Very educational! Here's an extract, autotranslated and tentatively edited, from the Wiki article on Ды́ба:
In the middle of the 17th century, Grigory Kotoshikin described the Russian 'dyba' as follows:
And torture is arranged for all thieves : they take off the thief’s shirt and bind his hands back, and tie him by the wrists with a rope - that rope is lined with felt - and they lift him to the top of the frame, like a gallows; his legs are tied with a belt; and one man, the torturer, steps on his feet, on the belt, and so pulls him back so the thief’s hands stand directly against his head, and come out of their joints; then, from behind the torturer; begins to beat him on the back with a whip from time to time; during the session there are thirty or forty blows; and when he hits him in a certain place on the back, it becomes, literally, as if a large strip is flayed off with a knife, just short of the bones. (...) After the first session of torture, he will not be condemned, but after a week they will suddenly torture him again and again, and burn him with fire, tying his hands and feet together, and putting a log between his arms and legs (like the 'parrot's perch'?), and then raise him up over the fire; and in other sessions they will heat iron tongs; and they break his ribs completely (...) The female sex suffers the same tortures as the male sex, except that their ribs are (not?) broken.
