Sovereign's Mercy in Russia of the 18th Century

This article is about the concept of "sovereign mercy," which was the most important component of the worldview of any Russian subject and was also used as an important channel for the representation of power. The contradictory context of using this concept makes it possible to re-evaluate the relationship between the throne and the individual in Russia in the 18th century. On the one hand, subjects always had a monarch's mercy as their last hope, which appeared in texts of petitions and especially in their officially established forms, which gave the relationship of the throne and the population in an "autocrat/ slave" paradigm. This well-established turn of phrase was an integral part of political official language and was most frequently used in petitions, court sentences, and so-called merciful manifestos. On the other hand, it cannot be said that the monarchs themselves treated the manifestation of sovereign mercy solely as an instrument of social control. Understanding the essence of sovereign mercy often was a serious, almost existential problem for the emperor, especially in the context of capital punishment and a "monopoly on violence." By supremely granting life to a sentenced criminal, the state also granted itself a "monopoly on mercy," which from the point of view of Catherine the Great, who created a compilation of ideas of enlightenment under the title of "Order" of the Legislative Commission, was a sign of the humanization of the of the throne's policies. A detailed comparison of the texts of the Italian philosopher Beccaria and the Order shows the diametrical positions of the Russian empress and the thinker. For Beccaria, any fact of sovereign mercy that was not secured by law and that was dependent on the will of the autocrat was proof of political despotism. For Russian monarchs and their subjects, the only source of monarchial mercy was the sacralized whim of the emperor.