CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN RUSSIA
Stone, Esther L.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN RUSSIA Letter From Russian Prisoner Reveals Shocking Practices By ESTHER L. STONE ESTHER L. STONE is a native of Russia where she was brought up and educated. She is...
...This has been kept up day after day since the end of 1905...
...The unfortunates are carried to the scaffold like legs, in their underwear only—they shiver from cold...
...The wardrobe with a chair placed on top of it is meant to serve as a foot-stool for the victim until the chair is removed from under the feet of the unfortunate...
...The highest punishment admitted by it is imprisonment for life, and still there is not a civilized country in the world where so many death sentences are passed and so many human beings are executed as in Russia today...
...Where Fear Clutches the Heart "MONTH after month the men under the death sentence wait for their execution, tormented every night by fear that their turn might come that very night...
...However, when a number of lawyers, authors, scientists, and other leading men, made an attempt to organize a league for the purpose of agitating against capital punishment, the administration refused to sanction such an organization...
...Abolish Death Punishments," Say People EVER since the first Duma was assembled the abolition of death punishments for political prisoners has been demanded by the people and their representatives...
...She is thoroughly familiar with conditions in Russia from personal contact and study and has kept in close touch with events in her native land since settling in this country...
...Soon his cries are silenced and we can hear only muffled groans and howling...
...Then when his cell door is opened, several people throw themselves upon him and one holds a pillow to put over his mouth...
...I don't know—perhaps it was better for him, but none of the executions shocked me as much as his...
...Meanwhile, the materials for the scaffold and instruments are being brought out from the prison corridors...
...The doctor, the attorney, the priest turn away and step aside, but the prison wardens exclaim: 'Oho, you don't want to get up there—you don't like it' * * *. Now comes the executioner, puts his hands upon the shoulder of the prisoner so heavily that he falls down...
...At six o'clock in the evening work on erecting of the bloody scaffold is begun and from that hour on until early in the morning I can not help remaining awake and witnessing with my own eyes all the horrors that are taking place...
...Since a dynamite explosion had taken place in the prison some two years ago, the prison has been declared under martial law, and is overrun with soldiers at the least sign of insubordination...
...Now everything is ready...
...I run in my cell in impotent rage, knock at the walls, yell, curse, entreat, but in reply I hear nothing but the cynical remarks of the police on guard, who with their chief at the head fill the hospital yard during the whole proceedings...
...While he struggles this way he is beaten and knocked until everything is ready and he remains hanging...
...Instead his arms and legs are tied up cruelly tight and he is carried to the office, thrown on the floor of a dark room, where he lies waiting for the scaffold to be erected and the arrival of the prosecuting attorney and other dignitaries...
...They do not retire, for this reason, until morning, and only in the morning utterly exhausted with the nervous strain, do they fall asleep and sleep through the entire day...
...Russkiva Vedomosti," a leading paper published in Moscow, says: "As compared with 1906, the number of death sentences rendered by some of the military courts has multiplied five and six times...
...Not a day passes but the Russian papers contain notices of death sentences pronounced by court martial on numerous people, and of executions by hanging and shooting of the unfortunate victims in different towns of Russia...
...apparently the victim was not properly gagged...
...As I am very ill, I shall confine myself to the description of circumstances under which those who are sentenced to death by hanging are being executed...
...For many are the executions, seventy since I have been here (since May 1908) and fifteen more are waiting to be executed, while ninety others may expect to be handed down similar decisions by the judges...
...His resistance, however, cannot last long...
...IN order to do this bloody work, the government suspends the operation of the civil laws by declaring a district under ma-tial law (and most of Russia is under martial law at present...
...Nobody is to be hanged tonight...
...But the administration is establishing order, by dispensing freely curses and most cynical remarks and threats...
...Once the wrong man was carried to the scaffold in spite of his protests...
...And since no organization in Russia can exist wthout the government sanction, the whole enterprise was nipped in the bud, for those who were to participate in it were men of conservative views who would not dream of undertaking anything in an underground way as would men of more radical views and inclinations in Russia...
...All this apparently awakens an uncontrollable desire to live in the victim...
...Sometimes mistakes are made...
...The coffins are brought in and placed around the scaffold...
...In punishment for writing it, Lamtatidse has been deprived of all the privileges hitherto granted him on account of his illness...
...This letter has been recently made the subject of an interpellation in the Duma...
...But he succeeded in being heard and was returned to his cell...
...In a dispatch from Russia dated March 9 we read: "Khomy-akoff, President of the Duma (the third), strongly urged the Czar at a recent audience to stop the widespread inflicting of capital punishment and abolish martial law...
...This is shown in the evening...
...Finally the attorney appears...
...Then the police appear and station themselves in the prison corridors and in the courtyard...
...The wardens throw themseves upon him while he works away with his legs and arms and shrieks...
...The noise of a subdued struggle can be heard, occasionally a cry reaches our ears...
...This in one province of Taurida only in the course of a single session of the court...
...The others condemned even have to look at all this while waiting for their turn, and repeat the same performance...
...Their arms and legs are freed from their fetters, their gag is removed, and their mouths are released from the covers, and they are placed on the scaffold, where they have to be supported in most cases...
...Now the hammer is busily engaged, the criminal is being freed from his chains...
...The total number of executions during this period was nearly 5,000...
...Now the prison is being filled with yells, the prisoners begin to sing a funeral march while the soldiers run about and order silence...
...by way of punishment the prisoners are deprived of their beds, soap, sugar and are being mercilessly beaten and in order to silence their screams their mouths are gagged...
...They were saying then that this was a piece of good luck for him...
...We can see how the coffins are brought in, and by their number we can tell how many persons will be executed...
...The executions are carried out in the court yard of the prison hospital, at a distance of about six yards from my window...
...Never, never have I heard anything like it...
...But now comes a night of actual execution...
...She has revisited Russia twice, her last visit coinciding with the culmination of the revolution in 1905-06...
...THE Russian Civil Code does not recognize capital punishment...
...In 1908 no less than 1,959 persons were sentenced to death...
...He falls on his knees, he weeps, he begs, he crawls around to kiss the hands of those who are around him...
...But the least sound, the lightest step of the warden, awakens them and they jump up with terrible crys, filling the prison walls with inhuman calls for help: 'Help, they want to hang me, help.' The whole prison is aroused, everybody begins to yell, to cry, to knock at the doors, some one says: 'Good bye...
...On another occasion a man who was down with typhoid fever was brought to the scaffold and hanged while unconscious, with a temperature running up to 105...
...Soon the corridors of the prison are filled with soldiers who shoot at the least provocation...
...Here are some extracts from this letter: "This is not the first time that I am thrown into prison and that I have to witness what is going on within its walls, but the things that are taking place here are so extraordinary that the mere thought of them fills me with horror...
...But the victim is prepared and does not submit without a struggle...
...Since a number of those condemned are common robbers and cut-throats they die like cowards, getting down on their knees before the executioners calling to their mothers for help, in a word, offering a pleasing spectacle for the prison authorities...
...But this was only a false alarm...
...Horrors of Execution Disclosed ALETTER from Lamtatidse, formerly a member of the Duma and now confined in the prison of Sebastopol, discloses to the world the horrors which sometimes accompany the executions...
...She was an eye-witness of the ravages wrought by the terrible massacres at Odessa.— Editor's Note...
Vol. 1 • July 1909 • No. 30
