Knout

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A knout (rhymes with "boot") is a heavy scourge-like whip, usually made of a bunch of rawhide thongs attached to a long handle, sometimes with metal wire or hooks incorporated. The English word stems from the French transliteration of a Russian word.

Russian original

Some claim it was a Tatar invention and was introduced into Russia in the 15th century, maybe by Grand duke Ivan III the Great (1462-1505). Others trace the word to Varangians and derive it from the Swedish knutpiska, a kind of whip with knots. Still others maintain it is of generic Germanic origin, not necessarily Scandinavian, comparing it with the German Knute, Dutch Knoet, Anglo-Saxon cnotta, English knot.

The Russian knout had different forms. One was a lash of raw hide, 16 inch long, attached to a wooden handle, 9 inch long. The lash ended in a metal ring, to which was attached a second lash as long, ending also in a ring, to which in turn was attached a few inches of hard leather ending in a beak-like hook. Another kind consisted of many thongs of skin plaited and interwoven with wire, ending in loose wired ends, like the cat-o-nine tails. It served as the official method of corporal punishment used in Russia for flogging criminals and political offenders.

The victim was tied to a post or on a triangle of wood and stripped, receiving the specified number of strokes on the back. A sentence of 100 or 120 lashes was equivalent to a death sentence; but few lived to receive so many. Even twenty lashes could maim; with the specially extended Great Knout twenty blows could kill.

The executioner was usually a criminal who had to pass through a probation and regular training, being let off his own penalties in return for his services. Peter the Great is traditionally accused of knouting his son Alexis to death, and there is little doubt that he was actually beaten till he died, whoever was the executioner.

The emperor Nicholas I abolished the earlier forms of knout in 1845, and substituted the pleti, a three-thonged lash. Ostensibly the knout has been abolished throughout Russia and reserved for the penal settlements, mainly in Siberia, adding another cruelty to the often fatal harsdhips of convict life there.

Elsewhere

The dreaded instrument became synonymous in western European languages with what was seen as the tyrannical cruelty of the autocratic government of Russia, much as the sjambok brought to mind the Apartheid government of South Africa or lynching the period of Jim Crow in America. The expression "under the knout" is used to designate harsh totalitarianism.

Sources and references

(incomplete) This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{#if:{{{article|}}}| article {{#if:{{{url|}}}|[{{{url|}}}}} "{{{article}}}"{{#if:{{{url|}}}|]}}{{#if:{{{author|}}}| by {{{author}}}}}}}, a publication now in the public domain.