Abolition of the Death Penalty in the Russian Legal Discourse at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

The problem of the death penalty is one of the most complex and controversial aspects in the field of criminal legal policy of the state. In our country, despite the formal ban on the use of capital punishment, debates about the admissibility and reasonableness of this form of combating crime continue to this day. It is noteworthy that a little over a hundred years ago in Russia, a discussion about the death penalty also ensued: if in earlier times it was considered an integral part of the penal system, then from the end of the 19th century the legal community began to articulate capital punishment as an anachronistic and ineffective institution that do not meet the humanistic standards of the post-reform Russian Empire. With the advent of the First Russian Revolution, during which executions became an almost regular occurrence, academic protest against capital punishment grew into a full-fledged movement for the abolition of the death penalty, and Russian lawyers played a key role in it. The Russian legal community advocated the immediate exclusion of capital punishment from the ladder of criminal penalties, which was reflected in the pages of the legal press, in joint collections of articles and monographic studies, at congresses of Russian criminologists and during parliamentary discussions. Domestic lawyers disputed theses about the terrifying function of the death penalty, noted that it is harmful to the state and undermines its authority, and also declared that the moral level of Russian society no longer allows it to tolerate “murders by sentence.” Of significant interest are such parameters of this movement as its professional and party composition, institutions reflecting its ideas, their relationship and mutual influence, as well as chronological and territorial framework. The argumentation of reformers and legislators who spoke out for the humanization of punishments and the abolition of the most cruel of them is also important. What prevailed in their interpretations: the principles of morality, the ideas of truth and justice as the basis of the rule of law, or the rational guidelines of criminal policy? The search for answers to these questions will be undertaken in our study. The positions and approaches that were formulated by domestic lawyers represent a very important and meaningful story in the history of the development of Russian intellectual legal thought. Those ideas and arguments that underlay the movement of the legal community for the abolition of capital punishment can provide answers to many modern questions about the appropriateness and justification of the use of the death penalty.