concept
Civil execution (pillory)
civil execution
also: гражданская казнь, позорный столб, pillory
A public degradation ceremony (grazhdanskaya kazn') in Imperial Russian criminal procedure, in which a condemned prisoner was bound to a post (позорный столб, the 'pillory' or 'post of shame') before a crowd as a prelude to sentencing, most famously endured by Dostoevsky's Petrashevsky circle; in the embedded story Winkel poisons himself on the eve of undergoing it.
Reading notes
- The Commission §41 позорному столбу
The "pillory of public shame" (позорный столб) refers to the public post used in a "civil execution" (grazhdanskaya kazn'), a formal degradation ceremony preceding sentencing for certain serious crimes -- the same ritual most famously endured by Dostoevsky and the Petrashevsky circle in 1849. Winkel's aunt's petition to spare him this ordeal, and his suicide on its eve, both hinge on the real weight this public humiliation carried.