Ritualized Violence Russian Style

Book excerpt: "This book argues that the Russian duel acquired its enduring prestige because it served to define and to defend personal autonomy in a hierarchical state that lacked legal guarantees against corporal punishment. To fight a tradition that tolerated superiors' punching and slapping their subordinates, Russian duelists embraced raw violence and incorporated it into dueling procedure, thus replacing the hierarchical - and therefore humiliating - violence of corporal punishment with the equalizing violence of the duel. Once made reciprocal, a punishing gesture (such as a slap in the face) lost its capacity to impose a hierarchy of authority and became a means of promoting equality between the parties."--BOOK JACKET.