page_title: Capital punishment in Russia
section_title: RSFSR and the Soviet Union
hierarchical_section_title: Capital punishment in Russia / History / RSFSR and the Soviet Union
caption_attribution_description: English: Top secret. List of the arrested at the NKVD. Approving resolution: Shoot all named in the list. Stalin. The first page of the list of 46 persons proposed by Lavrenty Beria for execution on January 29, 1942 (see Purge of the Red Army in 1941). All of them, including 17 Red Army Generals and one former People's Commissar (Minister), will be extrajudicially executed on February 23, 1942. Stored in the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation (АП РФ. Ф.3. Оп.24. Д.378. Л.196–211.).
context_page_description: Currently, capital punishment in Russia is not enforced. Russia has both an implicit moratorium established by President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and an explicit one, established by the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1999 and most recently reaffirmed in 2009. Russia has not executed anyone since 1996.
context_section_description: The Soviet government confirmed the abolition almost immediately after assuming power, but restored it for some crimes very soon. Most notably, Fanny Kaplan was executed on 4 September 1918 for her attempt to assassinate Lenin six days earlier. Over the next several decades, the death penalty was alternately permitted and prohibited, sometimes in very quick succession. The list of capital crimes likewise underwent several changes.
  Under the rule of Joseph Stalin, many were executed during the Great Purge in the 1930s. Many of the death sentences were pronounced by a specially appointed three-person commission of officials, the NKVD troika. The exact number of executions is debated, with archival research suggesting it to be between 700,000 and 800,000, whereas an official report to Nikita Khrushchev from 1954 cites 642,980 death penalties. (see also Joseph Stalin § Death toll and allegations of genocide). The verdict of capital punishment in the Soviet Union was called the "Supreme Degree of Punishment" (Vysshaya Mera Nakazaniya, VMN). Verdicts under Article 58 (counter-revolutionary activity) often ended with a sentence that was abbreviated as VMN, and usually followed by executions through shooting, though other frequent verdicts were 10 years and 25 years (dubbed "Сталинский четвертак" Stalinskiy chetvertak, "Stalin's Quarter") sentences.
  The death penalty was again abolished on 26 May 1947, the strictest sentence becoming 25 years' imprisonment, before it was restored on 12 May 1950: first for treason and espionage, and then for aggravated murder. The Penal Code of 1960 significantly extended the list of capital crimes. According to 1985–1989 statistics, the death penalty accounted for less than 1 in 2000 sentences. According to the GARF archives database, between 1978 and 1985 there were 3,058 sentences to death that had been appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR. At least one woman was executed during this time, Antonina Makarova, on 11 August 1978. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation carried out the death penalty intermittently, with up to 10 or so officially a year. In 1996, pending Russia's entry into the Council of Europe, a moratorium was placed on the death penalty, which is still in place as of 2020.
caption: Lavrentiy Beria's proposal of January 29, 1942, to execute 46 generals. Joseph Stalin's resolution: "Shoot all named in the list. – J. St."
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