Capital punishment in the Soviet Union was alegal penalty for most of the country's existence. The claimed legal basis forcapital punishment was Article 22 of the Fundamental Principles of Criminal Legislation, which stated that the death penalty was permitted "as an exceptional measure of punishment, until its complete abolition".[1]
According toWestern estimates, in the early 1980sSoviet courts passed around 2,000 death sentences every year, of which two-thirds were commuted to prison terms.[2] A 1991Helsinki Watch report stated that in January of that year the Soviet Union for the first time published capital punishment data. It was disclosed that, in 1990, 445 individuals were given the death sentence, 195 people were executed and 29 death sentences were commuted. Execution took the form of a gunshot to the back of the head.[3] The death penalty was not applied to minors or pregnant women.[4]
During theSecond All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies in November 1917, the government ofSoviet Russia decreed the abolition of the death penalty. In February 1918, the death penalty was reinstated. Hangings and shootings were very extensively employed by theBolsheviks as part of theirRed Terror.[5]
The first person to be sentenced to death by a Soviet court wasAlexey Schastny,Admiral of theBaltic Fleet, on 21 June 1918.[2] Conditional death sentences were also delivered in the early 1920s.[4] Decrees issued in 1922, 1923 and 1933, repealed in 1959, provided police with the right to carry outsummary executions.[4] Capital punishment was abolished on 26 May 1947, but reinstated in 1950.[6] Capital punishment was extended to cases ofaggravated murder in 1954.[4]
In addition totreason,espionage,terrorism andmurder, capital punishment was imposed foreconomic crimes, such as "thepilfering of state or public property in especially large amounts".[7] The hijacking of an aircraft became a capital crime in 1973.[8]
Capital punishment for crimes against state and public property was reintroduced in 1961.[9] During that year two foreign currency traders,Rokotov and Faibishenko, were retroactively sentenced to death and executed.[10] By 1987, over 6,000 people had been executed for economic crimes.[9] The death penalty was generally applied if the crime involved sums exceeding about 10,000 rubles, though there was no fixed threshold.[9]
Several officials wereexecuted for economic crimes as part ofYuri Andropov'santi-corruption campaign.[11] Vladimir I. Rytov, a deputyMinister of Fisheries, was executed in 1982 forsmuggling millions of dollars' worth ofcaviar to theWest.[12] The director of Gastronom 1, one of Moscow's most prominent gourmet food stores, was executed in 1984 for corruption.[13] The chairman ofTechnopromexport was executed in 1984 for "systematically taking big bribes".[11]Berta Borodkina, head of the restaurants and canteens department inGelendzhik, was sentenced to death for receivingUS$758,500 inbribes.[14][15][16]
Applications of the laws on economic crimes were criticized as both creating and promoting antisemitic outcomes.[17][18] International bodies such as the ICJ argued and provided evidence of an overemphasis on Jewish people's involvement in these crimes despite their being a minority population in the Soviet Union.[19] In 1964The New York Times noted that "60 percent of the 160 persons executed for economic crimes since 1961 wereJews."[20] Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, denied these criticisms had any merit.[21][22][23]
