Death Penalty the Worth of Life

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English translation © 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., rom the Russian text © 2007 theIurii Levada Analytical Center (Levada Center) and the Interdisciplinary AcademicCenter o the Social Sciences (Intercenter). “Tsena zhizni i granitsy prava: rossiiane

Sociological Research, vol. 48, no. 3, May–June 2009, pp. 23–42.© 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 1061–0154/2009 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753/SOR1061-0154480302

Boris DuBin

The Worth of Life and

the Liits of LawRussian Opinions on the Death Penalty,Russian Laws, and the System o Justice

Survey data show that or Russians the most heinous crimes are serial

murder, rape o minors, and premeditated murder, and these are the crimes

or which they most oten demand the death penalty. Four out o ve say

the Russian system o justice is guilty o mistakes oten and very oten,

yet almost hal o Russians are in avor o reinstituting and expanding the

practical imposition o the death penalty

In the past our decades, the total number o countries worldwide thathave renounced the death penalty as a means o punishment (abolitionist

countries) has increased threeold. At present, two-thirds o all countrieshave either given up the death penalty or do not apply it in practice. Atpresent, the supreme penalty persists in sixty-our countries. In 2006,death sentences were pronounced in ty-ve countries and carried out intwenty-ve countries. A total o 91 percent o all death sentences carriedout in 2006 occurred in the People’s Republic o China (in rst place),



24 SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, and the United States. In twelve U.S. stateswhere the supreme penalty is still practiced (one state ater another hasabolished it, a step taken not long ago by New York and New Jersey),

ty-three death sentences were carried out in 2006. Hence, the totalnumber o executions in the United States in the thirty years since capitalpunishment was reinstated in 1977 came to 1,057.1

Researchers who have studied practices o punishments administeredor violations o the law do not see any conrmation o the widely preva-lent belie that the threat o death constitutes an eective deterrence topotential criminals or that the death penalty plays a positive role in thisregard to reduce the number o heinous crimes.2 Quite the contrary: theynd substantial grounds or asserting that there is a positive infuencerom a state’s renunciation o the death penalty: in Canada, or example,over the span o thirty years since the death penalty was abolished thenumber o murders committed per 100,000 population has allen by 40percent and is now 1.85.3

On the history of the issue

It is worth keeping in mind that the social role o the death penalty and itsmoral signicance to society have become problems specically in mostrecent times.4 In such a problematization the sociologist sees one o thesignicant moments in the transition rom the traditional to the modernsociety, rom the traditionalist anthropology o members o the clan or class,the inhabitants o a territory as potential hostages to power—rom that tothe value o individual lie, to conceptions o personal guilt and responsi-

bility in their modern interpretation. In this sense, in my opinion, we needto look at the act that the convict, the person who has been punished (theprisoner, the state convict, the condemned) becomes the hero, and morethan that—the “internal addressee,” even a kind o conceivable “arbiter”o the latest literature and art rom the very beginning o their existence.5 The rst o such responses, which refected the most painul problemso contemporary time, was Victor Hugo’s The Last Day o a Condemned

Man (1829, published in Russian translation in M.M. Dostoevsky’s journal

Svetoch in 1860; it had a powerul infuence on F.M. Dostoevsky). Sincethen, the most prominent world intellectuals in both Europe and Russia



MAY–JUNE 2009 25

been sentenced to death) with the title Refections on Hanging (1955)and Albert Camus, Refections on the Guillotine (1957).7 A decade latercame Truman Capote’s documentary novel In Cold Blood (1966), and

ater another decade, Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979).Both o these documentary novels won numerous prizes and were turnedinto movies, which drew the additional attention o many hundreds o thousands o people. In general, movies, as the newest mass medium,became very actively involved in public discussions o abolitionism.Since the lms We Are All Murderers (1952, directed by André Cayatte,France) and I Want to Live (1958, directed by Robert Wise, United States),lms about the death penalty and about those condemned to die, lmedby major directors and oten participated in by very well-known actors,have been shown on screens worldwide at least once every two or threeyears; they are discussed heatedly and at length in the press, on radioand television. This longstanding public context o the problem, whichis constantly supported and extremely broad in terms o the scope o people’s interest in it, denitely has to be kept in mind.

Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, a country that has a most severe

legacy o repression,8

the rst and, as ar as I know, just about the onlymonograph lm about someone sentenced to death has been the veryinnovative one shot by Latvian documentary lmmaker Herz Frank,titled The Last Judgment (Vysshii sud; 1987); it did not get much o anaudience even at the crest o the wave o perestroika o that era.9 Oneway or another, in 1999, by a decree o the Constitutional Court o theRussian Federation, a moratorium was placed on the death penalty inthis country (as a matter o act, death sentences had not been carried

out since 1996). Now the moratorium has been extended to 2010. Atthe same time, it is reasonable to say that so ar there has been no eortwhatsoever to discuss the problems o the death penalty on a large scaleeither in the legal context or in the moral context with respect to publicopinion in Russia.

The death penalty in Russia: mass assessents

At the end o the 1980s, when mass sociological surveys began in thiscountry, two-thirds o the adult population said that they avored the




The data show a dramatic jump in people’s approval o the death

penalty or criminals immediately ater the terrorist act that occurredin the Theater Center on Dubrovka in Moscow: on the whole, almostthree-quarters o the respondents (73 percent, which was the maximumproportion in all survey years) supported imposing the death penalty atthat time. It is clear rom Table 1 that, at the same time, the proportion o respondents opposed to the supreme penalty did not change, but the shareo those who had diculty answering decreased substantially. People’seeling o general danger and o being unprotected mobilized aggressive

retributive reactions. Later this reactive upsurge passed, and accordingto Levada Center data the situation mitigated somewhat

Table 1

In Your Opinion, Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished or Expanded?

(% o respondents)

Russia St. Petersburg

1989,n =

1,470

1990,n =

1,350

1994,n =

3,000

1999,n =

2,000

2002,n =

1,600*

2002,n =

1,000

Should be abolishedimmediately 4 6 5 5 5 16

Its abolition should beapproached gradually 13 20 15 15 15 14

Its imposition should bekept within the presentlimits 30 —** 37 36 44 36

Its imposition should beexpanded 37 — 24 23 29 27

Difcult to answer 16 8 19 20 7 7

*The survey by what was then VTsIOM was carried out at the end o October 2002,immediately ater the Chechen militants seized hostages in the Theater Center on Du-brovka in Moscow.

**In this survey, except or the two that were cited above, a single generalized option“the death penalty ought to be retained in the uture as well” was avored by 65 percento the respondents.



MAY–JUNE 2009 27

total relatively more in number, but quantitative advantage is no longeras substantial as it was ormerly (Figure 1).

Fluctuations in the distribution o the answers to the question bydierent sociodemographic group are generally predictable: men, lesswell o and older people take a harsher position 10 But two aspects

Table 2

In Your Opinion, Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished or Expanded?

(% o respondents, Russia, n = 1,600)

2006 2007*

Should be abolished completely 12 11

A moratorium should be imposed on its application 23 31

Its application should be reinstated to its ormer parameters 43 40

Its application should be expanded 8 8

Difcult to answer 14 10

*Here and henceorth or 2007, unless otherwise indicated, the cited data are rom a Rus-sian nationwide representative survey o the adult population carried out by the LevadaCenter at the request o Penal Reorm International in July o the current year.

Figure 1. Should Russia Have the Death Penalty? (% o respondents, June2005, n = 1,600)

Yes No Difcult to answer




opposed to the death penalty), and people, on the other hand, living invillages and medium-size cities with populations o 100,000 to 500,000(among whom is the maximum number o respondents who support

the supreme penalty). In other words, it is reasonable to assume that aharsh attitude on the death penalty is linked not only to people’s senseo having no social prospects o their own (i that were so, the harsh-est answers would likely be given by those living in hamlets and smalltowns)—but also to their sense o the opportunities that would suppos-edly open up, but or others—that is, to the well-known phenomenon o “relative deprivation.”

In addition, when it comes to crime and criminals and the measuresthat should be taken to combat them, again, not the poorest Russians arethe harshest and most uncompromising these days but the respondentswith medium (medium low or medium high) incomes (Table 3).

Be that as it may, Russians o any sociodemographic group, except orthe youngest, perceive the imposition o the death penalty specicallyas the way to guarantee their own protection; their view is that no othermechanisms exist or ensuring the saety o citizens and maintaining

normative order in society. The best-educated respondents are not anexception in this regard: on the one hand, they seem to be aware o theintellectual norms o humaneness, and they even exhibit those norms incertain judgments, but they take a much harsher stance when it comesto their own saety (it must also be remembered that the better-educatedgroup o Russians includes hardly any o the youngest respondents whoare in school, and they are the ones, according to our survey data, whomaniest comparatively greater tolerance; Table 4).12 In exactly the same

way, in all sociodemographic groups the most prevalent opinion is thatthe death penalty is an eective measure to combat crime: on average,the proportion o respondents who do and do not believe that the deathpenalty will help is 57 percent to 36 percent, respectively, and this hardlychanges at all among the dierent groups.13

It is important to keep in mind that all o these cases involve punish-ments that are handed down and carried out by the state. Thereore,behind the widely prevalent level o approval o the death penalty today

in Russia is a sense o unspoken support or the state on the part o themass o unprotected wards o that very same state Also at work in the



MAY–JUNE 2009 29

t b li i t l ti th t d ll t t

Table 3

What Do You Personally Think About the Death Penalty?

(% o respondents, 2007)

Sociodemographic group

“Abolish” and“observe a

moratorium”

“Reinstate” and“expand

application”

On the whole 42 48

Sex

Male 38 53

Females 45 44Age

18 to 24 48 42

25 to 39 41 50

40 to 54 43 45

55 and older 38 54

Education

Higher 42 48

Secondary and secondary specialized 41 48Below secondary 42 50

Family income

Low 39 53

Medium low 38 50

Medium high 42 49

High 45 45

Type of community

Moscow 57 32Cities over 500,000 population 40 48

100,000 to 500,000 36 51

Up to 100,000 49 46

Countryside 35 54

Note: The cited data are rom a Russian nationwide representative survey o the adultpopulation carried out by the Levada Center at the request o Penal Reorm Internationalin July o the current year. Data exclude those who had diculty answering.




proportionate to the degree o the population’s lack o legal protection(and/or incompetence)—one might even say, it is an expression o it.On the other hand, the slight increase in level o trust in the bodies o

executive authority in the past while (trust in the president and, in part,owing to the light that is refected rom him, trust in the government),the way we see it, has brought in its wake the relative mitigation in at-titudes toward criminals and the supreme measure o punishment, asnoted in Table 4.

An uncompromising position—not only on the issue o whether toimpose the death penalty on people who have committed heinous crimesbut also on assessments o the need or harsh repressions against (orexample) homeless people, prostitutes, and homosexuals—is most otenheld by older Russians, those with less education, and people who livearther away rom big cities. This aspect is curious and important. Onewould think that the probability o such deviations in the places wherethey live would be substantially lower, and so the assessments also oughtto be milder, but the exact opposite is the case. It is in these groups thatwe nd a higher level o anxiety and ear in regard to the world around

them and the uture, a eeling o helplessness, a lack o condence intheir own powers, and, thereore, an uncontrollable (powerless) inneraggressiveness that becomes projected onto suspicious “others” and is,in this case, “subcontracted out” to the state.

On the other hand, the younger and better-educated inhabitants o Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other major Russian cities (and, as is wellknown, these places have substantially higher crime levels, and socialdeviations and phenomena o marginalism are encountered much more

requently), nonetheless, are inclined to be much more tolerant. On aver-age, they more actively express support or abolishing the death penalty(either immediately or gradually) and or mitigating the state’s repressivemeasures against homeless people, the most destitute, and others whosebehavior deviates rom what is deemed publicly acceptable.

In other words, the possession or, on the contrary, the lack o prospectsin lie and the resources that would make it possible to achieve them(here we mean any kind o social and symbolic capital, rom youthul-

ness to social imagination, to a thoughtul interest in other positions andother people to the real possibility o changing whether on the part o



MAY–JUNE 2009 31

distribution o the answers to the question as to which punishment is thet t ibl h b i O th h l th l ti R

Table 4

Will You Feel Better Protected Against Criminals if the Death Penalty Is

Imposed in Russia? (% o respondents, 2007)

Sociodemographic group“Defnitely yes”

and “mostly yes”“Mostly no” and“defnitely no”

As a whole 47 39

Sex

Male 48 39

Female 46 39

Age

18 to 24 42 44

25 to 39 49 39

40 to 54 44 42

55 and older 51 34

Education

Higher 50 40

Secondary and secondary specialized 44 38

Lower than secondary 46 40Family income

Low 50 36

Medium low 48 38

Medium high 50 37

High 46 44

Type of community

Moscow 45 40

Cities o more than 500,000 45 39100,000 to 500,000 52 37

Up to 100,000 41 45

Countryside 53 33





In the view o Russians, the most heinous crimes are serial murder,th i d dit t d d th th i

Table 5

Which Punishment Is More Terrible for a Human Being?

(% o respondents, 2007)

Sociodemographic group Death penaltyLie

imprisonment

As a whole 44 44

Sex

Male 44 44

Female 44 43

Age

18 to 24 40 47

25 to 39 43 45

40 to 54 45 44

55 and older 47 40

Education

Higher 36 51

Secondary and secondary specialized 46 42

Lower than secondary 46 42Family income

Low 45 47

Medium low 50 37

Medium high 46 42

High 41 47

Type of community

Moscow 34 54

Cities o more than 500,000 40 50100,000 to 500,000 44 45

Up to 100,000 48 39

Countryside 47 40




MAY–JUNE 2009 33

the death penalty ought to be imposed) and terrorism (32 percent).Younger and better-educated Russians and those living in the big cities

(but not Moscow) most oten speak in avor o the death penalty or ter-

rorists; middle-aged respondents are most strongly in avor o the deathpenalty or those ound guilty o serial murder and the rape o minors;or the other types o crimes, older respondents are more strongly inavor o the death penalty.

The maximum number o respondents who avor the death penaltyor serial murderers is ound among capital city residents; avoring thesupreme penalty or rapists are those living in the countryside.

The belie that it is basically useless to impose harsher punishmentsis most oten expressed by the youngest respondents and people livingin the capital city. A consciousness o the incompetence o the supremepenalty on the part o agencies o justice currently in place, and in generalo the untness o any human court in such circumstances, is the mostprevalent trait o the oldest age groups and, again, o Muscovites. Themore elderly respondents with less education are more likely than othergroups to hold on to the perception o the death penalty as retribution

that the criminal has coming to him. Those living in the countryside aremore likely than others to believe that the death penalty or especiallyheinous crimes represents the ultimate means, the only way to stop thegrowth o crime.

Eight percent o Russians say that the death penalty is not justied oracceptable in any case. Among those with higher education and thoseliving in the capital city, the gure is 10–11 percent.

Stigatization of the criinal: The role and scale of copassion and ercy

As has already been mentioned, one signicant actor in dierentiat-ing people’s attitudes toward crime and the death penalty is the level o the respondents’ social capital and the symbolic capital that goes alongwith it. The ethical component (a disposition toward greater tolerance),which in principle stems, on the one hand, rom an acknowledgment

o having something in common with the oender, and, on the otherhand, an understanding and recognition o the dierences between the




in answers with respect to the ability to experience compassion in thedierent sociodemographic groups, a reusal to believe in the repentanceo a criminal and to orgive him i he himsel has repented, is notablyand unequivocally prevalent in all strata o respondents. The ratio o

those who do and do not believe in such repentance, between those whoare and are not willing to orgive the one who has repented, in their ownwords, stands at 1 to 2.14

Meanwhile, as an independent component a willingness to orgive acriminal who has repented has a noticeable infuence on the respondents’attitudes toward crime and the death penalty. For example, in the opiniono those who, by their own admission, would not be able to orgive acriminal who had repented, the death penalty is the more terrible (which

is also why they are more likely to support imposing the death penaltyon those guilty o especially heinous crimes). On the other hand, orthose who, according to their own words, would be able to orgive aperson who had repented, the value o a human lie is more important; itseems to them that lie imprisonment without the possibility o a reviewo sentence is much more terrible, and, accordingly, they are much lesslikely (according to their answers) to be willing to sentence a criminalto the supreme penalty (Table 6).

Along the same lines, respondents’ attitudes toward crime and thedeath penalty or criminals are infuenced by their belie that the person

Table 6

Which Punishment Is More Terrible for a Human Being? (2007)

Would be able to orgivea criminal who had

repented, %

Would not be able toorgive a criminal who had

repented, %

The death penalty is moreterrible 37 49

Lie imprisonment is moreterrible 54 41




MAY–JUNE 2009 35

In other words, attitudes toward criminals and the death penalty asthe supreme measure o punishment or heinous crimes are shaped inthe collective consciousness under the intersecting infuences o several

actors. Here we indicate just a ew:

• thesocial positionof therespondentsandtheirfamilies,and

people similar to them among their immediate associates;• symboliccapital;

• aconsciousnessof theirgreateror lesserautonomy from the

oversight o the state, their greater or lesser condence in theirown powers; and

• moralandvalueattitudestowardtoleranceasanindependentvariable.

Such a complexity (one that is undamental!) o sociocultural deter-mination o behavior and evaluations in this sphere makes it impossibleto reduce them down to either an unequivocal socioeconomic predeter-mination or to a purely emotional outburst o indignation and a desireto take revenge against the criminals, on the part o the victims or those

who sympathize.

The character of society and conceptions of the general:

By way of retreat

The present author and his colleagues have had occasion many times towrite that the denitive eature o present-day social lie in Russia is thedisposition o both the overwhelming majority and o advanced groups

o the population to just adapt, and, moreover, to adapt downward. Inconnection with this, it is worthwhile to pinpoint the (legal) capacity o a population that is so inclined as well as any actual undamental pos-sibility o legal assessments o its behavior.15 In a society that consists o (dependent) wards and people oriented toward passive accommodation,universal norms o modern law, and also o morality, are not only notin eect but, strictly speaking, do not even arise. And the replies o theoverwhelming majority o Russians to questions concerning the possi-

bility o living by the law and being able to count on rights, justice, lawenorcement agencies, and so on, have long since provided clear and solid




to actually work or are capable o it (i.e., they are not supported by anyrecognized legitimacy o the social order in the aggregate o the basicinstitutions that arm and reproduce them), is a sign that they are o a

purely demonstrative, simulative, or pseudo-magical character, but byno means, at any rate, not o a modern or universal character.

This circumstance is also linked to a number o other phenomena thatdene the collective lie o Russians these days. On the one hand, I amreerring to Russia’s increasingly greater isolation rom the world, whichis refected both in state oreign policy and in the myths that are beingnewly promoted and hyped by many politicians and political technolo-gists, o a so-called special path o the country, as well as in the moodso the masses o Russians; on the other hand, the increasing spread o the ragmentation o the society, which is being split up into smallerand smaller closed communities that are built on relations just “amongthemselves.” In such social structures,16 their simplied character, whichis distinguished by a scarcity o most lie resources, striving towarduniormity and built on social partitions, makes it impossible or, at least,extremely dicult, to ormulate conceptions about “the other” person and

“every” person, to orm universal values and abstractly universal norms.This also applies to generalized regulative categories such as lie (andaccordingly death), guilt and shame, punishment and orgiveness.

The dierentiation o social unctions and their distribution among thevarious agents and institutions in societies customarily called modern anddeveloped, goes hand in hand with the ormulation o the kinds o valuesand norms that are interpersonal, in place, and common to all—accessibleto all, meaningul to all, and accepted by all. On the other hand, the rag-

mentation o social orms not accompanied by sophistication and divisiono unctions, puts in motion other mechanisms o social integration bybringing to lie simulative and, in the same sense, mythologized imageso wholeness and personalized gures that represent a simulated whole,always, moreover, one that has been “lost” (as an original perection)and “unachievable” (as a hoped-or uture).17

In a negative modus o generalizing conceptions, the sociology o knowledge discerns a symbolic transormation, a semantic transcrip-

tion o the individual’s lack o independent initiative and lack o sel-suciency (subjecthood) and the deciency or insuciency o his



MAY–JUNE 2009 37

and solidarity that has emerged and, perhaps, will remain in history, theunique achievement o “Western” societies. It served as the basis o theiranthropology, cultural, and later also their everyday civilization, because

it gave to individuals and groups basic structures, sel-understanding,social imagination, and historical memory.

mass assessents of the Russian syste of justice

In the context under consideration here, mass assessments o the law andthe system o justice in today’s Russia do not look so clear-cut: they areirremediably ambiguous and vague. People’s consciousness, moreover,is aected by a number o variegated actors that activate and bring outvarious attitudes that seem to pertain to the dierent stages and levels o society’s living standard, both archaic and closer to the present, sociallydeterministic and universally individualistic, related to the norm (to “ev-eryone”) and related to practice (to the individual’s own actions, to actualbehavior—one’s own behavior and that o “the others”), and so on.

According to the data cited rom the survey o July 2007, more than

hal o the Russian population (54 percent) does not believe that it is pos-sible to live in the country today without breaking the law. But almost thesame proportion (57 percent) also does not believe in the presumptiono each one’s guilt. The socially dependent population groups who haveewer resources—those living in small towns (42 percent), the elderly (43percent), and those with low amily incomes (47 percent)— are more likelythan others to believe that everyone who has been punished is in some wayor another guilty (“there is no such thing as punishment without guilt”).

It is reasonable to say that the law, violations, guilt, responsibility, jurisprudence, and punishment are, to put it provisionally, located ondierent planes o meaning, at dierent “distances” rom the respondent,so that the judgments expressed about them by the respondents look uncoordinated or, at any rate, not always consistent.18 The ordinary Rus-sian is not concerned with such consistency and does not care about anyroutine rationalization o his own behavior at all. The legal awareness o Russian society continues to be in its embryonic state, and the activity

o any responsible groups in society (e.g., deenders o human rights,alliances or protecting consumer rights, etc.), the same as the specialized




respondents are convinced that the Russian system o justice is guilty o

Table 7

How Often Are Judicial Mistakes Made in Russia? (% o respondents, 2007)

Sociodemographic groupExtremely

rarelyQuiteoten

Veryoten

On the whole 13 56 24

Sex

Male 11 56 28

Female 15 57 21

Age

18 to 24 18 55 19

25 to 39 9 58 27

40 to 54 13 56 26

55 and older 14 56 22

Education

Higher 14 57 24

Secondary and secondary specialized 12 57 24

Lower than secondary 14 55 24

Family income

Low 11 54 27

Medium low 13 60 22

Medium high 10 60 24

High 15 52 26

Type of community

Moscow 15 56 22

Cities o more than 500,000 11 56 27

100,000 to 500,000 12 60 22

Up to 100,000 16 58 21

Countryside 11 52 29

Notes: The cited data are rom a Russian nationwide representative survey o the adultpopulation carried out by the Levada Center at the request o Penal Reorm Internationalin July o the current year. Omitted as statistically insignicant are replies o an average0.3 percent o respondents who said “no errors at all are committed.” Data exclude thosewho had diculty answering.



MAY–JUNE 2009 39

hal o Russians, as was shown earlier, are in avor o reinstituting andexpanding the practical imposition o the death penalty.19

Another substantial contradiction is seen in the country’s present system

o justice itsel, and Russians have commented on it. The Russian justicesystem, as the respondents see it, should strive rst and oremost to punishthe law breaker (the opinion o 38 percent o the respondents), to isolatehim away rom society (28 percent), and to deter other potential criminals(17 percent). O much less importance in the actions o the justice systemis the motive o restoring justice (as indicated by 19 percent o the respon-dents). And yet, or Russians themselves that is the chie consideration(according to 48 percent o the respondents). To punish and isolate thecriminal, to deter anyone who is like him, are essential motives, but theyare much less important to the respondents.

This allows us to understand that in the opinion o the absolute majority, the ordinary Russian will not be able to obtain justice here in hisown country but [only] in the European Court o Human Rights. Thatis the opinion o 60 percent o our respondents; among Russians withhigher education and higher incomes, among those living in large and

very large cities, including Moscow, that gure rises to 66–69 percent.On average or the whole country, only 14 percent mention the Russiancourts in this regard, and this, o course, constitutes an indictment o this country’s system o justice and law enorcement.

According to the 2006 data, 61 percent o the Russians surveyeddo not believe that the ordinary person in Russia can hope or airnessrom the courts (4 percent “denitely believe” it, and another 25 percent“mostly believe” it). It is no accident that two-thirds o Russians, and

even more, do not trust the courts and the police, and are in act simplyaraid o the police: over the past ew years this ear has been routinelyexpressed by 67–69 percent o the respondents. As many as 80 percento the country’s population state that the problem o lawlessness andarbitrary action on the part o bodies o law enorcement is serious orvery serious. And more than hal o Russians, even up to 60 percent, overthe past ew years, have acknowledged that they personally do not seeany protection or themselves against such arbitrary action, either on the

part o the prosecuting agencies or in the courts.




kazni” [On the Death Penalty], Razvitie lichnosti, 2005, no. 3, pp. 105–20; and otherworks by the same author, as well as the table o contents o the journal Indeks/

Dos’ e na tsenzuru, www.index.org.ru/turma/sk/.2. See R. Hood, The Death Penalty: A World-Wide Perspective (Oxord: Clar-

endon Press, 2002), p. 230.3. Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-acts-eng/.4. See M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gal-

limard, 1975).5. Pushkin’s “prisoner” (in the poem o the same name, 1822) resonates here

with Beaudelaire’s captis (in “The Swan,” 1850) and Rimbaud’s orçats (“Orgyin Paris,” 1871).

6. I.S. Turgenev’s well-known essay “Kazn’ Tropmana” [The Execution o Tropman] (1870). In that same year, M. Munkácsy’s painting The Last Day o a

Condemned Man was exhibited in a Paris salon (1869); it was awarded the GoldMedal at the exhibit and was widely disseminated in the orm o prints. It is in-structive to note that the same post-reorm period in Russia saw the publication o A.F. Kistiakovskii’s book Issledovanie o smertnoi kazni [An Investigation o theDeath Penalty] (1867). Then there is V. Solov’ev’s speech in avor o abolition, inresponse to terrorists’ attempt on the lie o the tsar, in 1881. The turn o the centurysaw the abolitionist activity o V.G. Korolenko, and the beginning o the twentiethcentury, the publication o L. Andreev’s “Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh” [Story o Seven Hanged People], and monographs by N. Tagantsev, M. Gernet, and others. Inthe late Soviet press, which was still under censorship, A.I. Solzhenitsyn came out

against the death penalty in his Arkhipelag GULAG [The GULAG Archipelago], asdid A.D. Sakharov with his “Pis’mo po probleme smertnoi kazni” [A Letter on theProblem o the Death Penalty], 1977.

7. A. Koestler and A. Camus, Razmyshleniia o smertnoi kazni [ Réfexions sur la peine capitale] (Moscow: Praksis, 2003); in the same work, a signicant essayby Jean Bloch-Michel on the history o the issue, and Camus’s letters in avor o abolishing the death penalty, and world statistics as o the year 2001.

8. This reers to other things besides the mass repressions carried out by stateagencies against the population and whole categories o the population (the cus-

tomary term was “classes”) and a number o bloody wars, the orced resettlemento whole nations, and so on. One-ourth o the Russians surveyed (in the 1999survey) had taken part in ghts, and hal o them had been the victims o verbalabuse. A quarter o them (1998) had been victims o robbery. About one out o our or ve adult Russians has been a victim o violence by members o his orher own amily. Twenty-six percent o the women surveyed in 1998 had been thevictims o beatings by older people in childhood; 30 percent had witnessed suchscenes between parents. Fity-eight percent o the young men who had servedin the armed orces (data rom 1998) had been the victims o physical abuse byellow service personnel.

9. It is worthwhile to point out that the lm Legko li byt ’ molodym? [It’s NotEasy Being Young] was shot at that time by a Lithuanian lmmaker, and Pokaianie



MAY–JUNE 2009 41

harsher position on many issues concerning crime and punishment or crime is heldby respondents between the ages o twenty-ve and thirty-nine.

11. Compare A.P. Chekhov’s observation in his Ostrov Sakhalin [The Island o Sakhalin]: “It is not just the people who have been arrested that become coarserand harsher due to bodily punishment, but also those who administer punishmentand are present when it occurs. Even educated people are no exception” (A.P.Chekhov, Poln. sobr. soch. i pisem: Soch. [Complete Collected Works and Letters:Works]) (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), vols. 14/15, p. 338 (the ollowing pages concernthe death penalty).

12. Overall, the distribution o most assessments by the best-educated groupo Russians in this survey tend to be closer than others to the average data or theentire set o respondents, in this way personiying the averaged norm, so to speak.

13. The position held by young people in this case is in no way less harsh than

that o other groups (59 percent to 35 percent), and the position held by Muscovitesis even more harsh (62 percent to 29 percent).

14. The respective average data are as ollows: 30 percent and 61 percent(belie/disbelie in the ability to repent), 26 percent and 54 percent (willingness/ unwillingness to orgive someone who has repented). Judging rom this distribution,a proessed aliation with the Orthodox aith—which 60 percent o adult Russiansdo proess today, and even more do so in certain months—also does not go hand inhand with any sotening o attitudes toward a criminal who has repented.

15. For more detail see L. Gudkov, “Otnoshenie k pravovym institutam v Rossii”[Attitudes Toward Institutions o Law in Russia], in L. Gudkov, Negativnaia

identichnost ’ . Stat ’ i 1997–2002 godov [Negative Identity. Articles, 1997–2002](Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004), pp. 737–68.

16. In this regard, Russia is a signicant example but not the only one. Attemptsto escape rom a totalitarian repressive state system, with its orced (under paino death or social stigma) uniormization and actual atomization o social lie,were attempted in the twentieth century in many countries, and a number o theseattempts were actually successul.

17. The very recent initiatives to create a gure o a “national leader,” towhich Russia, in the words o one o his associates, is “just plain destined,” is a

nomenklatura attempt to galvanize exactly such notions. In this case there is nogood cause to speak o morality and law; the unconstitutional character o suchmeasures is obvious.

18. This kind o uncoordination characterizes assessments o the collective pastto an even greater extent. Here I will cite a ew gures rom the August 2007 survey(n = 1,600 people). The population losses due to mass repressions under Stalinare considered to be the largest in the twentieth century by a predominant portiono Russians (52 percent). Almost three-quarters (72 percent) agree that “it was apolitical crime, and there can be no justication or it.” At the same time, however,hal the respondents (49 percent) hold the opinion that the organizers and executors

o the mass extermination should be “let in peace since it happened so long ago”(26 percent believe that they should be tried and condemned); more than two-thirds




the twentieth century: given the absence o a “bright uture,” apparently, they arewilling to settle or a “bright past” at least.

19. At the beginning o the twenty-rst century, data published in the UnitedStates revealed that in the preceding twenty years, as a result o more careulexamination o the evidence and circumstances o cases, the courts ruled that oneout o seven people who had been convicted and sentenced to death in those yearswas innocent. See Oznobkina, “O smertnoi kazni.”



Documents

Death Penalty the Worth of Life