"A duel is a form of combat between two people that occurs according to established rules with the goal of restoring honor and removing from the offended party the stain of shame inflicted by an insult. Thus the role of the duel is socially symbolic. It represents a specific procedure for the restoration of honor and cannot be understood without clearly contextualizing the concept of honor in the broader ethical system of the Russian Europeanized post-Petrine nobility. Of course, when seen from a principled position that rejects this understanding of honor, the duel loses its meaning and becomes ritualized murder. The Russian nobleman of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries lived and operated under the influence of two contradictory regulators of social behavior. As a loyal subject and servant of the state, he abided by the tsars' commands. Fear of the punishment awaiting the disobedient served as a psychological motivation for submission. Simultaneously as a member of the nobility and part of the social estate that was both a socially dominant corporation and the cultural elite, he abided by a code of honor. The psychological motivation for submission here was shame. The ideal that noble culture created for itself demanded a total rejection of fear and regarded honor as the primary determinant of conduct. Hence activities demonstrating fearlessness gained social significance. So, if the "regulated state" of Peter I viewed noblemen's conduct at war as a service benefitting the state and noblemen's bravery only as a means for achieving this goal, then from the perspective of honor, bravery turned into an end in itself. This became particularly evident in duels: danger and coming face to face with death became the purifying means for removing an offense."