The people were allowed to let off steam
Did you notice, dear readers, how in a week the fire of talk about abolishing the moratorium on the death penalty that had flared up was skillfully, one might say, in a pioneering way, extinguished? And now, through the fog, a piece of fire does not even turn red. Forget it. We let off steam, made some noise, and that’s it.
The head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, Vladimir Vasiliev, said: “Now many people are asking questions about the death penalty — this topic will certainly be deeply, professionally, and meaningfully studied. And a decision will be made that will meet the moods and expectations of our society.” My instinct for bureaucratic language prompted me to write then: “Let me translate it into Russian for you: nothing will be done. And TV will tell you what moods and expectations our society has.”
Speaker of the State Duma Volodin proposed creating an inter-factional working group to analyze legislation regarding the use of the death penalty and migration policy. A little later it turned out that this is a group only on migration policy, and about the death penalty — this is not what journalists heard. It happens.
An influential senator, head of the Federation Council Committee on State Construction, Andrei Klishas, noted that according to the law, neither terrorists nor pedophiles can be sentenced to death even in the absence of a moratorium. He recalled that the death penalty is provided for in five articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: Part 2 of Art. 105 (qualified murder); Art. 277 (attack on the life of a statesman or public figure); Art. 295 (attack on the life of a person conducting justice or preliminary investigation); Art. 317 (attack on the life of a law enforcement officer); Art. 357 (genocide). And he urged not to speculate on the topic of the death penalty, but to carefully read the speech of the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, where he says that the return of the death penalty is impossible without changing the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
I did the calculations for the sake of interest. Since 1998, the Criminal Code of Russia has been legislatively amended 323 times. The three hundred and twenty-fourth change will not survive, is it? The limit has been reached, or what?
“It’s impossible without changing the Constitution of the Russian Federation,” Klishas said. This is the same Klishas who was the co-leader of the group to change the Constitution in 2020. I don’t remember that people in transport before this actively discussed the problems of constitutional legislation: they say, it’s time for us to change the Constitution, time demands. The people's gut was just buzzing — come on, change it already. And so, having heard the voice of the people, the authorities assembled a working group and changed the Constitution. No, of course, maybe I’m wrong, maybe someone remembers the deep popular demand. But they changed the Constitution. They changed it quickly when needed.
All this legal casuistry, which is referred to “from above”, attempts to disassemble and challenge it “from below”, the struggle of opinions in the Duma — all this is noise that leads away from the essence.
But the essence is simple. The moratorium on the death penalty was adopted in fulfillment of Russia's international obligations to the Council of Europe. We spontaneously left the Council of Europe. But the bridges, in this case a bridge in the form of a moratorium to return “if anything happens,” remained. Nobody wants to burn them after themselves.
The philosopher Dugin writes: “The death penalty should be restored just like that. So that the shadow of death hovers over everyone who challenges society, the people, the state. It should be extended to a wide range of serious crimes. And definitely against traitors to the Motherland. The very atmosphere in society will change, that’s what’s important. It is necessary to emphasize in every possible way and in everything that liberalism is over — from now on we will have to answer to the fullest extent for deeds and words. It’s time to introduce some kind of punishment for liberalism itself, defining it as the dangerous extremist ideology that it is.”
Can “those who wait” admit that enlightened Europe will receive another reason to consider us savages who have rejected the ideals of liberalism and returned the death penalty? And appealing to the practice of executing criminals in the United States does not work here. There, as you know, there is a democratic death penalty, but here we will have a totalitarian one, like in Iran and North Korea.
— Personally, I don’t need the death penalty. These are probably the ones who complain and shout that it would be better to be shot. These are liars and hypocrites. None of them wants to die.
This is from an interview with the maniac Pichushkin to Izvestia. At the time of the interview, he had already been in conditions for 11 years, which, according to our sentimental human rights activists, are “worse than death.”
And now he continues to live there.
He killed, at least, 49 people.
How many people were killed by the terrorists at Crocus?
Soon experts will explain to us why they cannot be executed, and sociologists will tell us what the “moods and expectations of our society” are on this issue. . Well, or they won’t explain and won’t tell. We'll trample, not for the first time.