18. An Escalation of Abuses
Darya Saltykova’s abuses of her serfs began on the relatively mild end of things, but worsened steadily as time went by. At first, when she disapproved of the work performed by one of her servants – especially if the servant was a girl – she threw sticks at them. Then she went from throwing sticks to hurling logs at her serfs. The violence escalated, and before long, she began to beat her servants. Then she began to torture them. Finally, she tortured them to death. The murderous widow’s wrath was directed mainly at females.
Of the hundreds of Saltykova’s murder victims, only three were male, and all three of them were killed by accident. When she wanted to wreak vengeance on men, she did not torture them directly but forced them to watch her torture and murder their female kin. One of her male serfs, for example, lost three wives, one after the other, to Saltykova’s depravities. Her viciousness towards her female serfs knew no bounds. She tortured and murdered them throughout the entire age spectrum, from babies to aging crones.
