Death Penalty: Paradoxes of Russian History
After two death sentences were carried out in Belarus this week, the "progressive world community" again stirred up and began to resent this "medieval atrocity." Since the beginning of this year, the European Union, with almost a knife at its throat, has been demanding that Minsk immediately annul all sentences and introduce a moratorium on the death penalty as such. Belarus is blamed for the fact that it is the last country in Europe to execute its particularly sophisticated and bloody villains. But is there anything wrong or shameful in this? Perhaps looking at the answer will help us look into our own past.
In Russia, the death penalty has existed since ancient times. Not to say that our sovereigns were especially zealous in its application - where did they have to do with the same "enlightened Europeans", like the English Henry VIII. True, it would be fundamentally wrong to say that they completely shunned the block and ax. Perhaps, the reign of the two empresses - Elizabeth and Catherine II, stands in particular, in which a moratorium was introduced, in modern terms, to be executed in Russia. However, exclusively in criminal matters. State criminals (the same Pugachev) this grace did not concern.
By the time of the sunset of the Russian Empire, the number of death sentences given on its vast expanses was steadily declining, reaching fifty maximum a year. For the sharp increase (by 10 times!) In the number of executions, “thank you” should be said to the revolutionaries — first with their unbridled terror, and, subsequently, with the attempt of the 1905 revolution, they pushed the authorities to extremely harsh retaliatory measures. However, it was the revolutionaries who abolished the death penalty for the first time in Russia - after the February Revolution of 1917 the Provisional Government did it. True, for a very short time - such a mess reigned in the rapidly decaying army that the practice of shooting at the front had to be returned urgently. By the way, General Lev Kornilov, who was the hottest of all, advocated this, so there is nothing to blame the Bolsheviks, as some liberal “historians” do.
The Bolsheviks tried to abolish the death penalty completely and irrevocably after October. The II Congress of Soviets even issued a special decision on this subject. Without a doubt, the idealistic dreamers among this audience in great numbers truly believed that there would be no one to execute in the new world of freedom, equality and fraternity created by them. However, these did not last long - less than a year. In 1918, the Civil War began to seriously erupt in the country, to win in which (as, indeed, in any other), without shedding blood it was impossible. Yesterday’s idealists and romantics, wearing leather jackets and wearing Mausers, dispersed along the Denikin and Wrangel fronts to defend, as they continued to believe, universal happiness. The Red Terror began ...
The most interesting thing was that it cost the main battles of the Civil to decline, as the RSFSR made a new attempt to get rid of this "phenomenon alien to the proletarian state." The death penalty was abolished by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom of Soviet Russia in January 1920. Alas ... The ban lasted less than three months. Already in May of that year, revolutionary military tribunals received the right to be shot. Not only that - at the front and in regions under martial law, death sentences were not subject to appeal and were executed immediately.
It is hardly worth giving unambiguous and categorical assessments of that time and its people today. Only one thing is known for certain - both the Reds, the White, the “Extreme” and the “Moderate” were executed. It would be at least incorrect to reduce the entire tragedy of the Civil War in Russia to terror and the "atrocities" of one of the parties (which, moreover, were not two at all, but many more). The only thing that needs to be paid tribute to the Soviet regime is that in 1922, by a special decree, it forbade the execution of pregnant women and persons under the age of 18. In those days - incredible humanism.
They didn’t even try to get rid of the terrible “relic of the old world” - the death penalty entered the criminal law first of the RSFSR and then the USSR. It should be noted that by 1926 the number of “execution” articles in the Criminal Code decreased by half. And at most one of the thousand convicted in the Soviet Union fell under them. What happened next? Well, of course, “everyone knows” - 1937, the “Great Terror”, the Great Patriotic War, “not a step back”, the shooting of deserters ... Well, yes - it did. True, behind all these things, which have become commonplace cliches and clichés, there is one more thing - completely taking out the brain of our liberal-democratic public and plunging its representatives into the abyss of intolerable cognitive dissonance.
The only leader of the Soviet Union, once again abolishing the death penalty in the country, was Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin! It was made by him in oh, what a difficult and unsweetened year 1947, when, as it is customary to say now, the criminal situation in the country was not just difficult - terrible. Nevertheless, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, the death penalty in peacetime was abolished completely. For any crime! Well, unless in 1950 it was allowed to be used in exceptional cases against saboteurs, spies and traitors to the motherland. What to do - those who managed to sit out for some time after the end of World War II, at that time were exposed enough.
Stalin was harsh. Sometimes it’s terrible. It was he who returned the hanging to the practice of criminal punishment of the USSR - by Decree defining the punishment “for fascist villains” of 1943. Yes, they jerked-sometimes massively, as in Leningrad or Krasnodar, and even after the end of the war. But who was they hanging? Police officers, punishers, accomplices of the Nazis. I am sure - in people who survived the horror of the occupation, during which, at times, the fascist lackeys far exceeded the atrocities of the owners, these executions did not cause anything but approval. At the same time, Vlasov and his henchmen and geeks like Krasnov, who exchanged the Russian uniform for Hitler’s, were attached to the loop. And here, I am sure, again, Stalin showed respect for the old traditions. In the Russian Empire they hanged those who lost their honor, dishonored their uniform, changed their oath. The Supreme rightly believed that for the Nazi henchmen the bullet was too fat.
Even for criminals who committed a premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances, the death penalty was returned after the death of Stalin - in 1954. One of the "democrats" deigns to be ironic about this - "at the numerous requests of the working people." But, perhaps, it would not be worth taking these words in quotation marks. After the end of World War II, along with the devastation, homelessness and a host of other problems, the USSR also received a tremendous increase in crime. Gangsterism, the number of armed robberies and other violent crimes grew especially. I deeply doubt that the inhabitants of Saratov wrote a letter to Pravda in 1945 stating that "the city was terrorized by robbers and murderers" under the dictation of the secretary of the local city party committee. Rather, they took great risks with such performances, but they could no longer remain silent.
"Mercy" in relation to the murderers ... Your will, for me there is an attempt in this to combine categorically incompatible. Therefore, the shooting of the fifteen-year-old Arkady Neiland, which happened already in 1964, under Khrushchev and made a lot of noise in the West, I cannot even blame him. After describing how a minor ghoul with an ax shredded the mistress of the house (15 strokes!), Then hacked her three-year-old son, and then calmly sat down to have breakfast there? And later - he shot the body of the murdered woman, stolen in the apartment "Zorkiy", so that later ... to sell the photos ?! Sorry - I can’t condemn. Like the introduction of the death penalty for rape in the same years.
But in some other way Nikita Sergeyevich remained true to himself. It was this “lamp of humanism” and the “fighter against bloody Stalinism” that returned the execution for crimes economic - in particular, for bribes and “illegal currency transactions”. At the same time, Khrushchev, with the same spontaneity, spat on the laws - that economies, that of jurisprudence, also wanted to have “retroactive force” in these decisions. That is, they could be applied to those whose crimes were committed before the introduction of the new legal norm. The prosecutors and the judge groaned, moaned, and fulfilled the will of the Secretary General. Having received initially 8 years of imprisonment in the course of the infamous “Rokotov case”, the “foreigners” were soldered first for 15 years, and then, after a new “trial”, which took place at the personal request of Khrushchev, they shot everyone completely.
Russia's actual (but not legal!) Abolition of the death penalty in 1996 was related to the desire of then-President Boris Yeltsin to "join the civilized world to the maximum." Well, how about the Council of Europe and the like ... Nevertheless, the notorious Protocol No. 6 (on the complete abolition of such) by our country was signed, but not ratified. In the State Duma, three bills are gathering dust, the purpose of which is the complete exclusion of such punishment from domestic legislation. And - the voices of some deputies are heard about the need to return the death penalty, at least for special cases ... According to opinion polls, the number of Russians who believe that “it is necessary to shoot”, if it decreases over the years, is very small.
Is the death penalty a panacea in the fight against crime? Unlikely. Is it an “absolute evil” that must be eradicated at all costs? I don’t think so. In general, my personal opinion is that people who were at least once present at the identification of people killed by criminals by their relatives have the right to enter into discussions about the admissibility of the death penalty. For the rest, excuse me, an understanding of the true nature of the issue remains unavailable - despite the titles, academic degrees and titles.
On the other hand, another thing is obvious - Europe, which is radiant with humanism and philanthropy, which today is trying to taunt Belarus for the execution of two notorious murderers, did not even express a shadow of indignation or, at worst, "concern" about the fact that recently in the Helmand province of the United States Air Force a family of 30 people was "accidentally" destroyed. In one fell swoop! Such a “fight against terrorism”, of course, is by no means a violation of human rights. Obviously, Afghans are not people, but Americans can send them to the other world in families, tens and hundreds without any court at all. And all the "human rights activists" are silent - as if they were typing water into their mouths.
This is not humanism, gentlemen. This is the most common hypocrisy, having nothing to do with it. Perhaps you should think hard - is it worth it to dance to his tune?
In Russia, the death penalty has existed since ancient times. Not to say that our sovereigns were especially zealous in its application - where did they have to do with the same "enlightened Europeans", like the English Henry VIII. True, it would be fundamentally wrong to say that they completely shunned the block and ax. Perhaps, the reign of the two empresses - Elizabeth and Catherine II, stands in particular, in which a moratorium was introduced, in modern terms, to be executed in Russia. However, exclusively in criminal matters. State criminals (the same Pugachev) this grace did not concern.
By the time of the sunset of the Russian Empire, the number of death sentences given on its vast expanses was steadily declining, reaching fifty maximum a year. For the sharp increase (by 10 times!) In the number of executions, “thank you” should be said to the revolutionaries — first with their unbridled terror, and, subsequently, with the attempt of the 1905 revolution, they pushed the authorities to extremely harsh retaliatory measures. However, it was the revolutionaries who abolished the death penalty for the first time in Russia - after the February Revolution of 1917 the Provisional Government did it. True, for a very short time - such a mess reigned in the rapidly decaying army that the practice of shooting at the front had to be returned urgently. By the way, General Lev Kornilov, who was the hottest of all, advocated this, so there is nothing to blame the Bolsheviks, as some liberal “historians” do.
The Bolsheviks tried to abolish the death penalty completely and irrevocably after October. The II Congress of Soviets even issued a special decision on this subject. Without a doubt, the idealistic dreamers among this audience in great numbers truly believed that there would be no one to execute in the new world of freedom, equality and fraternity created by them. However, these did not last long - less than a year. In 1918, the Civil War began to seriously erupt in the country, to win in which (as, indeed, in any other), without shedding blood it was impossible. Yesterday’s idealists and romantics, wearing leather jackets and wearing Mausers, dispersed along the Denikin and Wrangel fronts to defend, as they continued to believe, universal happiness. The Red Terror began ...
The most interesting thing was that it cost the main battles of the Civil to decline, as the RSFSR made a new attempt to get rid of this "phenomenon alien to the proletarian state." The death penalty was abolished by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Sovnarkom of Soviet Russia in January 1920. Alas ... The ban lasted less than three months. Already in May of that year, revolutionary military tribunals received the right to be shot. Not only that - at the front and in regions under martial law, death sentences were not subject to appeal and were executed immediately.
It is hardly worth giving unambiguous and categorical assessments of that time and its people today. Only one thing is known for certain - both the Reds, the White, the “Extreme” and the “Moderate” were executed. It would be at least incorrect to reduce the entire tragedy of the Civil War in Russia to terror and the "atrocities" of one of the parties (which, moreover, were not two at all, but many more). The only thing that needs to be paid tribute to the Soviet regime is that in 1922, by a special decree, it forbade the execution of pregnant women and persons under the age of 18. In those days - incredible humanism.
They didn’t even try to get rid of the terrible “relic of the old world” - the death penalty entered the criminal law first of the RSFSR and then the USSR. It should be noted that by 1926 the number of “execution” articles in the Criminal Code decreased by half. And at most one of the thousand convicted in the Soviet Union fell under them. What happened next? Well, of course, “everyone knows” - 1937, the “Great Terror”, the Great Patriotic War, “not a step back”, the shooting of deserters ... Well, yes - it did. True, behind all these things, which have become commonplace cliches and clichés, there is one more thing - completely taking out the brain of our liberal-democratic public and plunging its representatives into the abyss of intolerable cognitive dissonance.
The only leader of the Soviet Union, once again abolishing the death penalty in the country, was Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin! It was made by him in oh, what a difficult and unsweetened year 1947, when, as it is customary to say now, the criminal situation in the country was not just difficult - terrible. Nevertheless, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, the death penalty in peacetime was abolished completely. For any crime! Well, unless in 1950 it was allowed to be used in exceptional cases against saboteurs, spies and traitors to the motherland. What to do - those who managed to sit out for some time after the end of World War II, at that time were exposed enough.
Stalin was harsh. Sometimes it’s terrible. It was he who returned the hanging to the practice of criminal punishment of the USSR - by Decree defining the punishment “for fascist villains” of 1943. Yes, they jerked-sometimes massively, as in Leningrad or Krasnodar, and even after the end of the war. But who was they hanging? Police officers, punishers, accomplices of the Nazis. I am sure - in people who survived the horror of the occupation, during which, at times, the fascist lackeys far exceeded the atrocities of the owners, these executions did not cause anything but approval. At the same time, Vlasov and his henchmen and geeks like Krasnov, who exchanged the Russian uniform for Hitler’s, were attached to the loop. And here, I am sure, again, Stalin showed respect for the old traditions. In the Russian Empire they hanged those who lost their honor, dishonored their uniform, changed their oath. The Supreme rightly believed that for the Nazi henchmen the bullet was too fat.
Even for criminals who committed a premeditated murder under aggravating circumstances, the death penalty was returned after the death of Stalin - in 1954. One of the "democrats" deigns to be ironic about this - "at the numerous requests of the working people." But, perhaps, it would not be worth taking these words in quotation marks. After the end of World War II, along with the devastation, homelessness and a host of other problems, the USSR also received a tremendous increase in crime. Gangsterism, the number of armed robberies and other violent crimes grew especially. I deeply doubt that the inhabitants of Saratov wrote a letter to Pravda in 1945 stating that "the city was terrorized by robbers and murderers" under the dictation of the secretary of the local city party committee. Rather, they took great risks with such performances, but they could no longer remain silent.
"Mercy" in relation to the murderers ... Your will, for me there is an attempt in this to combine categorically incompatible. Therefore, the shooting of the fifteen-year-old Arkady Neiland, which happened already in 1964, under Khrushchev and made a lot of noise in the West, I cannot even blame him. After describing how a minor ghoul with an ax shredded the mistress of the house (15 strokes!), Then hacked her three-year-old son, and then calmly sat down to have breakfast there? And later - he shot the body of the murdered woman, stolen in the apartment "Zorkiy", so that later ... to sell the photos ?! Sorry - I can’t condemn. Like the introduction of the death penalty for rape in the same years.
But in some other way Nikita Sergeyevich remained true to himself. It was this “lamp of humanism” and the “fighter against bloody Stalinism” that returned the execution for crimes economic - in particular, for bribes and “illegal currency transactions”. At the same time, Khrushchev, with the same spontaneity, spat on the laws - that economies, that of jurisprudence, also wanted to have “retroactive force” in these decisions. That is, they could be applied to those whose crimes were committed before the introduction of the new legal norm. The prosecutors and the judge groaned, moaned, and fulfilled the will of the Secretary General. Having received initially 8 years of imprisonment in the course of the infamous “Rokotov case”, the “foreigners” were soldered first for 15 years, and then, after a new “trial”, which took place at the personal request of Khrushchev, they shot everyone completely.
Russia's actual (but not legal!) Abolition of the death penalty in 1996 was related to the desire of then-President Boris Yeltsin to "join the civilized world to the maximum." Well, how about the Council of Europe and the like ... Nevertheless, the notorious Protocol No. 6 (on the complete abolition of such) by our country was signed, but not ratified. In the State Duma, three bills are gathering dust, the purpose of which is the complete exclusion of such punishment from domestic legislation. And - the voices of some deputies are heard about the need to return the death penalty, at least for special cases ... According to opinion polls, the number of Russians who believe that “it is necessary to shoot”, if it decreases over the years, is very small.
Is the death penalty a panacea in the fight against crime? Unlikely. Is it an “absolute evil” that must be eradicated at all costs? I don’t think so. In general, my personal opinion is that people who were at least once present at the identification of people killed by criminals by their relatives have the right to enter into discussions about the admissibility of the death penalty. For the rest, excuse me, an understanding of the true nature of the issue remains unavailable - despite the titles, academic degrees and titles.
On the other hand, another thing is obvious - Europe, which is radiant with humanism and philanthropy, which today is trying to taunt Belarus for the execution of two notorious murderers, did not even express a shadow of indignation or, at worst, "concern" about the fact that recently in the Helmand province of the United States Air Force a family of 30 people was "accidentally" destroyed. In one fell swoop! Such a “fight against terrorism”, of course, is by no means a violation of human rights. Obviously, Afghans are not people, but Americans can send them to the other world in families, tens and hundreds without any court at all. And all the "human rights activists" are silent - as if they were typing water into their mouths.
This is not humanism, gentlemen. This is the most common hypocrisy, having nothing to do with it. Perhaps you should think hard - is it worth it to dance to his tune?
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