"The State as a Murderer": The Death Penalty and Just Authority in the Late Tsarist Empire
Journal: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Year: 2015

In the backdrop of the debates on the death penalty around 1905, this article contributes to a history of justice in turn-of-the-century-Russia. Justice in Russia always seems to be a matter of sovereignty. Acting on the assumption that justice is created by rulers in a particular historical context, it thus has become an institutionally top-down business, in which the subjects wait for the tsar’s milost’ [mercy]. Only the late tsarist empire can be described as an exception as there was a diffe