In the post-Soviet period, many mass media periodically began to refer to the rather well-known and controversial topic of the introduction of the death penalty for minors in the “Stalinist” Soviet Union. As a rule, this circumstance was cited as another argument for criticizing I. V. Stalin and the Soviet system of justice and administration in the 1930s - 1940s. Was this really the case?
Let's start right away with the fact that it was Soviet Russia that maximally humanized the pre-revolutionary criminal legislation, including in the direction of the criminal liability of minors. For example, under Peter I, a lower age threshold for criminal responsibility was established. He composed only seven years. It was from the age of seven that the child could be put on trial. In 1885, minors aged ten to seventeen years old could be convicted if they understood the meaning of the acts committed, that is, not for all criminal offenses and depending on personal development.
The possibility of criminal prosecution of minors continued until the October Revolution. Only on January 14, 1918, the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On commissions for minors" was adopted. In accordance with this document, criminal responsibility began from the age of 17, and from 14 to 17 years old, criminal cases were considered by the Commission on Minors' Affairs, which made decisions on educational measures in relation to a minor. As a rule, minors were tried to re-educate with all possible efforts and not be allowed to be placed in prison, where they could fall under the influence of older criminals.
In the famous "Republic Shkid", it was just about the numerous young criminals and delinquents. They were re-educated in "Skida", but they were not subjected to criminal punishment. - not put in jail or camp. The practice of bringing to justice children and adolescents under 14 years old generally remained in the pre-revolutionary past. The Criminal Code of the RSFSR, adopted in 1922, established the lower limit of prosecution under most articles of 16 years, and from the age of 14 they were prosecuted only for especially grave crimes. As for the death penalty, it could not be applied to all underage citizens of the USSR, even purely theoretically. Article 22 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR emphasized that "persons under the age of eighteen at the time of the commission of the crime and women in a state of pregnancy cannot be sentenced to death." That is, it was the Soviet government that laid the paradigm of juvenile justice, which remains in Russia to this day, after the collapse of the Soviet political system.
However, in the early 1930s. the situation in the Soviet Union has changed somewhat. Complicated crime situation and constant attempts of hostile states to carry out sabotage activities in the Soviet Union led to the fact that in 1935 the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars really adopted a resolution "On measures to combat juvenile delinquency." It was signed by Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Vyacheslav Molotov and Secretary of the Central Committee of the USSR Ivan Akulov. The decree was published in the Izvestia newspaper on April 7, 1935. The content of this decision testified to the most serious tightening of the criminal procedure legislation in the country. So, what was introduced by this decree? Firstly, in paragraph 1 of the Resolution it was emphasized that criminal liability with the application of all measures of criminal punishment (that is, as it seems to be understandable, including capital punishment, but here there will be the most interesting nuance, which we will discuss below), for theft, violence, bodily harm, mutilation, murder and attempted murder, begins from the age of 12. Secondly, it was emphasized that incitement of minors to participate in criminal activities, speculation, prostitution, begging is punishable by imprisonment for at least 5 years in prison.
The clarification to this decision stated that Article 22 of the RSFSR Criminal Code regarding the non-use of the death penalty as the highest measure of social protection to minors was also abolished. Thus, the Soviet government seemed, at first glance, to officially allow sentencing minors to capital punishment. This fit quite well into the general vector of toughening of state criminal policy in the mid-1930s. Interestingly, even in the first post-revolutionary years, the death penalty was not applied to underage citizens of the country, although there was a very high level of juvenile delinquency, there were whole gangs of street children who did not disdain the most cruel crimes, including murder, grievous bodily harm, and rape. However, then no one thought of sentencing even such cruel young criminals to criminal terms. What happened?
The fact is that until 1935 juvenile criminals could only be sent for re-education. This allowed the most inveterate of them, without fear of such a "mild" punishment, which cannot be called punishment, to commit crimes, being in fact completely safe from punitive measures of justice. An article in the newspaper Pravda, published on April 9, 1935, two days after the decree was published, said exactly this - that juvenile criminals should not feel unpunished. In other words, the decree was of a preventive nature and was aimed at preventing violent crimes involving minors. In addition, not all of the listed articles included the death penalty. Even for the murder of one person, the death penalty was not assumed, if the murder was not associated with banditry, robbery, resistance to the authorities, etc. crimes.
One can argue for a long time about whether the death penalty is permissible for minors who themselves killed several people during robberies. But it is quite possible to understand such a measure, especially in those difficult years. Moreover, in practice, it was practically not used. It was necessary to try very hard to "achieve" the death penalty for himself as a minor. "Overkill" and with prisoners of conscience, who, according to quite numerous anti-Soviet authors, were shot almost en masse as a minor. After all, Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR "Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" was not included in the list of articles according to which "all measures of influence" were allowed to minors. It was not listed in the 1935 decree. That is, there were simply no formal grounds for the execution of minors under this article.
The list of those executed at the Butovo training ground includes a large number of citizens of 1920-1921. birth. It is possible that these were the very young men who were shot. But do not forget about the specifics of the time. In 1936-1938. Citizens born in 1918-1920 became adults, i.e. born in the midst of the Civil War. Many of them could either deliberately hide their true data in order to receive less punishment, or simply did not have accurate data on their date of birth. It was often not possible to check the date of birth either, so the "drops" could reach not just a year or two, but several years. Especially when it came to people from deep provinces, from the national outskirts, where with registration and accounting in 1918-1920. there was a huge problem in general.
There is still no documentary evidence of the execution of underage citizens during Stalin's time, with the exception of a very dark and controversial example of the execution of four citizens born in 1921 at the Butovo training ground in 1937 and 1938. But this is a separate story, and with her, too, not everything is so simple. To begin with, these citizens (their names are Alexander Petrakov, Mikhail Tretyakov, Ivan Belokashin and Anatoly Plakushchy) have only a year of birth without exact dates. It is possible that they could have reduced their age. They were convicted of criminal offenses, and already in prison they repeatedly violated the regime of detention, were engaged in anti-Soviet agitation, robbing inmates. However, the name of 13-year-old Misha Shamonin is also mentioned among those shot at the Butovo range. Was it really so? After all, the photo of Misha Shamonin is easy to find in many media, but at the same time, after copying the photo from the case, for some reason no one tried to copy the case itself. But in vain. Either doubts about the shooting of a 13-year-old teenager would have been dispelled, or it would have turned out that this was just a deliberate action aimed at influencing public consciousness.
Of course, it is possible that extreme measures against juvenile criminals could be applied outside the legal field, including under the guise of murder while trying to escape, but this is not about individual abuses of authority on the part of police officers, security officers or Vokhrovites, but about law enforcement practice. But she knew only a few cases of teenagers being shot - four cases at the Butovo training ground (and even then causing great doubts) and one more case - already eleven years after the death of I. V. Stalin.
In 1941, the age of criminal responsibility for all crimes other than those listed in the 1935 decree was set at 14 years old. Note that in the 1940s, during the harsh wartime, there were no cases of mass executions of convicted minors either. On the other hand, the Soviet leadership applied all possible measures to eradicate child homelessness, to solve the problems of orphans and social orphans, which were more than enough and which represented a completely fruitful environment for the development of juvenile delinquency. To this end, orphanages, boarding schools, Suvorov schools, evening schools developed, Komsomol organizations were actively working - and all this in order to turn minors away from the street and from the criminal way of life.
In 1960, criminal responsibility for all crimes was determined at the age of 16, and only for especially grave crimes was criminal responsibility provided for at the age of 14. Nevertheless, it is with the Khrushchev, and not with the Stalinist period in Russian history that the only documented fact of the death penalty of a juvenile offender is associated. This is the infamous case of Arkady Neiland.
A 15-year-old boy was born into a dysfunctional family, at the age of 12 he was assigned to a boarding school, studied poorly there and escaped from the boarding school, was brought to the police for petty hooliganism and theft. On January 27, 1964, Neiland burst into the apartment of 37-year-old Larisa Kupreeva in Leningrad and hacked both the woman and her three-year-old son Georgy with an ax. Then Neyland photographed the naked corpse of a woman in obscene poses, intending to sell these pictures (pornography in the Soviet Union was rare and highly valued), stole a camera and money, set a fire in the apartment to hide the traces of the crime, and fled. They caught him three days later.
The minor Neiland was very confident that he would not face serious punishment, especially since he did not refuse to cooperate with the investigation. Neiland's crime, his bloodthirstiness and cynicism then outraged the entire Soviet Union. On February 17, 1964, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR published a decree on the possibility of applying in exceptional cases the capital punishment - execution - against juvenile criminals. On March 23, 1964, Neiland was sentenced to death and on August 11, 1964, he was shot. This decision provoked numerous protests, including those abroad. However, it is not very clear why the defenders of Neyland did not care at all about the fate of the young woman and her three-year-old child, who were brutally killed by the criminal. It is doubtful that even an unworthy, but more or less tolerable member of society would have been brought up from such a murderer. It is possible that he could have committed other murders later.
The isolated cases of the death penalty for minors by no means testify to the severity and cruelty of Soviet justice. In comparison with justice in other countries of the world, the Soviet court was indeed one of the most humane. For example, even in the United States, the death penalty for juvenile offenders was abolished only quite recently, in 2002. Until 1988, 13-year-olds were quietly executed in the United States. And this is in the United States, what to say about the states of Asia and Africa. In modern Russia, juvenile criminals often commit the most cruel crimes, but receive very mild punishments for this - according to the law, a minor cannot receive more than 10 years in prison, even if he kills several people. Thus, convicted at the age of 16, he is released at the age of 26, or even earlier.
