The death sentence has always existed in the USSR. For certain crimes, the culprit was expected to be shot. There was a whole apparatus that served the needs of the law enforcement system. It was based on the so-called firing squads, consisting of five people who carried out sentences. These people, like all representatives of their professions in the Soviet Union, “went through” accounting and were paid according to the staffing table.
How the firing squads worked
A typical firing squad consisted of four people. In addition to the executioner, it included a doctor whose duty was to certify death, as well as a representative of the prosecutor's office and the operational department of the Internal Affairs Directorate. As Lydia Golovkova says in her article "Butovo training ground", in rare cases the composition of the team could be increased to five people. But this was mainly during the years of mass repressions - in the 1970s and 1980s. were limited to the "four".
The number of the execution teams themselves was different for each republic of the USSR - according to the number of special pre-trial detention centers where executions were carried out. So in Ukraine and Georgia there were two, three - in Azerbaijan, four - in Tajikistan, etc. How many "special" pre-trial detention centers there were in the RSFSR is now not known for certain - this information is still classified.
There were no firing squads of their own in the Baltics and Moldavia. There is a widespread myth that the suicide bombers were transported from there to Minsk, where they were shot. But this is not the case. Khalid Yunusov, who for a long time worked as the head of the firing squad in Azerbaijan, said that the sentences were carried out in the Baltics, but only by the forces of "business travelers". Very often, his firing squad was sent there - after all, for a small republic, three executioners - a bit too much and often they had to sit around.
How much was paid
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Well, now let's move on to the issue of payment - it's not for nothing that we talked in such detail about how the entire system was arranged. The fact is that all members of the firing squad received a salary according to the staffing table - according to the position they held. The executioner was assigned to one of the "proven" people. Usually, they chose those who were dissatisfied with their salaries, because the one who directly brought the sentences to execution received about 200 rubles a month. Separate awards were for "performance". One and a half hundred were received by the direct performer and one hundred rubles - by other members of the team. Also - if the team worked, and did not sit "without sentences" - its members were paid quarterly bonuses - 150-170 rubles each. In addition, they received a day off on the day of the execution - immediately after the signing of the "work performance" act.
If the team was sent on a business trip - to shoot criminals in the Baltics or Moldavia - then they still received travel allowances, again according to the staffing table. Most often, it was representatives of Azerbaijan who went on business trips - so as not to sit idle in a small republic and not be left without bonuses and quarterly ones.
Yaroslav Gorbunov
