I will not talk about the attempts made in 1813, 1824 and 1845 to restore ordinary, normal types of death penalty for common crimes. In 1824, the courageous Admiral Mordvinov, whose biography was recently published by the chairman of our society, said: "Not a year or an hour will be hidden from history when the death penalty was restored in Russia. God forbid that Emperor Alexander I, who softened the cruelty of punishment by abolishing torture, would also mercilessly mark the words in sentences." who gave his will in 1817 to abolish the punishment of the whip and the imposition of the lion,” - who abolished, let’s say on his own behalf, the tearing of the nostrils, “so that such a sovereign, before such sincere people, in his criminal charter, could appear to reintroduce capital punishment, when, in the general opinion, it was abolished and even declared prohibited.
This opinion of Mordvinov had, although not for long, an influence on our domestic legislation with regard to the legislative application of the death penalty. In the second edition of the Code of Laws in 1832, the death penalty was, according to the opinion of Admiral Mordvinov, retained in the following form: 1) For crimes against the first two points, that is, for an attempt against the person of the sovereign emperor and members of the imperial family, as well as for rebellion and treason, only in the case when these crimes, due to their special importance, are submitted for consideration supreme criminal court. Ordinary courts could only impose hard labor for these crimes.
2) For violation of quarantine regulations, but also only by verdict of a military court, 3) For war crimes committed during the campaign. Thus, the death penalty in the code of laws was prescribed not in absolute form, but in an alternative form, either it or another, more lenient punishment.
When the Code of Punishments was published in 1845, a deviation was made from these historical traditions. The death penalty is not an alternative, but the only punishment and is determined for the following crimes: 1) For any malice against the life, health, honor, freedom, power, inviolability of the person of the sovereign emperor or members of the imperial family; 2) for rebellion against the sovereign and the state; 3) for high treason of various types; 4) for attempt, preparation, remote complicity, failure to report both the intent and the commission of these crimes; 5) for the most serious types of quarantine crimes. Finally, in the Code of Military Regulations, the death penalty is reserved for many crimes committed in wartime, or in places declared under martial law, which we will discuss below.
This could be the end of the historical sketch of the death penalty in Russia, if we had not had to consider the question that occupied the attention of the deeper minds of the 18th century, among which we include Prince Shcherbatov, whose veracity we very much trust, the question of whether the decrees of Empress Elizabeth can be considered such legislative monuments, which really abolished all types of capital punishment. executions for common crimes?
In his reflection on the death penalty (Readings of the Moscow Society of History and Antiquities, 1860, book 1), Prince Shcherbatov says: “Other murderers are condemned to be beaten with a whip in different places in the city, sometimes without a brush, even to death, and sometimes with a brush of blows, from three hundred blows or more, but all such a number that the unfortunate woman will almost naturally could not endure this punishment without death. However, such convicts are not protected, so that they are condemned to death, the guilty are taken with certain rituals to different parts of the city, and everywhere this painful punishment is renewed. Some of them, in the most severe suffering, than the beheading, or the gallows, or the quintuplet itself, others die, having endured all this cruelty.
A. E. Kistyakovsky,
those who are insensitive are taken to prison and die there, and finally there are those who are of such strong build that they do not die and recover.”