Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Russia but is not used due to a moratorium and no death sentences or executions have been carried out since 2 August 1996 execution of serial killer Sergey Golovkin. Russia has had an implicit moratorium in place since one was established by President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and explicitly established by the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1999 and reaffirmed in 2009.
History Medieval Russia Ibn Fadlan who had contact with the Rus' around 921 reported that they executed thieves by hanging.
In medieval Russia, capital punishment was relatively rare and was even banned in many, if not most, Russian principalities. The Russkaya Pravda, created in the early 11th century, did not prescribe the death penalty, instead permitting blood feuds, a practice subsequently abolished by Yaroslav's sons.
One of the first legal documents resembling a modern penal code was enacted in 1398, which mentioned a single capital crime: a theft performed after two prior convictions (an early precursor to the current three-strikes laws existing in several U.S. states). The Sudebnik of 1497 extends this list significantly, mentioning three specialized theft instances (those committed in a church, stealing a horse, or, as before, with two prior "strikes"), as well as arson and treason. The trend to increase the number of capital crimes continued: in 1649, this list included 63 crimes, a figure that nearly doubled during the reign of Peter I. The methods of execution were extremely cruel by modern standards and included drowning, burying alive, and forcing liquid metal into the throat.
Tsarist Russia During the reign of Alexis of Russia (1645–1676), 7,000 executions occurred solely for counterfeiting coins.
In 1698, Peter I executed 1,166 participants of the streltsy uprising.
Elizabeth () did not share her father Peter's views on the death penalty, and officially suspended it in 1745, effectively enacting a moratorium. This lasted for 11 years, after which the death penalty was permitted again, after considerable opposition to the moratorium from both the nobility and, in part, from the Empress herself.
Perhaps the first public statement on the matter to be both serious and strong came from Catherine the Great, whose liberal views were consistent with her acceptance of the Enlightenment. In her Nakaz of 1767, the Empress expressed disdain for the death penalty, considering it to be improper, adding: "In the usual state of the society, the death penalty is neither useful nor needed". However, an explicit exception was still allowed for the case of someone who, even while convicted and incarcerated, "still has the means and the might to ignite public unrest". This specific exception applied to mutineers of Pugachev's Rebellion in 1775; earlier she executed Vasily Mirovich in 1764 and four perpetrators of the plague riot of 1771.
Consistent with Catherine's stance, the next several decades marked a shift in public perception against the death penalty; during the reign of her grandson Alexander I (1801–1825), only 84 people were executed. In 1824, the very existence of such a punishment was among the reasons for the legislature's refusal to approve a new version of the Penal Code. Just one year later, the Decembrist revolt failed, and a court sentenced 36 of the rebels to death. Nicholas I's decision to commute all but five of the sentences was typical for the era. Such commutations were a recurring feature of Russian justice: for instance, in 1820, the commander of the Semyonovsky Regiment had his death sentence commuted following a mutiny of his unit. Similarly, death sentences for leaders of the 1802 Latvian peasant uprising were later commuted. Empress Catherine also commuted 54 death sentences for participants of the 1772 Yaik Cossack's Uprising. Furthermore, after Paul became tsar in 1796, a general amnesty was enacted, including for participants of the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising, including Kościuszko himself. Even after Pugachev's Rebellion, of the 12,438 people investigated by secret commissions, only 48 were officially executed; however, thousands of other rebels were summarily executed by government troops.
In 1826–1905, 1,397 people were sentenced to death, with 894 of them being executed. In 1905–1913, 6,871 were sentenced and 2,981 were executed. In 1866–1891, 134 were sentenced to death for political crimes, with 44 of them being executed.
+ Death penalty in the late Russian Empire Years Sentenced Executed 1875–1880 114 1881–1885 71 1886–1890 76 1891–1895 47 1896–1900 78 1901–1905 93 1905 72 10 1906–1907 2,608 1,283 1908 1,741 825 1909 1,435 543 1910 434 129 1911 237 58 1912 229 108 1913 115 25
By the late 1890s, capital punishment for murder was virtually never carried out, but substituted with 10 to 15 years imprisonment with hard labor, although it still was carried out for treason (for example, Alexander Ulyanov was hanged in 1887). However, in 1906, capital punishment was expanded up to introduction of drumhead court-martials that summarily executed 683 people in 1906–1907.
Capital punishment was applied during the World War I, notably in the case of Colonel Myasoyedov and three associates, who were wrongly executed as alleged German spies. The war also saw the execution of 92 mutinous soldiers during the Christmas Battles of January 1917.
Russian Republic The death penalty was officially outlawed on March 12, 1917, following the February Revolution and the establishment of the Russian Republic. On May 12, 1917, the death penalty became applicable to soldiers at the front.
Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union
Upon seizing power, the Bolsheviks initially abolished the death penalty. This measure, however, remained in effect for less than nine months. Unofficial executions of various opposition figures, including liberal leaders such as Kokoshkin and Shingarev began as early as January 1918, in February Soviet government decreed that enemy agents could be shot on sight. Admiral Schastny was the first officially executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal in July 1918. The Bolsheviks extensively employed hangings and shootings as part of the Red Terror.
The death penalty was again abolished in 1920, only to be reinstated four months later. The 1922 Code subsequently permitted capital punishment for 34 crimes, 11 of which were counterrevolutionary; even the act of crossing borders could result in the death penalty.
During Joseph Stalin's rule, the list of capital crimes greatly expanded to include vague offenses such as "rendering any kind of assistance whatever to the international bourgeoisie." Following the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, the death penalty was further streamlined, forbidding appeals and mandating immediate execution after judgment for those accused of "terrorist acts".
The use of capital punishment peaked during the Great Purge in the 1930s. To expedite trials, NKVD troikas were created, delivering an estimated 82% of all political sentences. The exact number of executions is debated. Archival research suggests figures between 700,000 and 800,000. Official reports to Nikita Khrushchev cite 642,980 death penalty sentences in 1954,Письмо Генерального прокурора СССР Р.А. Руденко, Министра внутренних дел СССР С.Н. Круглова и Министра юстиции СССР К.П. Горшенина 1-му секретарю ЦК КПСС Н.С. Хрущеву о пересмотре дел на осужденных за контрреволюционные преступления. Реабилитация: как это было. Документы Президиума ЦК КПСС и другие материалы. В 3-х томах. Vol. 1. pp. 103-105. and 688,503 in 1956, with 681,692 of these occurring in 1937–1938.Доклад комиссии ЦК КПСС президиуму ЦК КПСС по установлению причин массовых репрессий против членов и кандидатов в члены ЦК ВКП(б), избранных на ХVII съезде партии, 09.02.1956
Estimates of executions during World War II vary; Grigori F. Krivosheev puts it at 135,000, Novaya Gazeta reported 284,333 death sentences, with 157,593 being executed. Separately, French historian Nicolas Werth stated that military tribunals alone sentenced 183,780 individuals to death. + Individuals sentenced to death by military tribunals 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1,492 50,016 75,871 22,163 16,481 10,400 5,165 1,201 0 0 549 442 0 0
During World War II, Soviet authorities introduced a special decree, Ukaz 39 of April 19, 1943, which stipulated public hanging as a form of execution for war crimes and introduced drumhead court-martials. The direct battlefield application of these specific tribunals was relatively contained. In 1943, these courts analyzed 843 cases, leading to the execution of 815 individuals out of more than 1,000 tried. In 1944, they tried only 888 people. However, the provisions of this decree extended far beyond these immediate field tribunals, influencing general Soviet jurisprudence. Under this broader application, at least 81,780 people were sentenced (though not necessarily to death); an overwhelming majority of these individuals were not executed and were subsequently amnestied in 1955. Furthermore, the decree provided the legal basis for high-profile public trials targeting captured Nazi war criminals and their allies. In these specific proceedings, 253 people were tried, leading to 81 executions. Similarly, the decree underpinned the prosecutions of high-ranking Soviet collaborators, notably figures such as Vlasov, Krasnov, and Semenov.
The death penalty was again abolished on 26 May 1947, the strictest sentence becoming 25 years' imprisonment, before it was restored on 12 May 1950,Peter Hodgkinson and William A. Schabas, Capital Punishment: Strategies for Abolition (Cambridge University Press, 2004) p274The Soviet Penal System in the USSR and the SBZ/GDR Retrieved 3 April 2010. first for treason and espionage, and then for aggravated murder. A total of 839,772 people were officially sentenced for counterrevolutionary activity between 1918 and 1953. + Individuals sentenced to death for counterrevolutionary activity 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 19316,1853,45616,0689,7011,9624142,5502,4339902,3638692,10920,2011,48119321933193419351936193719381939194019411942194319441945 2,7282,1542,0561,2291,118353,074328,6182,6011,86323,72620,1933,8773,1102,3081946194719481949195019511952195319541955195619571958 2,273 898 0 0 4681,6021,6113007940315083
In the early 1960s the death penalty was additionally expanded to include crimes of an economic nature such as counterfeiting, illegal currency transactions, and bribery.
Between 1961 and 1991, 14,953 individuals were sentenced to death in the Russian SFSR. Concurrently, the Soviet Union as a whole saw 33,329 death sentences handed down from 1954 to 1991. + Individuals sentenced to death in the RSFSR 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1,890 2,159 935 623 379 574 522 511 471 476 427 416 335 317 273 227 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 222 276 353 423 415 458 488 448 407 223 120 115 100 223 147
According to the GARF archives database, between 1978 and 1985, there were 3,058 death sentences that had been appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.ф.А385. ВЕРХОВНЫЙ СОВЕТ РСФСР. оп.39. Дела по ходатайствам о помиловании осужденных к высшей мере наказания за 1978-1985 гг., retrieved 2013-6-8
From the 1960s, approximately 95% of those sentenced to death had committed intentional homicide under aggravating circumstances. The median age of these individuals was just over 30. The proportion of death row inmates who were unemployed or not engaged in studies, despite being capable, increased sharply from 16.3% in 1961 to 70.6% in 1996. 73.2% of them had prior convictions for other crimes.