Nusikaltimai ir visuomenė XIX amžiaus Lietuvoje
LTNesitikėdami išsamiai ir visapusiškai ištirti nusikalstamumo istoriją XIX amžiaus Lietuvoje, kuri tuo metu išgyveno svarbius politinius, kultūrinius, socialinius pokyčius, pasinaudosime, mūsų nuomone, perspektyviu Vytauto Kavolio pasiūlymu. Mokslininkas, rašydamas apie kultūros istorijos nagrinėjimo galimybes, kada „negalime iškart aprėpt visumos", siūlė susikoncentruoti ties kokia nors reikšminga kultūros detale, stebėti, kaip istorijos eigoje keičiasi tos detalės forma, turinys, funkcionavimas, nes: „Gilindamiesi į detalę, bandydami ją perskaityti kiek galima išsamiau, esmingiau, atrakiname visumą, kuriai ta detalė priklauso." Ir šioje knygoje mažiau dėmesio skirsime XIX amžiaus baudžiamosios statistikos analizei ar nusikaltimų dinamikos rekonstravimui. Specialiai lieka nenagrinėta ir nusikaltimo sampratos evoliucija. Neaptarinėsim ir tuo metu populiarių nusikaltimo etiologijos koncepcijų. Nusikalstamumo aprašymą pradėsime nuo carinės Rusijos valstybinių institucijų, kurių pagrindinis uždavinys - nusikaltimų fiksavimas, prevencija ir represija, raidos (modernėjimo) XIX amžiaus Lietuvoje. Taigi nusikalstamumą analizuosime ne tiesiogiai, bet per „carinės prievartos mašiną", kurios vieni svarbiausių elementų buvo vykdomoji policija ir penitenciarinė kalėjimų sistema. Pabandysim išsiaiškinti, kaip šios represinės institucijos evoliucionavo, ypač XIX amžiaus viduryje, dėl politinių sukilimų, baudžiavos panaikinimo ir teismų reformos, koks buvo jų kovos su nusikaltimais efektyvumas.Taip pat mėginsim atsakyti į klausimą, kaip oficialus (valdžios) požiūris į kelis baudžiamųjų nusikaltimų tipus koreliavo su dominuojančiais Lietuvos visuomenėje. Pasinaudojant gal ir nelabai vykusiu palyginimu, nusikaltimas mums bus tas pjesės veikėjas, kuris pats scenoje retai pasirodo, bet apie jo buvimą žino visi kiti pjesės personažai ir žiūrovai [p. 10-12].
ENKnowledge about the society and its development would be incomplete without the study of marginal social phenomena, crimes among them. In the study of such phenomena, history of culture does not reject the experience of other sciences (criminology, sociology, history of law). It investigates the relationship between legal and moral norms. It has been maintained that, in different historical periods, different forms of offence caused moral outrage of varying degrees. The aim of study has been to seė how and why the practice of punishment, the penitentiary system and the crime-regulating institutions (e. g. police) are modernised. It is not considered enough to reconstruct the dynamics of crimes, rather, attempts are made to answer the question why the content of the notion of criminal offence changes and why some forms of offence are replaced by others. The chronological limits of the research are not chosen at random - most frequently they include 18th and 19th centuries, i.e. the historical period when the process of decomposition of estate society and its transformation into a modern civic one was becoming more intensive. The present study in the history of crime begins with a description of the Russian structures of repression. It focuses on the evolution of the police and the penitentiary system after the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and the uprising of 1863 as well as the efficiency of these institutions. It also investigates the relationship between the view of the state on some types of criminal offence and the prevailing norms of social behaviour. Lithuanian historiography does not contain special works devoted to the history of crime in the 19th century.Therefore, of major importance are those works of Lithuanian historians which study the various aspects of the modernisation of Lithuanian society (Egidijus Aleksandravičius, Juozas Jurginis, Antanas Kulakauskas, Vytautas Merkys, Leonas Mulevičius, Antanas Tyla, Rimantas Vėbra and others). Methodologically, of great significance are the studies of different Western European historians, which have especially grown in number in the second half of the 20th century (David Bayley, J. S. Cocburn, Michel Foucault, V. A. Gatrell, Pieter Spierenburg, Charles Tilly and others). Especially interesting are the works by the Polish historian Elżbieta Kaczyńska which, among other things, analyse the development of crime in Suvalkija, southwestern Lithuania, in the second half of the 19th century. There have survived numerous barely investigated historical sources: yearly and monthly reports of various Czarist officials, reports on the state of the police and prisons, correspondence of the central and local government concerning the reformation of the police and prisons, etc. Memoirs of prisoners (especially political) and various complaints also serve as a good source. All this is sufficient to investigate the problem through the analysis of historical literature and on the basis of historical sources. Without expecting to provide a consistent reconstruction of the evolution of crime and structures of repression, most attention was devoted to the changes that occurred in the mid-19th century. It was the period when serfdom was abolished, the uprising of 1863 took place and the peasant reform was carried out. All that was of paramount importance to the modernisation of the Lithuanian society. The new conditions which emerged following the reform and the uprising had a big influence on the development of crime and institutions of repression.At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, the police of the Russian Empire was decentralised and built on the basis of estate distinctions. Next to the state police there existed local police. Senior police officials were usually appointed by the administration while the district executive police - the lower municipal (zemskij) court - was comprised of local noblemen. The formation of the executive police in historical Lithuanian lands had some peculiarities that were determined by the Czarist policy in the "territories newly annexed to the Empire". After the 1794 uprising the Russian administration made attempts to stabilise the political and social situation as soon as possible by gradual russification of Lithuania and its integration into the Empire. These aims as well as the complex political situation made the authorities devote more attention to the organisation of executive police. It was understood that, without support from the Lithuanian social political elite, the administration would not be able to create an efficient system for the maintenance of order. That is why the first decrees of the authorities concerning the establishment of the police (1797 and 1798) increased the number of officials appointed by the state and tightened the control upon them without eliminating the nobility from the system of the executive police. Viewing these measures of police enforcement as a threat to their class privileges, Lithuanian nobility met them with hostility and spoke for their abolition. These attitudes among the nobility were strengthened by the fact that, at the beginning of the 19th century, the main task of the executive police was maintenance of social order rather than protection of private property. Besides, the former was understood as an unconditional execution of the orders and decrees passed by the authorities. [...].
