Traditional practice until the beginning of the 20th century in the Russian Empire, snokhachestvo () referred to sexual relations between a pater familias (bolshak) of a Russian peasant household (dvor) and his daughter-in-law (snokha) during the minority or absence of his son.
Presumably this practice was originally (before Christianization) a polyandrous union in which one woman had two husbands, with one of these husbands being the son of the second. Finally as âÂÂsnokhachestvo" it was formed after Christianization
Historians and ethnographers differ in their assessments of the prevalence and character of snokhachestvo. While some authors described it as a relatively widespread feature of the patriarchal peasant household, others considered it rare, concealed, or strongly condemned within rural communities. Much of the available evidence derives from ethnographic reports, court records, and informant testimony from the nineteenth century, which sometimes present conflicting accounts.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, a number of social and economic factors have been identified by historians as contributing to the occurrence of such practices, including the conscription of young men and seasonal labor migration, which often left wives in the household of their husbands' families.
With a view to attracting additional workers to the household, marriages in rural Russia were frequently contracted when the groom was six or seven years old. During her husband's minority, the bride often had to tolerate advances of her assertive father-in-law. For example, in the middle of the 19th century in Tambov Governorate, 12âÂÂ13-year-old boys were often married to 16âÂÂ17-year-old girls. The boys' fathers used to arrange such marriages to take advantage of their sons' lack of experience. Snokhachestvo entailed conflicts in the family and put moral pressure on the mother-in-law, who usually treated her son's wife as a rival for her own husband's affections.
According to historian S. G. Fedorov, one of the explanations of snokhachestvo is connected with the structure of the traditional peasant household. In large peasant families, several nuclear families of different generations usually lived together under the authority of the bolshak, the head of the household. He notes that some researchers interpret snokhachestvo as a customary practice with historical roots, arguing that in certain cases a bride was sought not only as a wife for the son but also as an additional worker for the household. Fedorov notes that snokhachestvo was associated with serious crimes in some cases.
, by contrast, links the phenomenon more specifically to demographic factors. She argues that peasant marriages were often arranged primarily for economic reasons and that significant age disparities between spouses were not uncommon. Such asymmetries, she suggests, could contribute to the spread of snokhachestvo, though they did not automatically result in it.
In European canon law, prohibitions on incest extended not only to relations between blood relatives (consanguinity) but also to certain relations by marriage (affinity). In the Russian Empire, similar prohibitions were reflected in both ecclesiastical and civil law; relationships by affinity were treated as a form of kinship, and marriage or sexual relations within certain degrees were prohibited. Under imperial law in cases involving close affinity relations, punishments could include exile to the Tomsk or Tobolsk governorates or confinement in correctional detention wards. In practice, however, especially in applying customary law, penalties could be less severe and might include corporal punishment such as lashes.
Ethnographer and writer Sergey V. Maksimov, in his study Sibir' i katorga (1871), analyzed criminal statistics relating to convictions for incest in the Russian Empire. According to data he cited for a nine-year period, 61 men and 48 women were convicted of such offenses.
He reported that such cases were recorded most frequently in the Tobolsk, Vyatka, and Perm governorates, as well as in the territory of the Don Cossack Host and in the Poltava and Kharkov governorates, and that they were most common among peasants, with a particularly high incidence among former military settlers and Don Cossacks. Among the forms of incest reflected in these statistics, relations between a father-in-law and daughter-in-law occupied the most prominent place. Maksimov wrote that, unlike many other forms of incestâÂÂmost of which, in his account, involved coercionâÂÂsnokhachestvo represented a form of relationship that could be based on mutual agreement between the participants. At the same time, according to historian Sergey G. Fedorov, Maksimov regarded snokhachestvo as a morally reprehensible phenomenon associated with further adulterous relations.
Ethnographer P. M. Bogaevsky describes snokhachestvo as uncommon among Sarapul peasants and not regarded as a typical or widespread practice, noting that it was only occasionally justified by reference to the Bible.
Ethnographer notes that in the Tomsk Governorate only seven court cases of snokhachestvo were recorded between 1836 and 1861, all involving coercion, suggesting that the practice was relatively rare or often concealed.
The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary notes that peasants generally regarded snokhachestvo as a crime, though not a particularly serious one, as reflected in volost court decisions.
There is still a debate in historical scholarship as to whether peasant lynching was a norm of customary law, or whether it was an extraordinary measure that went beyond this law. In any case, peasant vigilante justice was very often bypassed by snokhachestvo due to the dominance of the large patriarchal family in the village, which was the economic and spiritual core of the rural world.
Snokhachestvo was regarded by the Russian Orthodox Church as a form of incest arising from relations by affinity, and as unseemly by the obshchina, the rural community. Understandably, cases of snokhachestvo were not publicized and the crime remained latent, making it difficult to assess its true extent in the Russian Empire.
One of the first Russian writers to decry snokhachestvo, describing it as a form of "sexual debasement", was Alexander Radishchev, who saw it as an outgrowth of Russian serfdom. In the 19th century, its resurgence was fueled by obligatory conscription and "the seasonal departure of young men for work outside the village."
Snokhachestvo remained relatively widespread even after the abolition of serfdom in 1861. Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, a jurist, resented the fact that "nowhere it seems, except Russia, has at least one form of incest assumed the character of an almost normal everyday occurrence, designated by the appropriate technical term." The Narodnik writer Gleb Uspensky, while deploring the plight of young peasant women, sympathized with "the emotional and physical needs of the mature peasant man."
The condescending attitude of the villagers to snokhachestvo was due to the legacy of patriarchal life and the authority of the Bolshak in the peasant family. In the provinces, for example, "in the Oryol province the attitude towards daughter-in-law relations was tolerant." In the villages of and , peasants even said that this "has been the practice for a long time, not by them, but by their elders."
Ethnographer devoted a substantial study to various aspects of Don Cossack life, including the practice of snokhachestvo. Among the Don Cossacks, marriages were often arranged by the parents. Kharuzin noted that among Old Believer Don Cossacks, fathers sometimes married their sons at a very young age to women aged about twenty or older, ostensibly to bring a worker into the household. In such cases, the bride was chosen âÂÂof course, one that he himself likedâ and after the wedding began paying her court. âÂÂThe attention of the head of the household and the full freedom he granted would flatter the daughter-in-lawâÂÂs vanity.â By the 1880s, ethnographic accounts suggest that attitudes toward such practices were changing: ethnographer M. N. Kharuzin recorded complaints from older Cossack men who claimed that young brides sometimes invoked accusations of improper conduct by a father-in-law in order to leave an arranged marriage. According to their account, a bride who wished to depart shortly after the wedding might allege harassment, even where none had occurred. As men from the Chernyshevskaya stanitsa reportedly told Kharuzin: âÂÂA girl might fall for someone else before the wedding, and three days after it, she leaves. And then the only excuse the women give is, âÂÂThe father-in-law has been making advances,â even though he may not have done anything.â In some cases, snokhachestvo led to the murder of the father-in-law, committed either by his wife or by his own son. According to Cossack informants, more submissive wives, noticing their husband's illicit conduct toward the daughter-in-law, sometimes pretended not to see anything, believing that âÂÂgrief cannot be helped by swearing and shouting.âÂÂ
As the patriarchal peasant household continued to disintegrate and land divisions became more common, snokhachestvoâÂÂalready a vestigial phenomenon by the late 19th centuryâÂÂbegan to disappear altogether. The small, nuclear family became predominant in the village, with married sons and their parents living separately, and under such conditions, snokhachestvo no longer had any place.
There are sexual connotations in the relationship between Katerina and her father-in-law in Shostakovich's 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, but not in the 1865 story it is based upon.
In 1927, Olga Preobrazhenskaia, "the leading woman director of fiction films in the twenties", and her co-director, Ivan Pravov, released a film condemning snokhachestvo. Titled The Peasant Women of Ryazan (in Russian, ), the silent film is about the rape and pregnancy of a woman whose husband is away in World War I. The rapist is her father-in-law, and the woman, overcome by shame, drowns herself when her husband returns from battle.