In Peter's time, as in ours, torture was carried out to gather information, and public execution to deter further crimes. The fact that innocent men have confessed to escape further pain has never stopped torture, nor has the execution of criminals ever stopped crime. Undeniably, the state has a right to defend itself against people who break its laws, and perhaps even a duty to try to deter future infringements, but how far into repression and cruelty can a state or society descend before the means no longer justify the end? It is a question as old as political theory, and it will not be answered here. But it should be borne in mind when we read what Peter did.
At the Tsar's command, Prince Romodanovsky brought all the captured traitors to Preobrazhenskoe and constructed fourteen torture chambers to receive them. Six days a week (Sunday was a
day of rest), week after week, in what became an assembly line of torture, all the surviving prisoners, 1,714 men, were examined. Half of September and most of October were spent in lashing and burning the Streltsy with knout and flame. Those who had already confessed to one charge were re-interrogated on another. As soon as one rebel had revealed some new bit of information, all those who had already been questioned were dragged back in for re-examination on this point. Those who had lost their strength and almost their minds under torture were handed over to doctors to be restored by treatment so that they might be questioned further under new, excruciating tortures.
Major Karpakov, deeply implicated as one of the leaders of the rebellion, after being knouted and having his back roasted by fire, lost the power to speak and fainted. Worried that he might die prematurely, Romodanovsky put him in the care of Peter's personal physician, Dr. Carbonari. As soon as he was restored, he was again subjected to torture. A second officer who had also lost the power to speak was handed over to Dr. Carbonari for rehabilitation. By mistake, the doctor left his knife behind in the cell after working over the prisoner. The officer, unwilling that his life, which he knew was almost ended, be restored so that he could suffer more tortures, seized the knife and tried to cut his own throat. But he was already too weak and could not cut deeply enough. Before he could do himself fatal damage, his hand went limp and he fainted. He was discovered, partially cured and returned to torture.
All of Peter's principal friends and lieutenants were involved in the carnage. Men such as Romodanovsky, Boris Golitsyn, Shein, Streshnev, Peter Prozorovsky, Michael Cherkassky, Vladimir Dolgoruky, Ivan Troekurov, Fedor Shcherbatov and Peter's old tutor and Prince-Pope, Zotov, were chosen to participate, as a special mark of the Tsar's confidence. If the plot had spread and boyars were involved, Peter counted on these comrades to discover and faithfully report it. Peter himself, plagued by suspicion and fierce with anger, was often present and,-sometimes wielding his big, ivory-handled cane, personally questioned those who seemed most guilty.
But the Streltsy did not break easily, and their sheer endurance sometimes drove the Tsar to rage. "While one accomplice or rebel was being tied to a rack," wrote Korb,
his lamentations gave rise to a hope that truth might be pressed from him by torments; but no, for as soon as his body began to be stretched with the rope, besides the horrible cracking of his members which were being torn from their natural sockets, he remained mute, even when twenty strokes of the knout were superadded, as if the accumulation of his pain were too great to afflict the senses. All believed that the man must be crushed with excess of calamity to such a degree that he must have lost the power of moaning and of speech. So he was loosed from the infamous rack and rope, and then asked if he knew the persons present in the torture chamber. To the astonishment of all, he enumerated every one of them. But when they put a fresh question about the treason, once more he became utterly dumb, and did not break silence during a whole quarter of an hour, while he was roasted by a fire by the Tsar's command. The Tsar, tired at last of this exceedingly wicked stubbornness, furiously raised the stick which he happened to have in his hand, and thrust it so violently into his jaws— clenched in obstinate silence—to break mem open, and make him give tongue and speak. And these words too that fell from the raging man, "Confess, beast, confess!" loudly proclaimed how great was his wrath.
Although the interrogations were supposedly conducted in secret, all Moscow knew that something terrible was happening. Yet, Peter was anxious to hide the savage work, especially from foreigners; aware of the reaction that this wave of terror would produce in the Western courts he had just visited, he attempted to seal off his torture chambers from Western eyes and ears. Nevertheless, rumors provoked enormous curiosity. One group of Western diplomats ventured out to Preobrazhenskoe on horseback to see what they could learn. Passing three houses from which came appalling howls and groans, they stopped and dismounted in front of a fourth which emitted even more atrocious shrieks. Entering, they were startled to see the Tsar, Lev Naryshkin and Romodanovsky. As they retreated, Naryshkin asked them who they were and why they had come. Angrily, he ordered them to go to Romodanovsky's house so that the matter could be looked into. Mounting their horses, the diplomats refused, telling Naryshkin that if he had anything to say to them, he could come to their embassy and say it there. Russian soldiers appeared and a Guards officer attempted to drag one of the-diplomats out of his saddle. Desperately, the unwelcome visitors spurred their horses and galloped to safety past the soldiers running to block their way.
Eventually, reports of the horror reached such magnitude that the Patriarch took it upon himself to go to Peter to beg for mercy. He went carrying an image of the Blessed Virgin, reminding Peter of the humanity of all men and asking for the exercise of mercy. Peter, resenting the intrusion of spiritual authority on temporal matters, replied to the churchman with great feeling: "What are you doing with that image and what business is it of yours to come here? Leave immediately and put that image in a place where it may be venerated. Know that I reverence God and His Most Holy Mother more earnestly, perhaps, than you do. But it is the duty of my sovereign office, and a duty that I owe to God, to save my people from harm and to prosecute with public vengeance crimes that lead to the common ruin." In this case, Peter continued, justice and harshness were linked, the gangrene ran deep in the body politic and could be cut out only with iron and fire. Moscow, he said, would be saved not by pity but by cruelty.
Everyone fell within the sweep of the Tsar's wrath. Priests discovered to have prayed for the success of the rebellion were condemned to execution. The wife of a minor official, passing in front of a gibbet erected before the Kremlin, said of the men hanging there, "Alas! Who knows whether you were innocent or guilty?" She was overheard and denounced as one who expressed sympathy for condemned traitors, and she and her husband were arrested and examined. Able to prove that she was only expressing compassion for all humans who suffered, the couple escaped death, but was nevertheless exiled from Moscow.
Despite the wretched forced confessions, gasped between screams or torn from groaning, half-conscious men, Peter learned little more than Shein had already learned: that the Streltsy had meant to seize the capital, burn the German Suburb, kill the boyars and ask Sophia to rule them. If she refused, they would ask the eight-year-old Tsarevich Alexis and, as a last resort, Sophia's former lover, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, "for he had always been merciful to us." Peter did learn that no boyar or important member of the government or the nobility had been involved, but the most important questions were unanswered: Had there been a plot by important persons against his life and throne? And, most importantly, had Sophia known about or encouraged the uprising in advance?