Capital punishment in the Soviet Union

Capital punishment in the Soviet Union was a legal penalty for most of the country's existence. The claimed legal basis for capital 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 to Western estimates, in the early 1980s Soviet courts passed around 2,000 death sentences every year, of which two-thirds were commuted to prison terms.[2] A 1991 Helsinki 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]

  1. ^ Ioffe, O. Olimpiad Solomonovich; Janis, Mark Weston (1987). Soviet Law and Economy. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 9024732654.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference schmemann83 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Kushen, Robert; Schwartz, Herman; Mikva, Abner (1991). Prison Conditions in the Soviet Union. Helsinki Watch. p. 29. ISBN 1-56432-049-9.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference vanderberg83 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).