Encyclopedia of Russian History

In 1918 the Winter Palace and its art collection were nationalized, and in 1922 most of the building became part of the State Hermitage Museum. Substantial restoration work was interrupted by the outbreak of war, during which the museum staff performed heroically. The State Hermitage Museum reopened in 1945, and since that time the former Winter Palace has become the object of scrupulous preservation efforts devoted to one of the world’s greatest museums.

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH

See also: ELIZABETH; FRENCH INFLUENCE IN RUSSIA; MUSEUM, HERMITAGE; RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO; ST. PETERSBURG

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Orloff, Alexander, and Shvidkovsky, Dmitri. (1996). St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press.

WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD

WITCHCRAFT

Russian witchcraft is best seen as a remnant of East Slavic, pre-Christian, pagan practices, elements of which survived into modern times. The earliest written record that mentions witchcraft dates to 1024 and appears in a chronicle describing the execution of sorcerers in Suzdal. Literary sources continued to speak of sorcery in later centuries and, in most cases, were connected to allegations of witchcraft causing inclement weather, droughts, crop failure, and other phenomena that resulted in famine and pestilence.

During the Kievan era (roughly 900 to 1240) the most common form of popular (extralegal) witch trial appears to have been ordeal by cold water and execution by burning at the stake. As early as the second half of the eleventh century, however, Rus princes granted the Church official authority over witchcraft trials. Contrary to the Byzantine canonical practice of executing suspected witches, the Rus princes established relatively nominal monetary penalties for practicing sorcery. Despite this, unofficial persecutions of sorcerers continued to take place on occasion.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Muscovy saw a marked increase in the preoccupation with witchcraft. With the 1551 Stoglav Council headed by Ivan IV (1533-1584), the Muscovite government and church took an active interest in battling witchcraft. The council recommended that the state impose the death penalty for sorcerers, and that the church excommunicate such offenders. Ivan IV s Decree of 1552, while disregarding the recommendation of imposing the death penalty, transferred witch trials to state jurisdiction, thereby transforming witchcraft into a civil offence. This formed the background for the use of allegations of criminal witchcraft for political purposes. DurENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ing the reign of Ivan IV, and more so through the subsequent Time of Troubles, the Muscovite ruling elite invoked charges of witchcraft to persecute their political enemies, both at court and outside of Moscow.

Witchcraft trials saw their heyday during the seventeenth century, when the death penalty came to be systematically applied to the guilty. However, the Muscovite witch hunts were much smaller in scale than those that were occurring in contemporary communities of Western Europe. Although the tsars sent directives to the provinces to fight sorcery until 1682, the orders were not systematic and organized, nor were the persecutions. This, in large part, is because of the deep-rooted dvoeverie (dual-faith, the holding of conflicting belief systems) among most Russians, including the ruling elite, who had ambivalent views toward remnants of pagan practices. Also, unlike in the West, where much of the “witch craze” was directed against women, the Muscovite “witch scare” charged a proportional number of men (warlocks) with sorcery. This was probably connected to the occupation of the accused-unlike in the West, Muscovy men often acted as herbalists and village healers, which were professions commonly associated with witchcraft.

During the reign of Catherine II (1762-1796), the death penalty for witchcraft was abolished and the crime lowered to the level of fraud. In 1775 she transferred cases dealing with witchcraft to courts handling such affairs as popular superstition, juvenile crimes, and the criminally insane. Sorcery, however, persisted among the East Slavic peasants into the nineteenth century, in large part because of their continued use of charms, spells, potions, and herbs in folk medicine. See also: IVAN IV; KIEVAN RUS; TIME OF TROUBLES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Zguta, Russell. (1977). “Witchcraft Trials in Seventeenth-Century Russia.” The American Historical Review 82(5):1187-1207. Zguta, Russell. (1978). “Witchcraft and Medicine in Pre-Petrine Russia.” The Russian Review 37(4):438-448.

ROMAN K. KOVALEV

WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH