Before the imposition of a moratorium on the death penalty in our country, capital punishment was carried out by shooting. But on August 1, 1946, the former commander-in-chief of the Russian Liberation Army "traitor No. 1" Andrei Vlasov and a group of his associates were hanged in Moscow. And this was far from the only execution in the form of hanging.
The death penalty in the Soviet Union
Unlike many other states, the USSR has never been very diverse in the choice of forms of the death penalty. Neither the electric chair, as in the United States, nor hanging, as in many European states of that time, nor chopping off the head, as in the Middle East, was practiced in the USSR.
As you know, on October 28, 1917, the Second Congress of Soviets abolished the death penalty in Soviet Russia, but already on September 5, 1918, the death penalty in the country was restored, which was explained by the need to introduce capital punishment against counter-revolutionary elements and bandits. Nevertheless, attempts to limit the death penalty were undertaken practically throughout Soviet history. On July 27, 1922, the death penalty was banned for persons under 18 and pregnant women.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the death penalty in the Soviet Union was carried out by firing squad. The verdict was carried out first by the security units, then by individual perpetrators. In this, the Soviet capital punishment differed from pre-revolutionary Russia, in which not only were they shot (mostly military personnel), but also hanged.
However, when in the summer of 1918 a peasant uprising against Soviet power broke out in the Penza province, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin personally sent a telegram to the Penza Bolsheviks, in which he demanded to hang 100 kulaks and "bloodsuckers", focusing on hanging, as the people should see the hung enemies. Nevertheless, the main instigators of the uprising were shot.
In Stalin's time, including during the purges of the mid - second half of the 1930s, death sentences were also carried out by shooting. They were shot both at special training grounds and in the prisons themselves. The killings of prisoners by other means were in all cases extrajudicial.
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Why did the hanging come back during the war?
The Great Patriotic War made its own adjustments to the capital punishment. By the way, shortly after the victory over Nazi Germany, in 1947, the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces issued a Decree of 1947-26-05 "On the abolition of the death penalty", according to which capital punishment should no longer be applied in peacetime.
However, already in January 1950, "at the request of the workers" the execution was returned for traitors, spies and saboteurs, and in the 1960 Criminal Code of the RSFSR the death penalty was provided for a very impressive list of crimes - from treason to the Motherland to rape with especially grave consequences. Executions also continued by the method of execution, but in a short period of time - from 1943 to 1947 - such a measure of execution as hanging was also actively used.
In the spring of 1943, Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR No. 39 of April 19, 1943 was issued "On measures of punishment for German fascist villains guilty of murder and torture of the Soviet civilian population and prisoners of the Red Army, for spies, traitors to the motherland from among Soviet citizens and for their accomplices ". It was at this time that the Soviet state security organs already possessed comprehensive information about the atrocities of the Nazi occupiers and their accomplices in the occupied territories.
In paragraph 1 of the decree, the death penalty by hanging was established for German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish “fascist villains” convicted of murder and torture of civilians and prisoners of the Red Army, as well as for spies and traitors from among Soviet citizens. Thus, the decree of April 19, 1943 was unique, since never before or later in the Soviet Union hanging as a capital punishment did not appear.
The Soviet leadership decided to use hanging against the Nazi executioners and their henchmen, guided by the need to show the people the inevitability and harshness of punishment for war crimes. The execution looked like a more humane measure of punishment, and in the case of hanging, the execution was carried out publicly and the hanged criminals hung for some time to the delight of the Soviet people and intimidation of other executioners and traitors of the Soviet people.
But in practice, the hanging was also used by field courts at the front in relation to the captured Nazi punishers and policemen. For example, from December 15 to 18, 1943, at the military tribunal of the 4th Ukrainian Front, there was a trial over a Gestapo employee and a traitor from among the citizens of the USSR. Both defendants were sentenced to death by hanging and hanged.
First trial against traitors
On July 14-17, 1943, in Krasnodar, by this time liberated from the Nazi invaders, the first trial took place over a group of traitors who collaborated with the Nazis and guilty of the massacres of Soviet citizens - civilians and soldiers of the Red Army.
11 arrested traitors who served in the SS-10-A Sonderkommando and the Krasnodar police were brought before the tribunal. Paramonov, Tuchkov and Pavlov received 20 years of hard labor each, and those who more "distinguished themselves" in the murders of civilians Tishchenko, Rechkalov, Pushkarev, Naptsok, Misan, Kotomtsev, Kladov, Lastovin were sentenced to death by hanging and on July 18, 1943 at 13 hours were hung on the central square of Krasnodar.
About 50 thousand people were present at the execution of the policemen from the Sonderkommando. This was, perhaps, the first such large public execution of traitors during the war. Then similar processes with the public hanging of war criminals took place in a number of other cities of the Soviet Union - in Kiev, Nikolaev, Leningrad.
Vlasov, Krasnov and Semenov
A number of prominent traitors to the Motherland and White émigrés who collaborated with Hitler's Germany and imperialist Japan were sentenced to death by hanging.
On May 12, 1945, on the territory of Germany, Soviet servicemen detained the commander-in-chief of the Russian Liberation Army, former Soviet General Andrei Vlasov. Soon, his other prominent associates from among the military leaders of the ROA were arrested.
The trial of Vlasov and the "Vlasovites" took place on July 30-31, 1946. It was of a closed nature, although usually the Nazis and traitors "for edification" were tried and executed in public. But in the case of the Vlasovites, the Soviet leadership refused to publicize the trial, as it feared that Vlasov would begin to expound anti-Soviet views. On August 1, 1946, Andrei Vlasov and his associates were executed by hanging. They were burned and their ashes were buried in the ground.
On May 28, 1945, in the city of Lienz, the British command transferred to the Soviet Union 2.4 thousand Cossacks captured by British troops who fought on the side of Nazi Germany. Among them were such notable figures as Cavalry General Peter Krasnov, Lieutenant General Andrei Shkuro, Major General Timofey Domanov, Major General Sultan-Girey Klych.
All these people, former white officers, supported Hitlerite Germany during the Great Patriotic War, took part in the formation and direction of Cossack units to the eastern front. In particular, since September 1943, Peter Krasnov served as head of the Main Directorate of the Cossack Forces of the Imperial Ministry of the Eastern Occupied Territories of the Third Reich.
Timofey Domanov was a marching chieftain of the Cossack Camp and a member of the Main Directorate of the Cossack Forces of the Imperial Ministry of the Eastern Occupied Territories of Germany. Andrei Shkuro since 1944 served as chief of the Cossack Troops Reserve at the General Staff of the SS Forces, had the ranks of lieutenant general of the SS troops and SS Gruppenführer and was responsible for training the Cossack formations of Hitler's Germany. Finally, Sultan-Girey Klych commanded formations from the highlanders of the North Caucasus, which were part of the Cossack Camp of General Krasnov.
Together with Krasnov, Shkuro, Domanov and Sultan-Girey Klych, Lieutenant General Helmut von Pannwitz was brought to trial. Unlike the Cossack generals listed above, Pannwitz had nothing to do with Russia - he was a Prussian aristocrat by birth and from a young age served in the German army. When Germany attacked the USSR in 1941, Pannwitz commanded a reconnaissance battalion with the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the front, he quickly made a career and was transferred to the apparatus of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces, dealing with the creation of armed formations from among the peoples of the USSR, primarily the Cossacks.
In 1944, Pannwitz was promoted to lieutenant general. By this time, he was in charge of the Cossack units of Hitlerite Germany, and in March 1945 he was elected the Supreme Campaign Ataman of the Cossack Camp. That is, Pannwitz was not a native of Russia and a traitor to the Motherland, respectively, but was an ordinary German general. And he had every reason to avoid extradition to the Soviet Union, as he was a subject of Germany, but he voluntarily agreed to be extradited to the USSR. Pannwitz suffered the fate of other leaders of the Cossack Camp - he was sentenced to death by hanging. On January 16, 1947, Krasnov, Shkuro, Domanov, Sultan-Girey Klych and von Pannwitz were hanged on the territory of the Lefortovo prison by a court sentence.
In August 1945, after the victory over Japan, the Soviet security organs arrested a number of former white emigrants and traitors to the Motherland, who went over to the side of the Japanese Empire and engaged in subversive activities against the Soviet Union during the war. Among them was the famous participant in the Civil War, Ataman Grigory Semyonov, Lieutenant General of the White Army, who, after emigration from Russia, actively participated in the affairs of the Bureau for Russian Emigrants in the Manchurian Empire (BREM).
From 26 to 30 August 1946, the trial of the "Semenovites" was held in Moscow. Eight people appeared before the tribunal - ataman Grigory Semyonov himself, Lieutenant Generals Lev Vlasyevsky and Alexei Baksheev, Finance Minister in the Kolchak government Ivan Mikhailov, leader of the All-Russian Fascist Party Konstantin Rodzaevsky, member of the leadership of the All-Russian Fascist Party Lev Okhotin, journalist Nikolai Ukhtomsky, former white officer Boris Shepunov. Ukhtomsky and Okhotin were sentenced to 20 and 15 years of hard labor, Baksheev, Vlasyevsky, Rodzaevsky, Mikhailov and Shepunov were sentenced to death, and Grigory Semyonov was sentenced to death by hanging.
Thus, ataman Semyonov became the only defendant who was sentenced to be hanged and hanged on August 30, 1946. In fact, he was punished, albeit belatedly, for his actions during the Civil War in Russia, since during the Second World War Semyonov no longer played a special role in the activities of the Japanese special services against the USSR, he was more of a symbolic figure.
After the trials of Nazi punishers and traitors, hanging as a capital punishment was no longer used in the Soviet Union. Policemen and punishers exposed in the 1960s and 1970s were already sentenced to death by firing squad.
Author: Ilya Polonsky
