SPECIFICS OF DEATH PENALTY AT THE ZAPOROZHIAN COSSACKS: THE PROBLEM OF LACK OF EXECUTIONER ON THE SICH

The article attempts to clarify the absence of the executioner profession in the territory of the Zaporozhye Cossacks. The reasons for the spread of the executioner profession in the European society of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times are analyzed. During this period, the emergence of the executioner profession led to interrelated processes: a change in views on the nature of the crime and the purpose of punishment, the centralization of power in European states, and the appreciation of justice. It was found that the profession of executioner is also in Eastern Europe: in Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Moscow kingdom and later in the Russian Empire. In Ukraine, executioners were a rare profession, but not because of its lack of demand, but because of the widespread negative attitude towards it. It was established that the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, this border and militarized society, which was formed outside the titular territory, was inherent in the reproduction of elements of the archaic social organization. The article touched upon two such secondary potest institutions: the collectivism of the Cossack society and the power of the ataman, which rested primarily on his personal qualities and was limited by custom and Sich society. The pride of these potestary and egalitarian structures made the existence of the executioner profession in Zaporozhye impossible, which led to the formation of specific methods of the death penalty. One of these methods was described in the memoirs and historical literature of the XVIII-XIX centuries (the oral narration of the former Cossack N. Korzh about the Zaporozhian customs, the memories of Archimandrite Leonty about his travels to the Sich, a historical study of a military engineer and historian O. Rigelman) a procedure in which a convict sitting on a horse himself had to throw a loop upon himself while hanging. Another common procedure (both the death penalty and corporal punishment) is the collective beating of a criminal with batons by Cossacks. An analysis of these procedures indicates a close connection between the public organization of the Sich and its criminal policy.