Kamenski Alexander Borisovich
– D.Sci., Professor, the Head of Chair of Early and Early Modern Russian History, Russian State University for Humanities
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Street hooligans is a phenomenon well known to lodgers both of large cities and small towns around the world nowadays and ages ago. But while now the police mostly punishes the hooligans by itself outside the courtroom, it was different in the mediaeval and early modern time when their cases were usually put on a trial and not the deeds of the hooligans but violation of honour was looked into. Using examples from the life of the town Bejetsk in 1760-s the article aims at showing that opposite to widely spread perceptions, an individual was defended in an archaic type of community organization even better than in modern society by the very fact of his inclusiveness in the community. The community considered violation of honour of one of its members to be an insult to the whole community. There also existed certain limits in which one’s behaviour could deviate. The violation of these limits was taken as a threat to community’s stability by destroying its collective reputation.