Adam
Budesheim
In
Leo Tolstoy’s class novel, Anna Karenina,
divorce plays a decisive role. Anna
becomes involved in an adulterous affair with a young military officer, Alexey
Vronsky. Knowledge of the affair
becomes widespread quite rapidly, and when Anna is unable to break off her
relations with Vronsky, her husband, Alexey Karenin, decides to seek a divorce.
Karenin’s visit to a St. Petersburg lawyer reveals some of the many
problems faced by those who sought a divorce in late imperial Russia.
Divorces in Russia during the late nineteenth century
were quite rare, and for good reason. The
restrictions placed on divorce were very stringent.
The Orthodox Church, through its governing body, the Holy Synod, had
complete control over marriage and divorce.
The Orthodox Church viewed marriage as an indissoluble sacrament, and
therefore was extremely resistant to granting any types of divorce.
There were, however, specific reasons for which a divorce might be granted. The most common reason was if one spouse was convicted of a crime and exiled to Siberia. The Church readily granted divorces in such cases because definitive proof of exile, such as an official document from the courts, was easily obtainable. The Church did not wish to leave spouses, especially wives, in a state in which they could not receive the support they needed to survive due to the loss of their spouses.
Another common ground for divorce was desertion on
the part of one spouse. It was
officially classified as desertion if the spouse was missing for five
consecutive years. The Church was rigorous in its standards of investigation to
determine that the spouse actually had been missing for the full five years, and
had not left due to severe physical abuse, before granting the divorce.
In cases of adultery, the Church was unbending in its
requirements for proof. This made
the situation particularly difficult, since one of those forms of proof was the
testimony of two eyewitnesses. As
most affairs are carried on in secret, it is unlikely that eyewitnesses to the
adulterous act can actually be found. As
a result, the wealthy were sometimes put in a position in which they were forced
to bribe certain Church officials or to pay individuals to claim to be
eyewitnesses. Peasants, due to
their meager financial resources, were unable to attempt such means of attaining
“proof” and thereby were very rarely able to obtain a divorce.
Sexual incapacity and impotence were also grounds for
divorce. The physical problem (the
Church did not consider psychologically derived impotence as grounds for
divorce) must have existed prior to the marriage and must have prevented the
actual consummation of the marriage through intercourse.
Even if it became clear that pregnancy was not physically possible within
the marriage, if the act of intercourse had taken place, there was no chance for
a divorce.
A final, though extremely rare instance of divorce,
was if one spouse apostatized from the Orthodox Church, or if one spouse from a
non-Orthodox marriage converted to the Orthodox Church.
In both these cases, the Church was concerned with preserving the faith
of member of the Church and granted a divorce out of the belief that a spouse of
a different faith might corrupt the faith of the Orthodox spouse.
The Orthodox Church had such limited possibilities
for divorce and such rigorous examinations of the evidence that divorce was
extremely rare in imperial Russia. The
proceedings were often so complex that only the wealthy could afford to dedicate
the time and energy towards receiving the divorce.
Alexey Karenin might have been able to obtain the divorce, but even that
is highly unlikely, given a lack of eyewitnesses.
The affair was extremely well known in the upper circles of Russian
society, but without eyewitnesses, the divorce would not be granted.