On August 2, 1996, Sergei Aleksandrovich Golovkin, found guilty of murder and rape of adolescents, was shot in the special block of the Butyrka prison, thus becoming the last convicted person in Russia to be subjected to the death penalty.
Twenty years have passed. There is no execution in Russia, although the death penalty is provided for by the Criminal Code for a number of especially grave crimes. At the same time, the ruling of the Constitutional Court of November 19, 2009 says that "the death penalty should neither be imposed nor executed." Say, if once a citizen received guarantees of certain rights and freedoms (and he received them when Russia joined the Council of Europe in 1996) in accordance with the Constitution and the international legislation adopted by the country, then no Criminal Code is now a decree. It turns out that in order to return the death penalty to the Russian Federation, as 60% of citizens demand, according to the latest opinion polls, it is necessary to amend the Basic Law. The process is long and expensive. Should I get involved in it?
PEOPLE "BEST" AND "EVIL"
The death penalty appeared during the primitive period. The elder gathered his fellow tribesmen and decided what to do with the villain. It is logical to assume that he was executed in very exceptional cases. Every hunter, warrior was in abundance, so it was wiser to tuck the killer into a “fine” - to force him to compensate his relatives for the losses from the death of one of the tribe members with hard work.
Roughly the same alignment persisted with the appearance of the first generic associations. The highest justice was seen as follows - you deprived us of a plowman, well, do not ask. However, here there were also nuances - the guilty clan could pay off by paying the "reparation" to the injured clan.
Things took a completely different turn with the emergence of a unified supreme power. The prince was in no way interested in civil strife going on in his domain. They will cut each other - who should they collect from? Again - "reparations" can be taken into our hands. It is very convenient - both the criminal is punished, and the treasury is the income. The only case in which there could be no question of any compensation was the encroachment on the life of the prince himself - remember how Olga repaid the Drevlyans for the death of her husband.
With the adoption of Christianity by Russia, the Greek bishops tried to introduce the Byzantine law in the lands of Prince Vladimir - "You are set by God to execute evil people." However, neither under Vladimir, nor later - during the "Russian Truth" (1016), the death penalty was not enshrined in law. That, however, did not prevent the prince's vigilantes from executing the unwanted. An example is the establishment of a new faith in Novgorod.
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After the deliverance of Russia from the Mongol yoke, fragmentation was replaced by a single state, which first of all took care of its own safety. The Code of Law of Ivan III of 1497 provided for the death penalty for high treason, which equated encroachment on the lives of "the best people", rejection of the state religion - sanctification and "horse thief" - horse theft, which can also be classified as state crimes, due to the infliction of special harm defense and the grand-ducal treasury: a farmer without a horse ceased to exist as a taxpayer.
FOR EVERY TASTE
A radical expansion of the scope of the death penalty in Russia occurred during the reign of Ivan IV, which was reflected in the Code of Laws of 1550. Usually this is associated with the manic nature of Ivan Vasilyevich, but one must also take into account the fact that in the 16th century Russia was rapidly growing in vast territories - the population increased, and accordingly, receipts to the treasury grew. Hence, the final depreciation of a person as a unit that ensures the welfare of the state.
The Code of Law of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of 1649 increased not only the number of "articles" under which they were executed, but also diversified the execution itself. Here you have hanging, and burning, and cutting off the head, and quartering, and filling your throat with a red-hot iron. The last type of execution was applied exclusively to counterfeiters, which is understandable - with the advent of a single national currency, they caused special damage to the budget.
Under Peter Alekseevich, the death penalty in Russia reached its climax - the Military Article of 1716 assumed the use of the death penalty in 123 cases, but in reality they were executed only for rebellion, murder and "treason against the sovereign." However, the latter was interpreted quite freely. So Major Glebov, who entered into a love affair with the Emperor's first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina, imprisoned in the Suzdal Pokrovsky Monastery, was called the "enemy of the tsarist majesty" and was impaled on Red Square. Pyotr Alekseevich knew a lot about executions, the more surprising that a kind-hearted girl Liza grew up in his family, who, upon accession to the throne under the name of Elizabeth Petrovna, for the first time in Russian history, limited the use of the death penalty.
Subsequently, the number of executed death sentences (with the exception of periods of riots and revolutions) decreased.
After the February and then the October coup, the death penalty was abolished twice, but was soon reintroduced in order to maintain the revolutionary order. As a result, according to Certificate 1 of the Special Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of December 11, 1953, 799455 death sentences were passed in the USSR from 1921 to 1953. Moreover, in the mid-30s of the last century, the age of persons who could be subjected to the death penalty was reduced. According to the decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of April 7, 1935, minors who had reached the age of twelve and were convicted of committing especially grave crimes were brought to trial with "the application of all measures of punishment." Now it is customary to use this decree as an example of the "atrocities" of the Soviet government, but only two minors who were shot in the USSR are known for certain: fifteen-year-old Vladimir Vanchevsky,who killed 8 small children in Sverdlovsk at the end of the 30s and his Leningrad peer Arkady Neiland in 1964 hacked a woman and her three-year-old son with an ax.
ONE TO THREE
According to legend, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, then the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council, petitioned Khrushchev to mitigate the punishment for Neiland, but the secretary general refused. Nikita Sergeevich was not distinguished not only by his softness, but also by his respect for legal norms. During the years of his reign, an incident was simply egregious. Three currency dealers - Rokotov, Faibishenko and Yakovlev were convicted three times. At first they were given eight years, then fifteen, but even this result did not satisfy the Secretary General. A decree “On strengthening criminal liability for violating the rules of foreign exchange transactions” was urgently issued and the speculators went to the execution chamber, although at the time of the crime, the death penalty was not provided for under their article.
However, in the USSR they were not only executed - in 1947 the death penalty was abolished. Rather, it was abandoned as an emergency measure applied in case of war. The "lull" did not last long - after three years "at the numerous requests of the working people" the death penalty was returned for the traitors to the Motherland and spies.
The 1960 Criminal Code of the RSFSR (like the codes of the Union republics that copied it) provided for the death penalty not only for treason and attempted murder of citizens, but also for economic crimes. In the nearly thirty years that have passed since the adoption of the code and before the collapse of the USSR, 22,000 people have been shot in the country. Among others, 40 serial killers. Over the years of the so-called "new" Russia, the number of serial killers has tripled. Most of them are in prison for life, but some are already at large. Do you believe in fixing these kinds of villains? No, nothing will fix them, the death penalty - even more so. But maybe the death penalty is capable of reasoning (of course, if this word is applicable here) only those trying on a knife or an ax? Usually this assumption is dismissed from the threshold by opponents of the execution. I will not argue. Here is an excerpt from the study,conducted over the past 25 years in the United States by statisticians from the University of Pepperdine (California) - Roy Adler and Michael Summers: "With every execution in every subsequent year, there are 75 fewer murders." There is something to think about. And the Constitution can be changed. After all, people write it for people too.
Mikhail Mamaladze