CONFLICTS BETWEEN MILITARY PERSONNEL OF THE RUSSIAN REGULAR ARMY UNITS IN SIBERIA IN THE 18TH CENTURY (BASED ON MATERIALS OF JUDICIAL AND INVESTIGATIVE CASES)

Abstract

The paper analyzes conflicts that arose between servicemen in the units of the Russian army in Siberia during the middle and 2nd half of the 18th century. This particular aspect for the historical period under research still remains without any attention both in historical studies and in modern military conflict studies. The author set the goal of finding out, whether people of unprivileged origin, who were serving in the ranks of the regular army, have had some features of moods and behavior. These features, according to Boris Mironov and Pavel Shcherbinin, make it possible to refer such people to the “military estate” as a special group or even an institution in the social structure of the Russian Empire in the 18th century. Archival materials, such as several judicial and investigative cases, containing documents of military court proceedings of crimes (including murders) and the sentences passed on them, were used to solve this problem. In particular, the cases of the murder of a soldier by a dragoon, the murder of an officer by a soldier, as well as insults in a drunken state by an officer to a higher commander are studied. The analysis of these judicial and investigative cases leads to the conclusion that Mironov and Shcherbinin’s point of view can not be confirmed. It is hardly possible to say that the servicemen of the Russian regular army in the 18th century, who did not belong to the nobility by origin, constituted the “military estate” as a special group or even an institution, having their own specific interests, moods and social behavior. Conflicts in the army units stationed in Siberia rather suggest that the same conflicts and antagonisms inevitably arose in the armed forces of the empire as among the civilian population.