The Russian Noblewoman Catherine the Great Couldn't Find a Law For

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]In 18th century Russia, killing your own serfs almost never brought a sentence.

[00:00:06]Darya Saltykova killed 138 of them. She was 26 when her husband died, leaving her three estates and a thousand serfs. By Russian law, her property. The killing started almost at once. She did the work herself. A rolling pin, boiling water from her own kettle, iron tongs heated to the face, hair torn out by the fistful. Most victims were young women, brides especially.

[00:00:37]One serf, Yermolai Ilyin, lost three wives to her in seven years. 21 complaints were filed over seven years.

[00:00:46]None reached anyone. The local police took 120 rubles to look away, four times their salary. Priests were paid to drop the bodies into the pond or bury them in the woods. Complainants were flogged and sent east to Siberia. In 1762, Ilyin and another serf escaped to St. Petersburg. They reached the new empress, Catherine the Great. Her investigators opened the estate books.

[00:01:14]The death rate among women on Saltykova's land had no medical explanation. The investigation took six years. The verdict? None. The Senate refused to sign such a verdict, so Catherine signed one alone. She called Saltykova a monster of the human race, stripped of name, title, 1 hour chained to a Red Square scaffold while crowds spat at her. Then, a hole 2 m beneath a Moscow convent, 11 years without daylight. A candle given only when food arrived. Her conditions eased slightly after that. She never saw freedom again.

[00:01:54]She died in 1801, mad and unrecognized.