Sociological Research, vol. 48, no. 3, May–June 2009, pp. 23–42.

© 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISSN 1061–0154/2009 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/SOR1061-0154480302

Boris Dubin

The Worth of Life and

the Limits of Law
Russian Opinions on the Death Penalty,
Russian Laws, and the System of Justice

Survey data show that for Russians the most heinous crimes are serial
murder, rape of minors, and premeditated murder, and these are the crimes
for which they most often demand the death penalty. Four out of five say
the Russian system of justice is guilty of mistakes often and very often,
yet almost half of Russians are in favor of reinstituting and expanding the
practical imposition of the death penalty

In the past four decades, the total number of countries worldwide that
have renounced the death penalty as a means of punishment (abolitionist
countries) has increased threefold. At present, two-thirds of all countries
have either given up the death penalty or do not apply it in practice. At
present, the supreme penalty persists in sixty-four countries. In 2006,
death sentences were pronounced in fifty-five countries and carried out in
twenty-five countries. A total of 91 percent of all death sentences carried
out in 2006 occurred in the People’s Republic of China (in first place),

English translation © 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text © 2007 the
Iurii Levada Analytical Center (Levada Center) and the Interdisciplinary Academic
Center of the Social Sciences (Intercenter). “Tsena zhizni i granitsy prava: rossiiane
o smertnoi kazni, rossiskom zakone i sude,” Vestnik obshchestvennogo mneniia.
Dannye. Analiz. Diskussii, 2007, no. 6, pp. 17–24. A publication of the Levada
Center and Intercenter.
Translated by Kim Braithwaite.

  23
24  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, and the United States. In twelve U.S. states
where the supreme penalty is still practiced (one state after another has
abolished it, a step taken not long ago by New York and New Jersey),
fifty-three death sentences were carried out in 2006. Hence, the total
number of executions in the United States in the thirty years since capital
punishment was reinstated in 1977 came to 1,057.1
Researchers who have studied practices of punishments administered
for violations of the law do not see any confirmation of the widely preva-
lent belief that the threat of death constitutes an effective deterrence to
potential criminals or that the death penalty plays a positive role in this
regard to reduce the number of heinous crimes.2 Quite the contrary: they
find substantial grounds for asserting that there is a positive influence
from a state’s renunciation of the death penalty: in Canada, for example,
over the span of thirty years since the death penalty was abolished the
number of murders committed per 100,000 population has fallen by 40
percent and is now 1.85.3

On the history of the issue

It is worth keeping in mind that the social role of the death penalty and its
moral significance to society have become problems specifically in most
recent times.4 In such a problematization the sociologist sees one of the
significant moments in the transition from the traditional to the modern
society, from the traditionalist anthropology of members of the clan or class,
the inhabitants of a territory as potential hostages to power—from that to
the value of individual life, to conceptions of personal guilt and responsi-
bility in their modern interpretation. In this sense, in my opinion, we need
to look at the fact that the convict, the person who has been punished (the
prisoner, the state convict, the condemned) becomes the hero, and more
than that—the “internal addressee,” even a kind of conceivable “arbiter”
of the latest literature and art from the very beginning of their existence.5
The first of such responses, which reflected the most painful problems
of contemporary time, was Victor Hugo’s The Last Day of a Condemned
Man (1829, published in Russian translation in M.M. Dostoevsky’s journal
Svetoch in 1860; it had a powerful influence on F.M. Dostoevsky). Since
then, the most prominent world intellectuals in both Europe and Russia
have stated many times that the death penalty is not acceptable.6
In the mid-twentieth century, books of social commentary became a
public sensation in the West, for example; Arthur Koestler (who had himself
 MAY–JUNE 2009  25

been sentenced to death) with the title Reflections on Hanging (1955)

and Albert Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine (1957).7 A decade later
came Truman Capote’s documentary novel In Cold Blood (1966), and
after another decade, Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979).
Both of these documentary novels won numerous prizes and were turned
into movies, which drew the additional attention of many hundreds of
thousands of people. In general, movies, as the newest mass medium,
became very actively involved in public discussions of abolitionism.
Since the films We Are All Murderers (1952, directed by André Cayatte,
France) and I Want to Live (1958, directed by Robert Wise, United States),
films about the death penalty and about those condemned to die, filmed
by major directors and often participated in by very well-known actors,
have been shown on screens worldwide at least once every two or three
years; they are discussed heatedly and at length in the press, on radio
and television. This longstanding public context of the problem, which
is constantly supported and extremely broad in terms of the scope of
people’s interest in it, definitely has to be kept in mind.
Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, a country that has a most severe
legacy of repression,8 the first and, as far as I know, just about the only
monograph film about someone sentenced to death has been the very
innovative one shot by Latvian documentary filmmaker Herz Frank,
titled The Last Judgment (Vysshii sud; 1987); it did not get much of an
audience even at the crest of the wave of perestroika of that era.9 One
way or another, in 1999, by a decree of the Constitutional Court of the
Russian Federation, a moratorium was placed on the death penalty in
this country (as a matter of fact, death sentences had not been carried
out since 1996). Now the moratorium has been extended to 2010. At
the same time, it is reasonable to say that so far there has been no effort
whatsoever to discuss the problems of the death penalty on a large scale
either in the legal context or in the moral context with respect to public
opinion in Russia.

The death penalty in Russia: mass assessments

At the end of the 1980s, when mass sociological surveys began in this
country, two-thirds of the adult population said that they favored the
death penalty. Table 1 shows data from surveys carried out by what was
then the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VTsIOM), and
how they have changed in the years since then.
26  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Table 1

In Your Opinion, Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished or Expanded?

(% of respondents)

Russia St. Petersburg

1989, 1990, 1994, 1999, 2002, 2002,
n= n= n= n= n= n=
1,470 1,350 3,000 2,000 1,600* 1,000

Should be abolished
immediately 4 6 5 5 5 16
Its abolition should be
approached gradually 13 20 15 15 15 14
Its imposition should be
kept within the present
limits 30 —** 37 36 44 36
Its imposition should be
expanded 37 — 24 23 29 27
Difficult to answer 16 8 19 20 7 7

  *The survey by what was then VTsIOM was carried out at the end of October 2002,
immediately after the Chechen militants seized hostages in the Theater Center on Du-
brovka in Moscow.
**In this survey, except for the two that were cited above, a single generalized option
“the death penalty ought to be retained in the future as well” was favored by 65 percent
of the respondents.

The data show a dramatic jump in people’s approval of the death

penalty for criminals immediately after the terrorist act that occurred
in the Theater Center on Dubrovka in Moscow: on the whole, almost
three-quarters of the respondents (73 percent, which was the maximum
proportion in all survey years) supported imposing the death penalty at
that time. It is clear from Table 1 that, at the same time, the proportion of
respondents opposed to the supreme penalty did not change, but the share
of those who had difficulty answering decreased substantially. People’s
feeling of general danger and of being unprotected mobilized aggressive
retributive reactions. Later this reactive upsurge passed, and according
to Levada Center data the situation mitigated somewhat.
The noted tendency toward mitigation continued to strengthen gradu-
ally, and the data in Table 2 reflect the situation of the past two years.
As we can see, today, as well, proponents of the death penalty in Russia
 MAY–JUNE 2009  27

Table 2

In Your Opinion, Should the Death Penalty Be Abolished or Expanded?

(% of respondents, Russia, n = 1,600)

2006 2007*

Should be abolished completely 12 11

A moratorium should be imposed on its application 23 31
Its application should be reinstated to its former parameters 43 40
Its application should be expanded 8 8
Difficult to answer 14 10

*Here and henceforth for 2007, unless otherwise indicated, the cited data are from a Rus-
sian nationwide representative survey of the adult population carried out by the Levada
Center at the request of Penal Reform International in July of the current year.

Figure 1. Should Russia Have the Death Penalty? (% of respondents, June

2005, n = 1,600)

Yes No Difficult to answer

total relatively more in number, but quantitative advantage is no longer

as substantial as it was formerly (Figure 1).
Fluctuations in the distribution of the answers to the question by
different sociodemographic group are generally predictable: men, less
well-off, and older people take a harsher position.10 But two aspects
draw our attention. First, respondents’ level of education has hardly
any influence on the answers in this case.11 Second, people, on the one
hand, living in Moscow (among whom is the greatest number of those
28  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

opposed to the death penalty), and people, on the other hand, living in
villages and medium-size cities with populations of 100,000 to 500,000
(among whom is the maximum number of respondents who support
the supreme penalty). In other words, it is reasonable to assume that a
harsh attitude on the death penalty is linked not only to people’s sense
of having no social prospects of their own (if that were so, the harsh-
est answers would likely be given by those living in hamlets and small
towns)—but also to their sense of the opportunities that would suppos-
edly open up, but for others—that is, to the well-known phenomenon of
“relative deprivation.”
In addition, when it comes to crime and criminals and the measures
that should be taken to combat them, again, not the poorest Russians are
the harshest and most uncompromising these days but the respondents
with medium (medium low or medium high) incomes (Table 3).
Be that as it may, Russians of any sociodemographic group, except for
the youngest, perceive the imposition of the death penalty specifically
as the way to guarantee their own protection; their view is that no other
mechanisms exist for ensuring the safety of citizens and maintaining
normative order in society. The best-educated respondents are not an
exception in this regard: on the one hand, they seem to be aware of the
intellectual norms of humaneness, and they even exhibit those norms in
certain judgments, but they take a much harsher stance when it comes
to their own safety (it must also be remembered that the better-educated
group of Russians includes hardly any of the youngest respondents who
are in school, and they are the ones, according to our survey data, who
manifest comparatively greater tolerance; Table 4).12 In exactly the same
way, in all sociodemographic groups the most prevalent opinion is that
the death penalty is an effective measure to combat crime: on average,
the proportion of respondents who do and do not believe that the death
penalty will help is 57 percent to 36 percent, respectively, and this hardly
changes at all among the different groups.13
It is important to keep in mind that all of these cases involve punish-
ments that are handed down and carried out by the state. Therefore,
behind the widely prevalent level of approval of the death penalty today
in Russia is a sense of unspoken support for the state on the part of the
mass of unprotected wards of that very same state. Also at work in the
mass conscientiousness, at the same time, is the neo-traditionalist and,
in that regard, archaic figure of the state specifically as the symbolic
tool of retribution. It is significant to note that most Russians firmly do
 MAY–JUNE 2009  29

Table 3

What Do You Personally Think About the Death Penalty?

(% of respondents, 2007)

“Abolish” and “Reinstate” and

“observe a “expand
Sociodemographic group moratorium” application”

On the whole 42 48
Sex
Male 38 53
Females 45 44
Age
18 to 24 48 42
25 to 39 41 50
40 to 54 43 45
55 and older 38 54
Education
Higher 42 48
Secondary and secondary specialized 41 48
Below secondary 42 50
Family income
Low 39 53
Medium low 38 50
Medium high 42 49
High 45 45
Type of community
Moscow 57 32
Cities over 500,000 population 40 48
100,000 to 500,000 36 51
Up to 100,000 49 46
Countryside 35 54

Note: The cited data are from a Russian nationwide representative survey of the adult
population carried out by the Levada Center at the request of Penal Reform International
in July of the current year. Data exclude those who had difficulty answering.

not believe in any actual effectiveness on the part of any and all state
agencies and institutions, with the exception of the armed forces. But
that is exactly why they have faith in the archaic figure of the state as
avenger: the scale of significance of such a symbolic figure is directly
30  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

proportionate to the degree of the population’s lack of legal protection

(and/or incompetence)—one might even say, it is an expression of it.
On the other hand, the slight increase in level of trust in the bodies of
executive authority in the past while (trust in the president and, in part,
owing to the light that is reflected from him, trust in the government),
the way we see it, has brought in its wake the relative mitigation in at-
titudes toward criminals and the supreme measure of punishment, as
noted in Table 4.
An uncompromising position—not only on the issue of whether to
impose the death penalty on people who have committed heinous crimes
but also on assessments of the need for harsh repressions against (for
example) homeless people, prostitutes, and homosexuals—is most often
held by older Russians, those with less education, and people who live
farther away from big cities. This aspect is curious and important. One
would think that the probability of such deviations in the places where
they live would be substantially lower, and so the assessments also ought
to be milder, but the exact opposite is the case. It is in these groups that
we find a higher level of anxiety and fear in regard to the world around
them and the future, a feeling of helplessness, a lack of confidence in
their own powers, and, therefore, an uncontrollable (powerless) inner
aggressiveness that becomes projected onto suspicious “others” and is,
in this case, “subcontracted out” to the state.
On the other hand, the younger and better-educated inhabitants of
Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other major Russian cities (and, as is well
known, these places have substantially higher crime levels, and social
deviations and phenomena of marginalism are encountered much more
frequently), nonetheless, are inclined to be much more tolerant. On aver-
age, they more actively express support for abolishing the death penalty
(either immediately or gradually) and for mitigating the state’s repressive
measures against homeless people, the most destitute, and others whose
behavior deviates from what is deemed publicly acceptable.
In other words, the possession or, on the contrary, the lack of prospects
in life and the resources that would make it possible to achieve them
(here we mean any kind of social and symbolic capital, from youthful-
ness to social imagination, to a thoughtful interest in other positions and
other people, to the real possibility of changing, whether on the part of
oneself or the other person)—this is, the way we see it, the deciding
circumstance that serves to shape Russians’ attitudes toward crime and
the death penalty. This can be seen very clearly, for example, in the
 MAY–JUNE 2009  31

Table 4

Will You Feel Better Protected Against Criminals if the Death Penalty Is
Imposed in Russia? (% of respondents, 2007)

“Definitely yes” “Mostly no” and

Sociodemographic group and “mostly yes” “definitely no”

As a whole 47 39
Sex
Male 48 39
Female 46 39
Age
18 to 24 42 44
25 to 39 49 39
40 to 54 44 42
55 and older 51 34
Education
Higher 50 40
Secondary and secondary specialized 44 38
Lower than secondary 46 40
Family income
Low 50 36
Medium low 48 38
Medium high 50 37
High 46 44
Type of community
Moscow 45 40
Cities of more than 500,000 45 39
100,000 to 500,000 52 37
Up to 100,000 41 45
Countryside 53 33

Note: The cited data are from a Russian nationwide representative survey of the adult
population carried out by the Levada Center at the request of Penal Reform International
in July of the current year. Data exclude those who had difficulty answering.

distribution of the answers to the question as to which punishment is the

most terrible for a human being. On the whole, the population of Rus-
sia was strictly evenly divided in this regard between the two prompts,
which brings into even sharper relief the differences between the various
sociodemographic groups (Table 5).
32  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Table 5

Which Punishment Is More Terrible for a Human Being?

(% of respondents, 2007)

Life
Sociodemographic group Death penalty imprisonment

As a whole 44 44
Sex
Male 44 44
Female 44 43
Age
18 to 24 40 47
25 to 39 43 45
40 to 54 45 44
55 and older 47 40
Education
Higher 36 51
Secondary and secondary specialized 46 42
Lower than secondary 46 42
Family income
Low 45 47
Medium low 50 37
Medium high 46 42
High 41 47
Type of community
Moscow 34 54
Cities of more than 500,000 40 50
100,000 to 500,000 44 45
Up to 100,000 48 39
Countryside 47 40

Note: The cited data are from a Russian nationwide representative survey of the adult
population carried out by the Levada Center at the request of Penal Reform International
in July of the current year. Data exclude those who had difficulty answering.

In the view of Russians, the most heinous crimes are serial murder,
the rape of minors, and premeditated murder; these are the crimes for
which the respondents most often demand the death penalty (71 percent, 65
percent, and 48 percent, respectively). A relative majority includes among
these crimes trafficking in narcotics (38 percent of the respondents believe
 MAY–JUNE 2009  33

the death penalty ought to be imposed) and terrorism (32 percent).

Younger and better-educated Russians and those living in the big cities
(but not Moscow) most often speak in favor of the death penalty for ter-
rorists; middle-aged respondents are most strongly in favor of the death
penalty for those found guilty of serial murder and the rape of minors;
for the other types of crimes, older respondents are more strongly in
favor of the death penalty.
The maximum number of respondents who favor the death penalty
for serial murderers is found among capital city residents; favoring the
supreme penalty for rapists are those living in the countryside.
The belief that it is basically useless to impose harsher punishments
is most often expressed by the youngest respondents and people living
in the capital city. A consciousness of the incompetence of the supreme
penalty on the part of agencies of justice currently in place, and in general
of the unfitness of any human court in such circumstances, is the most
prevalent trait of the oldest age groups and, again, of Muscovites. The
more elderly respondents with less education are more likely than other
groups to hold on to the perception of the death penalty as retribution
that the criminal has coming to him. Those living in the countryside are
more likely than others to believe that the death penalty for especially
heinous crimes represents the ultimate means, the only way to stop the
growth of crime.
Eight percent of Russians say that the death penalty is not justified or
acceptable in any case. Among those with higher education and those
living in the capital city, the figure is 10–11 percent.

Stigmatization of the criminal: The role and scale of

compassion and mercy

As has already been mentioned, one significant factor in differentiat-

ing people’s attitudes toward crime and the death penalty is the level of
the respondents’ social capital and the symbolic capital that goes along
with it. The ethical component (a disposition toward greater tolerance),
which in principle stems, on the one hand, from an acknowledgment
of having something in common with the offender, and, on the other
hand, an understanding and recognition of the differences between the
offender and oneself, differences of circumstances, motives, attendant
elements, and so on, constitutes an independent variable in this regard. It
is instructive to note that in spite of a few, very insignificant fluctuations
34  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Table 6

Which Punishment Is More Terrible for a Human Being? (2007)

Would be able to forgive Would not be able to

a criminal who had forgive a criminal who had
repented, % repented, %

The death penalty is more

terrible 37 49
Life imprisonment is more
terrible 54 41

Note: The cited data are from a Russian nationwide representative survey of the adult
population carried out by the Levada Center at the request of Penal Reform International
in July of the current year. Data exclude those who had difficulty answering.

in answers with respect to the ability to experience compassion in the

different sociodemographic groups, a refusal to believe in the repentance
of a criminal and to forgive him if he himself has repented, is notably
and unequivocally prevalent in all strata of respondents. The ratio of
those who do and do not believe in such repentance, between those who
are and are not willing to forgive the one who has repented, in their own
words, stands at 1 to 2.14
Meanwhile, as an independent component a willingness to forgive a
criminal who has repented has a noticeable influence on the respondents’
attitudes toward crime and the death penalty. For example, in the opinion
of those who, by their own admission, would not be able to forgive a
criminal who had repented, the death penalty is the more terrible (which
is also why they are more likely to support imposing the death penalty
on those guilty of especially heinous crimes). On the other hand, for
those who, according to their own words, would be able to forgive a
person who had repented, the value of a human life is more important; it
seems to them that life imprisonment without the possibility of a review
of sentence is much more terrible, and, accordingly, they are much less
likely (according to their answers) to be willing to sentence a criminal
to the supreme penalty (Table 6).
Along the same lines, respondents’ attitudes toward crime and the
death penalty for criminals are influenced by their belief that the person
who has transgressed against the law is capable of repenting and chang-
ing, a disposition to educate people to be tolerant rather than to impose
harsher punishment, and so on.
 MAY–JUNE 2009  35

In other words, attitudes toward criminals and the death penalty as

the supreme measure of punishment for heinous crimes are shaped in
the collective consciousness under the intersecting influences of several
factors. Here we indicate just a few:
• the social position of the respondents and their families, and
people similar to them among their immediate associates;
• symbolic capital;
• a consciousness of their greater or lesser autonomy from the
oversight of the state, their greater or lesser confidence in their
own powers; and
• moral and value attitudes toward tolerance as an independent
variable.
Such a complexity (one that is fundamental!) of sociocultural deter-
mination of behavior and evaluations in this sphere makes it impossible
to reduce them down to either an unequivocal socioeconomic predeter-
mination or to a purely emotional outburst of indignation and a desire
to take revenge against the criminals, on the part of the victims or those
who sympathize.

The character of society and conceptions of the general:

By way of retreat

The present author and his colleagues have had occasion many times to
write that the definitive feature of present-day social life in Russia is the
disposition of both the overwhelming majority and of advanced groups
of the population to just adapt, and, moreover, to adapt downward. In
connection with this, it is worthwhile to pinpoint the (legal) capacity of
a population that is so inclined as well as any actual fundamental pos-
sibility of legal assessments of its behavior.15 In a society that consists of
(dependent) wards and people oriented toward passive accommodation,
universal norms of modern law, and also of morality, are not only not
in effect but, strictly speaking, do not even arise. And the replies of the
overwhelming majority of Russians to questions concerning the possi-
bility of living by the law and being able to count on rights, justice, law
enforcement agencies, and so on, have long since provided clear and solid
evidence of this. The fact that such norms and conceptions seem to be in
place in words but do not actually function and are not backed up by any
belief on the part of the population that they are in general intended ever
36  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

to actually work or are capable of it (i.e., they are not supported by any
recognized legitimacy of the social order in the aggregate of the basic
institutions that affirm and reproduce them), is a sign that they are of a
purely demonstrative, simulative, or pseudo-magical character, but by
no means, at any rate, not of a modern or universal character.
This circumstance is also linked to a number of other phenomena that
define the collective life of Russians these days. On the one hand, I am
referring to Russia’s increasingly greater isolation from the world, which
is reflected both in state foreign policy and in the myths that are being
newly promoted and hyped by many politicians and political technolo-
gists, of a so-called special path of the country, as well as in the moods
of the masses of Russians; on the other hand, the increasing spread of
the fragmentation of the society, which is being split up into smaller
and smaller closed communities that are built on relations just “among
themselves.” In such social structures,16 their simplified character, which
is distinguished by a scarcity of most life resources, striving toward
uniformity and built on social partitions, makes it impossible or, at least,
extremely difficult, to formulate conceptions about “the other” person and
“every” person, to form universal values and abstractly universal norms.
This also applies to generalized regulative categories such as life (and
accordingly death), guilt and shame, punishment and forgiveness.
The differentiation of social functions and their distribution among the
various agents and institutions in societies customarily called modern and
developed, goes hand in hand with the formulation of the kinds of values
and norms that are interpersonal, in place, and common to all—accessible
to all, meaningful to all, and accepted by all. On the other hand, the frag-
mentation of social forms not accompanied by sophistication and division
of functions, puts in motion other mechanisms of social integration by
bringing to life simulative and, in the same sense, mythologized images
of wholeness and personalized figures that represent a simulated whole,
always, moreover, one that has been “lost” (as an original perfection)
and “unachievable” (as a hoped-for future).17
In a negative modus of generalizing conceptions, the sociology of
knowledge discerns a symbolic transformation, a semantic transcrip-
tion of the individual’s lack of independent initiative and lack of self-
sufficiency (subjecthood) and the deficiency or insufficiency of his
social connections, of any positive interest in “the other.” Serving as the
framework of comparison and contrast for such analytical assessments
is the synthesis of the principles of independent action, competitiveness,
 MAY–JUNE 2009  37

and solidarity that has emerged and, perhaps, will remain in history, the
unique achievement of “Western” societies. It served as the basis of their
anthropology, cultural, and later also their everyday civilization, because
it gave to individuals and groups basic structures, self-understanding,
social imagination, and historical memory.

Mass assessments of the Russian system of justice

In the context under consideration here, mass assessments of the law and
the system of justice in today’s Russia do not look so clear-cut: they are
irremediably ambiguous and vague. People’s consciousness, moreover,
is affected by a number of variegated factors that activate and bring out
various attitudes that seem to pertain to the different stages and levels of
society’s living standard, both archaic and closer to the present, socially
deterministic and universally individualistic, related to the norm (to “ev-
eryone”) and related to practice (to the individual’s own actions, to actual
behavior—one’s own behavior and that of “the others”), and so on.
According to the data cited from the survey of July 2007, more than
half of the Russian population (54 percent) does not believe that it is pos-
sible to live in the country today without breaking the law. But almost the
same proportion (57 percent) also does not believe in the presumption
of each one’s guilt. The socially dependent population groups who have
fewer resources—those living in small towns (42 percent), the elderly (43
percent), and those with low family incomes (47 percent)— are more likely
than others to believe that everyone who has been punished is in some way
or another guilty (“there is no such thing as punishment without guilt”).
It is reasonable to say that the law, violations, guilt, responsibility,
jurisprudence, and punishment are, to put it provisionally, located on
different planes of meaning, at different “distances” from the respondent,
so that the judgments expressed about them by the respondents look
uncoordinated or, at any rate, not always consistent.18 The ordinary Rus-
sian is not concerned with such consistency and does not care about any
routine rationalization of his own behavior at all. The legal awareness of
Russian society continues to be in its embryonic state, and the activity
of any responsible groups in society (e.g., defenders of human rights,
alliances for protecting consumer rights, etc.), the same as the specialized
social institutions and state bodies involved in that area, starting with the
schools, remains spotty, weak, and not very effective.
As we can see, on average more than four-fifths (81 percent) of our
38  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Table 7

How Often Are Judicial Mistakes Made in Russia? (% of respondents, 2007)

Extremely Quite Very

Sociodemographic group rarely often often

On the whole 13 56 24
Sex
Male 11 56 28
Female 15 57 21
Age
18 to 24 18 55 19
25 to 39 9 58 27
40 to 54 13 56 26
55 and older 14 56 22
Education
Higher 14 57 24
Secondary and secondary specialized 12 57 24
Lower than secondary 14 55 24
Family income
Low 11 54 27
Medium low 13 60 22
Medium high 10 60 24
High 15 52 26
Type of community
Moscow 15 56 22
Cities of more than 500,000 11 56 27
100,000 to 500,000 12 60 22
Up to 100,000 16 58 21
Countryside 11 52 29

Notes: The cited data are from a Russian nationwide representative survey of the adult
population carried out by the Levada Center at the request of Penal Reform International
in July of the current year. Omitted as statistically insignificant are replies of an average
0.3 percent of respondents who said “no errors at all are committed.” Data exclude those
who had difficulty answering.

respondents are convinced that the Russian system of justice is guilty of

mistakes often and very often (Table 7). Three-quarters believe that it is
more terrible to convict someone who is not guilty than to permit some-
one who is guilty to escape punishment. And yet, nonetheless, almost
 MAY–JUNE 2009  39

half of Russians, as was shown earlier, are in favor of reinstituting and

expanding the practical imposition of the death penalty.19
Another substantial contradiction is seen in the country’s present system
of justice itself, and Russians have commented on it. The Russian justice
system, as the respondents see it, should strive first and foremost to punish
the law breaker (the opinion of 38 percent of the respondents), to isolate
him away from society (28 percent), and to deter other potential criminals
(17 percent). Of much less importance in the actions of the justice system
is the motive of restoring justice (as indicated by 19 percent of the respon-
dents). And yet, for Russians themselves that is the chief consideration
(according to 48 percent of the respondents). To punish and isolate the
criminal, to deter anyone who is like him, are essential motives, but they
are much less important to the respondents.
This allows us to understand that in the opinion of the absolute ma-
jority, the ordinary Russian will not be able to obtain justice here in his
own country but [only] in the European Court of Human Rights. That
is the opinion of 60 percent of our respondents; among Russians with
higher education and higher incomes, among those living in large and
very large cities, including Moscow, that figure rises to 66–69 percent.
On average for the whole country, only 14 percent mention the Russian
courts in this regard, and this, of course, constitutes an indictment of
this country’s system of justice and law enforcement.
According to the 2006 data, 61 percent of the Russians surveyed
do not believe that the ordinary person in Russia can hope for fairness
from the courts (4 percent “definitely believe” it, and another 25 percent
“mostly believe” it). It is no accident that two-thirds of Russians, and
even more, do not trust the courts and the police, and are in fact simply
afraid of the police: over the past few years this fear has been routinely
expressed by 67–69 percent of the respondents. As many as 80 percent
of the country’s population state that the problem of lawlessness and
arbitrary action on the part of bodies of law enforcement is serious or
very serious. And more than half of Russians, even up to 60 percent, over
the past few years, have acknowledged that they personally do not see
any protection for themselves against such arbitrary action, either on the
part of the prosecuting agencies or in the courts.

Notes
1. Data from Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-
facts-eng/ (accessed October 2, 2007). For more detail see E. Oznobkina, “O smertnoi
40  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

kazni” [On the Death Penalty], Razvitie lichnosti, 2005, no. 3, pp. 105–20; and other
works by the same author, as well as the table of contents of the journal Indeks/
Dos’e na tsenzuru, www.index.org.ru/turma/sk/.
2. See R. Hood, The Death Penalty: A World-Wide Perspective (Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 2002), p. 230.
3. Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-facts-eng/.
4. See M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gal-
limard, 1975).
5. Pushkin’s “prisoner” (in the poem of the same name, 1822) resonates here
with Beaudelaire’s captifs (in “The Swan,” 1850) and Rimbaud’s forçats (“Orgy
in Paris,” 1871).
6. I.S. Turgenev’s well-known essay “Kazn’ Tropmana” [The Execution of
Tropman] (1870). In that same year, M. Munkácsy’s painting The Last Day of a
Condemned Man was exhibited in a Paris salon (1869); it was awarded the Gold
Medal at the exhibit and was widely disseminated in the form of prints. It is in-
structive to note that the same post-reform period in Russia saw the publication of
A.F. Kistiakovskii’s book Issledovanie o smertnoi kazni [An Investigation of the
Death Penalty] (1867). Then there is V. Solov’ev’s speech in favor of abolition, in
response to terrorists’ attempt on the life of the tsar, in 1881. The turn of the century
saw the abolitionist activity of V.G. Korolenko, and the beginning of the twentieth
century, the publication of L. Andreev’s “Rasskaz o semi poveshennykh” [Story of
Seven Hanged People], and monographs by N. Tagantsev, M. Gernet, and others. In
the late Soviet press, which was still under censorship, A.I. Solzhenitsyn came out
against the death penalty in his Arkhipelag GULAG [The GULAG Archipelago], as
did A.D. Sakharov with his “Pis’mo po probleme smertnoi kazni” [A Letter on the
Problem of the Death Penalty], 1977.
7. A. Koestler and A. Camus, Razmyshleniia o smertnoi kazni [Réflexions sur
la peine capitale] (Moscow: Praksis, 2003); in the same work, a significant essay
by Jean Bloch-Michel on the history of the issue, and Camus’s letters in favor of
abolishing the death penalty, and world statistics as of the year 2001.
8. This refers to other things besides the mass repressions carried out by state
agencies against the population and whole categories of the population (the cus-
tomary term was “classes”) and a number of bloody wars, the forced resettlement
of whole nations, and so on. One-fourth of the Russians surveyed (in the 1999
survey) had taken part in fights, and half of them had been the victims of verbal
abuse. A quarter of them (1998) had been victims of robbery. About one out of
four or five adult Russians has been a victim of violence by members of his or
her own family. Twenty-six percent of the women surveyed in 1998 had been the
victims of beatings by older people in childhood; 30 percent had witnessed such
scenes between parents. Fifty-eight percent of the young men who had served
in the armed forces (data from 1998) had been the victims of physical abuse by
fellow service personnel.
9. It is worthwhile to point out that the film Legko li byt’ molodym? [It’s Not
Easy Being Young] was shot at that time by a Lithuanian filmmaker, and Pokaianie
[Repentance] by a Georgian filmmaker.
10. We note in addition that for older respondents their feeling of vulnerability
is projected, in their minds, onto their own minor children; it is no accident that a
 MAY–JUNE 2009  41

harsher position on many issues concerning crime and punishment for crime is held
by respondents between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-nine.
11. Compare A.P. Chekhov’s observation in his Ostrov Sakhalin [The Island of
Sakhalin]: “It is not just the people who have been arrested that become coarser
and harsher due to bodily punishment, but also those who administer punishment
and are present when it occurs. Even educated people are no exception” (A.P.
Chekhov, Poln. sobr. soch. i pisem: Soch. [Complete Collected Works and Letters:
Works]) (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), vols. 14/15, p. 338 (the following pages concern
the death penalty).
12. Overall, the distribution of most assessments by the best-educated group
of Russians in this survey tend to be closer than others to the average data for the
entire set of respondents, in this way personifying the averaged norm, so to speak.
13. The position held by young people in this case is in no way less harsh than
that of other groups (59 percent to 35 percent), and the position held by Muscovites
is even more harsh (62 percent to 29 percent).
14. The respective average data are as follows: 30 percent and 61 percent
(belief/disbelief in the ability to repent), 26 percent and 54 percent (willingness/
unwillingness to forgive someone who has repented). Judging from this distribution,
a professed affiliation with the Orthodox faith—which 60 percent of adult Russians
do profess today, and even more do so in certain months—also does not go hand in
hand with any softening of attitudes toward a criminal who has repented.
15. For more detail see L. Gudkov, “Otnoshenie k pravovym institutam v Rossii”
[Attitudes Toward Institutions of Law in Russia], in L. Gudkov, Negativnaia
identichnost’. Stat’i 1997–2002 godov [Negative Identity. Articles, 1997–2002]
(Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2004), pp. 737–68.
16. In this regard, Russia is a significant example but not the only one. Attempts
to escape from a totalitarian repressive state system, with its forced (under pain
of death or social stigma) uniformization and actual atomization of social life,
were attempted in the twentieth century in many countries, and a number of these
attempts were actually successful.
17. The very recent initiatives to create a figure of a “national leader,” to
which Russia, in the words of one of his associates, is “just plain destined,” is a
nomenklatura attempt to galvanize exactly such notions. In this case there is no
good cause to speak of morality and law; the unconstitutional character of such
measures is obvious.
18. This kind of uncoordination characterizes assessments of the collective past
to an even greater extent. Here I will cite a few figures from the August 2007 survey
(n = 1,600 people). The population losses due to mass repressions under Stalin
are considered to be the largest in the twentieth century by a predominant portion
of Russians (52 percent). Almost three-quarters (72 percent) agree that “it was a
political crime, and there can be no justification for it.” At the same time, however,
half the respondents (49 percent) hold the opinion that the organizers and executors
of the mass extermination should be “left in peace since it happened so long ago”
(26 percent believe that they should be tried and condemned); more than two-thirds
(68 percent) believe that it makes no sense to seek out those guilty of the crimes
of that era. From this it is understandable that these days for Russians, neither
the GULAG nor the holocaust are included among the most significant events of
42  SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

the twentieth century: given the absence of a “bright future,” apparently, they are
willing to settle for a “bright past” at least.
19. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, data published in the United
States revealed that in the preceding twenty years, as a result of more careful
examination of the evidence and circumstances of cases, the courts ruled that one
out of seven people who had been convicted and sentenced to death in those years
was innocent. See Oznobkina, “O smertnoi kazni.”

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