Conclusion
Russian justice was brutal, but infused with an ideology of patrimonial mercy. This tension was never resolved. In fact, that patrimonial ideology occasionally demanded sovereign violence, as in 1648 and 1682 when Russian rulers were confronted with urban riots demanding justice.
As Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1648 and female regents on behalf of two minor ‘co-tsars' in 1682 faced crowds screaming for the heads of corrupt boyars, they understood the interpenetration of legitimacy and violence. To maintain legitimacy, they had to provide justice. To shield corrupt boyars from a crowd bent on arson and riot risked losing all control. In each case, these rulers appeased the crowd's moral economy by yielding one or two officials to murder by mob violence, so merciless were the expectations of political ideology. Peter I, a personal observer of this cruel interaction as co-tsar in 1682 at age 10, went on to create palace guards and establish a more distant stance for the autocrat but, as has been shown, neither he nor his successors abandoned the claim that the tsar was a patrimonial protector of his people. Russian rulers dispensed forgiveness, mitigated sentences, replaced most death sentences with exile, and wielded cruel violence against any opposition to themselves. Ruling empire in a situation of limited resources, Russian law balanced violence with mercy.
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