear, as the practice may have already changed significantly by the time researchers began to observe and document it.

Historian A. Krawiec similarly viewed the phenomenon as a form of polyandry, including fraternal polyandry among the Eastern Slavs. He suggested that snokhachestvo may have emerged or taken its final shape after Christianization, as a result of “enforced monogamization,” when the head of the household formally married a woman to his (often underage) son while continuing to live with her as his partner.

Abraham noted that a similar form of marriage existed among the pagan Prussians, where a son could inherit his father's wife: the father would use family resources to acquire a wife, and after his death, his son would marry her. He also pointed out that traces of polyandry observed among the Slavs resembled descriptions attributed to the Celtic Britons in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (1st century BCE):

“They have wives in common, especially brothers with brothers and fathers with sons.” — Gaius Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, Book V

Abraham also drew parallels with the relatively widespread practice of fraternal polyandry in the East.

Krawiec emphasized economic factors as a possible underlying cause of such arrangements, noting that the costs associated with marriage could encourage pooling of resources among male relatives. He also referred to the economic structure of the peasant household, where additional labor was often necessary for subsistence agriculture. Abraham likewise considered economic conditions a potential contributing factor, while acknowledging that multiple causes may have been involved.^[3][4]

Scholar and publicist Ivan Franko, in his 1895 article “Сліди снохацтва в наших горах” (“Traces of Snokhachestvo in Our Mountains”), also suggested ancient roots for the custom, but associated its occurrence primarily with the structure of the patriarchal extended peasant family (sometimes referred to as the zadruga). He argued that wherever such undivided family communes existed, snokhachestvo was more likely to occur.^[5]

Historians and ethnographers differ in their assessments of the prevalence and character of snokhachestvo. While some authors described it as a relatively widespread feature of the patriarchal peasant household, others considered it rare, concealed, or strongly condemned within rural communities. Much of the available evidence derives from ethnographic reports, court records, and informant testimony from the nineteenth century, which sometimes present conflicting accounts.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, a number of social and economic factors have been identified by historians as contributing to the occurrence of such practices, including the conscription of young men and seasonal labor migration, which often left wives in the household of their husbands' families.

With a view to attracting additional workers to the household, marriages in rural Russia were frequently contracted when the groom was six or seven years old. During her husband's minority, the bride often had to tolerate advances of her assertive father-in-law. For example, in the middle of the 19th century in Tambov Governorate, 12–13-year-old boys were often married to 16–17-year-old girls. The boys' fathers used to arrange such marriages to take advantage of their sons' lack of experience. Snokhachestvo entailed conflicts in the family and put moral pressure on the mother-in-law, who usually treated her son's wife as a rival for her own husband's affections.

According to historian S. G. Fedorov, one of the explanations of snokhachestvo is connected with the structure of the traditional peasant household. In large peasant families, several nuclear families of different generations usually lived together under the authority of the bolshak, the head of the household. He notes that some researchers interpret snokhachestvo as a customary practice with historical roots, arguing that in certain cases a bride was sought not only as a wife for the son but also as an additional worker for the household. Fedorov notes that snokhachestvo was associated with serious crimes in some cases, such as rape and murders motivated by jealousy.^[2]

Natalia Pushkareva, by contrast, links the phenomenon more specifically to demographic factors. She argues that peasant marriages were often arranged primarily for economic reasons and that significant age disparities between spouses were not uncommon. Such asymmetries, she suggests, could contribute to the spread of snokhachestvo, though they did not automatically result in it.^[6]

In European canon law, prohibitions on incest extended not only to relations between blood relatives (consanguinity) but also to certain relations by marriage (affinity).^[7] In the Russian Empire, similar prohibitions were reflected in both ecclesiastical (canon law) and civil law; relationships by affinity were treated as a form of kinship, and marriage or sexual relations within certain degrees were prohibited.^[8][9] Under imperial law in cases involving close affinity relations, punishments could include exile to the Tomsk or Tobolsk governorates or confinement in correctional detention wards.^[9] In practice, however, especially in volost courts applying customary law, penalties could be less severe and might include corporal punishment such as lashes.

Ethnographer and writer Sergey V. Maksimov, in his study “Сибирь и каторга” (“Siberia and Penal Servitude”, 1871), analyzed criminal statistics relating to convictions for incest in the Russian Empire. According to data he cited for a nine-year period, 61 men and 48 women were convicted of such offenses.^[10]

He reported that such cases were recorded most frequently in the Tobolsk, Vyatka, and Perm governorates, as well as in the territory of the Don Cossack Host and in the Poltava and Kharkov governorates, and that they were most common among peasants, with a particularly high incidence among former military settlers and Don Cossacks.^[10] Among the forms of incest reflected in these statistics, relations between a father-in-law and daughter-in-law occupied the most prominent place. Maksimov wrote that, unlike many other forms of incest—most of which, in his account, involved coercion—snokhachestvo represented a form of relationship that could be based on mutual agreement between the participants.^[10] At the same time, according to historian Sergey G. Fedorov, Maksimov regarded snokhachestvo as a morally reprehensible phenomenon associated with further adulterous relations.^[2]

Ethnographer P. M. Bogaevsky describes snokhachestvo as uncommon among Sarapul peasants and not regarded as a typical or widespread practice, noting that it was only occasionally justified by reference to the Bible.^[11]

Ethnographer N. A. Kostrov notes that in the Tomsk Governorate only seven court cases of snokhachestvo were recorded between 1836 and 1861, all involving coercion, suggesting that the practice was relatively rare or often concealed.^[12]

Similar observations were made in Galicia. Ivan Franko, in his article “Сліди снохацтва в наших горах” (“Traces of Snokhachestvo in Our Mountains”), reports that by the time of writing (late 19th century), isolated cases of snokhachestvo were recorded there, particularly in the Carpathian foothills.^[5]

Ivan Franko suggested that a passage in the Primary Chronicle, a chronicle compiled in the early 12th century, may contain a reference to snokhachestvo among the Radimichs, Vyatichi, and Severians, noting that the chronicle describes behavior “before fathers and daughters-in-law” (“предъ отьци и предъ снохами”)^[13], which he interpreted as possibly indicative of such relations.^[5] Natalia Pushkareva has noted that the same chronicle describes marriage practices among these tribes as involving the consent of the bride, expressed by the phrase “with her agreement” (“с нею же кто съвещашеся”).^[14]

V. Abraham argued that after the introduction of Christianity, both the secular and ecclesiastical authorities of Rus’, opposing all forms of polygamy, also attempted—unsuccessfully—to eradicate those forms of polyandry associated with the development of snokhachestvo. As an example of such efforts, he pointed to the Church Statute of Yaroslav.^[3] A. Krawiec proposed a similar interpretation of the phenomenon.^[4]

As snokhachestvo was prohibited by law, references to it in archival sources are relatively rare. According to Abraham, a case described in the Diary of the Last Campaign of Stephen Báthory against Russia (late 16th century) may be interpreted as an example of snokhachestvo. In this account, Báthory reports a case from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where a thirteen-year-old boy was married to a woman with whom his father lived “as with a wife,” awaiting the son’s maturity.^[15][3]

Abraham also argued that echoes of such relationships can be found in numerous folk tales and legends about relationships between mothers and sons in Ukraine, Belarus, and among the East Slavs.^[3]

There is still a debate in historical scholarship as to whether peasant lynching was a norm of customary law, or whether it was an extraordinary measure that went beyond this law. In any case, peasant vigilante justice was very often bypassed by snokhachestvo due to the dominance of the large patriarchal family in the village, which was the economic and spiritual core of the rural world.^[2]

Snokhachestvo was regarded by the Russian Orthodox Church as a form of incest arising from relations by affinity, and as unseemly by the obshchina, the rural community. Understandably, cases of snokhachestvo were not publicized and the crime remained latent, making it difficult to assess its true extent in the Russian Empire.

One of the first Russian writers to decry snokhachestvo, describing it as a form of "sexual debasement", was Alexander Radishchev, who saw it as an outgrowth of Russian serfdom. In the 19th century, its resurgence was fueled by obligatory conscription and "the seasonal departure of young men for work outside the village."^[16]

Snokhachestvo remained relatively widespread even after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, a jurist, resented the fact that "nowhere it seems, except Russia, has at least one form of incest assumed the character of an almost normal everyday occurrence, designated by the appropriate technical term."^[16] The Narodnik writer Gleb Uspensky, while deploring the plight of young peasant women, sympathized with "the emotional and physical needs of the mature peasant man."^[17]

The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary notes that peasants generally regarded snokhachestvo as a crime, though not a particularly serious one, as reflected in volost court decisions.^[9]

Ethnographic materials from the Oryol Governorate reveal divergent assessments. Some informants described tolerant attitudes toward certain forms of affinal sexual relations in villages such as Konevka and Melovoe, while other testimonies emphasized that such relationships were regarded as grave sins under Orthodox moral teaching. Modern historians have interpreted this material differently, highlighting either the tolerance of such practices or the persistence of strong religious condemnation.^[18][19]

In the 19th century, in villages around Sofia, Caribrod (now Dimitrovgrad), Breznik, Radomir, the Kyustendil region, and the Kraishte area, boys were often married at a young age to older women—typically grooms aged 15–18 and brides 20–25. According to historian and Slavist Konstantin Jireček in his The Principality of Bulgaria (1899), this practice was explained by the desire to introduce an additional adult worker into the household as early as possible, while daughters were kept in their parental homes longer so that their labor could continue to contribute to the family economy. Marriages were commonly arranged by parents without consulting the children, and in some cases girls were compelled to marry despite existing attachments. In such unions, the conjugal role of underage husbands was at times assumed by the father or another elder male relative, where such figures still existed. Jireček associated these practices with domestic conflict, including disputes, divorce, and occasionally violent outcomes. He recounts a case from the Kraishté area in which a peasant, having married off his still very young son, killed his daughter-in-law after failing to establish the desired relations, and was subsequently sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment.^[20]

Ethnographer M. N. Kharuzin devoted a substantial study to various aspects of Don Cossack life, including the practice of snokhachestvo. Among the Don Cossacks, marriages were often arranged by the parents. Kharuzin noted that among Old Believer Don Cossacks, fathers sometimes married their sons at a very young age to women aged about twenty or older, ostensibly to bring a worker into the household. In such cases, the bride was chosen “of course, one that he himself liked” and after the wedding began paying her court. “The attention of the head of the household and the full freedom he granted would flatter the daughter-in-law’s vanity.” By the 1880s, ethnographic accounts suggest that attitudes toward such practices were changing: ethnographer M. N. Kharuzin recorded complaints from older Cossack men who claimed that young brides sometimes invoked accusations of improper conduct by a father-in-law in order to leave an arranged marriage. According to their account, a bride who wished to depart shortly after the wedding might allege harassment, even where none had occurred. As men from the Chernyshevskaya stanitsa reportedly told Kharuzin: “A girl might fall for someone else before the wedding, and three days after it, she leaves. And then the only excuse the women give is, ‘The father-in-law has been making advances,’ even though he may not have done anything.” In some cases, snokhachestvo led to the murder of the father-in-law, committed either by his wife or by his own son. According to Cossack informants, more submissive wives, noticing their husband's illicit conduct toward the daughter-in-law, sometimes pretended not to see anything, believing that “grief cannot be helped by swearing and shouting.”^[21]

As the patriarchal peasant household continued to disintegrate and land divisions became more common, snokhachestvo—already a vestigial phenomenon by the late 19th century—began to disappear altogether. The small, nuclear family became predominant in the village, with married sons and their parents living separately, and under such conditions, snokhachestvo no longer had any place.^[22][23]