Focussing on the nineteenth century, this article will show how the crime of instigating suicide emerged as part of an (inadequate) effort to correct the abuses of serfdom in Russia, but would, by the 1860s, become a (likewise inadquate) tool to regulate familial relations – specifically, the abuse of wives & children. In both periods, prosecution was predicated on a paternalist model which justified the intervention of the state in personal relations. The ways in which patriarchy was experienced & negotiated on the part of subordinate groups is also explored. (88 notes) JA