"This punishment is too cruel, which should be abolished. The compilers of the societies agreed to allow the death penalty, but they could not agree to the painful and tormenting deprivation of life. For one is necessary, and the other is inhumane. This punishment does not correspond to the importance of the crimes. In France, in order to keep fear in the hearts of the people, although they kill five, but in an invisible way to the audience, the sufferer is killed. Pugachov, who shook the very throne of the monarchy, devastated many regions of Russia and exterminated more than a thousand noble families with various torments, was sentenced to five, but according to secret behavior it was ordered to first cut off his top, and then to five. Meanwhile, the murderer, who committed murder for greed, fiddles with the auction, suffers with all the torment of the death penalty, and endures. There are ten deaths, instead of the single ones given to them. If we go into consideration of the acts that happened before our eyes, then we will see that in the death penalty the act of our government has no basis either in law or in philanthropy, but everything is done randomly and arbitrarily. Pugachov was executed in a few minutes, and those killed in 1788 *. The priest, for the sole purpose of profit and robbery, suffered a whipping, an execution that lasted for several hours and, of course, with no less torment, like a quintuplet. Where is the mercy for humanity? According to our laws, the death penalty has been abolished and the judge cannot determine more than what is prescribed by law. Meanwhile, the judge determines 300 and 400 blows of the whip, a punishment that carries the death penalty. If they say that the death penalty is not determined by judges, then this is a ridiculous excuse. And in general, if the punishment is such that the greater half cannot withstand it without losing their lives, then it becomes almost inevitably subjecting to death in vain the one whom the laws exempt from it, then I ask: with such caution do the races administer punishments to great criminals? The judge, by signing the order to inflict such a punishment, deceives himself and in fact becomes a murderer himself, all the more inexcusable because he uses the power given to him for evil.
N RUSSIA.
by us, and to please the court for some reason, with damage to his conscience, he publicly commits murders.”
"I said above that many do not die at the place of punishment, but, having been taken back to prison, they lose their lives, while others, although very rarely, completely recover. While these examples are rare, they do exist, and therefore the most condemned person does not completely lose hope of remaining alive after punishment, nor do the spectators, having the same hope and counting more who remain alive than actually remain, that is, almost all those who Those who die in prison do not have this impression.”
I think that this opinion of a person who is extremely truthful leaves not the slightest doubt that in Russia the death penalty, in a disguised form, existed for general crimes until the reign of Emperor Alexander II. It was an execution by beating with a whip, lashes, spitzrutens, and even rods. Since corporal punishment from the half of the reign of Catherine II was reserved only for the lower classes, it is obvious that the death penalty in the form mentioned was applied to criminals of these classes. From the passage read by Shcherbatov about the death penalty, it is clear that the number of blows of the whip ranged from 300 to 400. And note that the masters on the back had such skill in using the whip that they could, according to eyewitnesses of these executions, knock the soul out of the unfortunate person with two or three blows - which they did, unless they were appeased with a bribe. The whipping was facilitated by the fact that the number of blows with the whip was not only not defined in the law, but was also not prescribed in court sentences until 1812. The whip, this is one of the terrible weapons not only of corporal punishment, but also of death itself, was abolished in 1845 with the publication of the Code. But even after that, two other weapons remained in action: sheti and spitzrutens. I cannot say anything definite about whether the whip could have carried out a beating. This question needs to be investigated. But even a non-specialist in criminal law knows that punishment by spitzrutens was a lethal punishment. This punishment, as we know, was borrowed by Peter I from the German people and in cruelty is not inferior to our national whip, national because its Tatar origin has not been proven in any way. The highest amount of this punishment reached 6,000
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]