Snokhachestvo (Russian: снохачество; Ukrainian: снохацтво; Bulgarian: снахачество) was a form of sexual relationship historically attested among several Slavic peoples, particularly among Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Bulgarians, and Serbs, in which the head of a patriarchal extended peasant household had sexual relations with his daughter-in-law (his son's wife). Such relationships most commonly arose while the son was still underage or during his prolonged absence, were associated with the organization of the traditional peasant household, and survived in some regions until the early 20th century.
Historical accounts commonly describe a characteristic form of snokhachestvo as involving the marriage of an underage son to an older woman brought into the household as an additional worker, while the father assumed the role of her de facto husband until the son reached maturity.
Terminology
The term snokhachestvo derives from snokha ("daughter-in-law"), which in turn goes back to the Proto-Slavic *snъxa. Cognate terms are attested in several Slavic languages. Nayden Gerov's nineteenth-century Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language records the Bulgarian term snahachestvo, defining it as "when a father-in-law has illicit sexual relations with his daughter-in-law." Similarly, Ivan Franko used and defined the Ukrainian term snokhatstvo in his 1895 article Сліди снохацтва в наших горах (“Traces of Snokhachestvo in Our Mountains”), describing it as the custom whereby a father-in-law maintains conjugal relations with his daughter-in-law. Polish historian Adam Krawiec uses the term świekrostwo as the Polish equivalent of the Russian snokhachestvo.
Hypotheses of early origins According to legal historian and specialist in medieval law Władysław Abraham, snokhachestvo was interpreted as a remnant of some form of polyandry that existed among the Slavs before the adoption of Christianity. The exact nature of that form is unclear, as the practice may have already changed significantly by the time researchers began to observe and document it.
Historian Adam Krawiec similarly viewed the phenomenon as a form of polyandry, including fraternal polyandry among the Eastern Slavs. He suggested that snokhachestvo may have emerged or taken its final shape after Christianization, as a result of “enforced monogamization,” when the head of the household formally married a woman to his (often underage) son while continuing to live with her as his partner.
Abraham noted that a similar form of marriage existed among the pagan Prussians, where a son could inherit his father's wife: the father would use family resources to acquire a wife, and after his death, his son would marry her. He also pointed out that traces of polyandry observed among the Slavs resembled descriptions attributed to the Celtic Britons in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (1st century BCE):
“They have wives in common, especially brothers with brothers and fathers with sons.” — Gaius Julius Caesar, The Gallic War, Book V
Abraham also drew parallels with the relatively widespread practice of fraternal polyandry in the East.
Krawiec emphasized economic factors as a possible underlying cause of such arrangements, noting that the costs associated with marriage could encourage pooling of resources among male relatives. He also referred to the economic structure of the peasant household, where additional labor was often necessary for subsistence agriculture. Abraham likewise considered economic conditions a potential contributing factor, while acknowledging that multiple causes may have been involved.
Scholar and publicist Ivan Franko, in his 1895 article Сліди снохацтва в наших горах (“Traces of Snokhachestvo in Our Mountains”), also suggested ancient roots for the custom, but associated its occurrence primarily with the structure of the patriarchal extended peasant family (sometimes referred to as the zadruga). He argued that wherever such undivided family communes existed, snokhachestvo was more likely to occur.
Historical development and perceptions Ivan Franko suggested that a passage in the Primary Chronicle, a chronicle compiled in the early 12th century, may contain a reference to snokhachestvo among the Radimichs, Vyatichi, and Severians, noting that the chronicle describes behavior “before fathers and daughters-in-law” (“предъ отьци и предъ снохами”), which he interpreted as possibly indicative of such relations. Natalia Pushkareva has noted that the same chronicle describes marriage practices among these tribes as involving the consent of the bride, expressed by the phrase “with her agreement” (“с нею же кто съвещашеся”).
Władysław Abraham argued that after the introduction of Christianity, both the secular and ecclesiastical authorities of Rus’, opposing all forms of polygamy, also attempted—unsuccessfully—to eradicate those forms of polyandry associated with the development of snokhachestvo. As an example of such efforts, he pointed to the Church Statute of Yaroslav. A. Krawiec proposed a similar interpretation of the phenomenon.
As snokhachestvo was prohibited by law, references to it in archival sources are relatively rare. According to Abraham, a case described in Jan Piotrowski's Dziennik wyprawy Stefana Batorego pod Psków ("Diary of Stephen Báthory's Campaign against Pskov") constituted an example of snokhachestvo. In this account, while staying in Polotsk, Báthory recounts a case involving people who had been brought before him "recently here, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania": in this family, a thirteen-year-old boy was married to a woman with whom his father lived “as with a wife” while awaiting the son’s coming of age. Báthory presented the episode as an example of local customs that he sought to eradicate.
Abraham also argued that echoes of such relationships can be found in numerous folk tales and legends about relationships between mothers and sons in Ukraine, Belarus, and among the East Slavs.
An indication of such practices appears in an early 17th-century instruction issued by Princess Theophila Ostrogska (widow of Prince Ostrogski), whose estates were located in the Opir River valley (in the area of present-day Skole and Tukhlia). In the instruction, she prescribed: “If it should occur, as happens there [in the mountains], that a father-in-law lives in illicit relations with his daughter-in-law, he is to be punished by death, with the matter reported to me.” Ivan Franko regarded this passage as clear evidence that snokhachestvo existed at that time in the Skole Mountains (in the present-day Skole Beskids) and was apparently quite widespread, since Princess Ostrogska not only found it necessary to write a draconian decree against it but explicitly referred to the practice as something that "happens there" (i.e., in the mountains). Ivan Franko further argued that the severity of the prescribed punishment reflects the attitudes prevalent in the lowland regions from which the princess and her officials came (the princess herself having been born into the Polish Tarło family), where such practices were either unknown or regarded as a rare phenomenon, a “cultural remnant”. Franko further argued that the cruel and uncompromising persecution of snokhachestvo by Princess Ostrogska also shows that she was detached from the family structures that had led to its emergence and regarded it purely as a moral failing, the result of individual willfulness, rather than as a sociological issue—that is, one in which the individual’s will is more or less constrained by economic conditions, customs, and legal norms prevalent in their immediate environment.
About 170 years later, the Austrian traveler, naturalist, and pioneer of mountaineering Belsazar Hacquet reported the existence of snokhachestvo on the opposite side of the Skole Mountains, in the Hutsul region, noting that "formerly it had been more widespread than now." Ivan Franko cited this testimony in his article and suggested that Hacquet’s reference to Pokutians in fact referred to the Hutsuls. Franko further observed that the account appeared credible and may indicate that the custom was still present in the late 18th century.
Cases of snokhachestvo were not publicized and the crime remained latent, making it difficult to assess its true extent in the Russian Empire.
According to Laura Engelstein, Aleksandr Radishchev invoked snokhachestvo to illustrate what she describes as the abuse of power by men in patriarchal peasant families. In his A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790), Radishchev has the peasant woman Anyuta recount that she once refused a proposed marriage to a ten-year-old boy: "A prosperous peasant household once sought my hand for a ten-year-old boy, but I refused. What could I do with a child? By the time he came of age, I would already be old... They say that the father-in-law sleeps with his daughters-in-law until his sons grow up. That is why I did not want to enter that household. I wanted someone my own age."
Late nineteenth-century observers believed the custom was still alive, encouraged by the seasonal absence of young husbands working away from their villages, although it was increasingly condemned within peasant communities. According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, this attitude was reflected in volost court practice, where snokhachestvo was generally treated as an offence, though not a particularly serious one. The Narodnik writer Gleb Uspensky, while deploring the plight of young peasant women, sympathized with "the emotional and physical needs of the mature peasant man."Mondry, Henrietta. Pure, Strong And Sexless: The Peasant Woman's Body and Gleb Uspensky. Rodopi, 2005. , pp. 34–35.
Social and economic conditions in the 18th–19th centuries Regardless of how scholars have interpreted the historical origins of snokhachestvo, most modern scholars have emphasized the social and economic conditions associated with the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historians and ethnographers nevertheless differ in their assessments of its prevalence and character. While some authors described it as a relatively widespread feature of the patriarchal peasant household, others considered it rare, concealed, or strongly condemned within rural communities. Much of the available evidence derives from ethnographic reports, court records, and informant testimony from the nineteenth century, which sometimes present conflicting accounts.
Russian Empire The sources discussed in this subsection concern the historical Russian Empire, whose territory extended across parts of what are now Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other countries.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, a number of social and economic factors have been identified by historians as contributing to the occurrence of such practices, including the conscription of young men and seasonal labor migration, which often left wives in the household of their husbands' families.