Deputy Lugovoy proposed to punish “terry traitors” with life imprisonment

“All around treason, and cowardice, and deceit.” These words were said, more precisely, written more than a hundred years ago and for a slightly different reason, but they sound surprisingly relevant, fresh. Compare, for example, with the disturbing post on the telegram channel of State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi: “The number of those who have crossed the moral line in relation to their homeland, people is growing exponentially … The most severe punishment should follow for treason.”

The fundamental difference, however, is that, unlike Emperor Nicholas II, who refused to fight, to whom the first quote belongs – a diary entry dated March 2 (March 15), 1917, the deputy has not yet been broken. The deputy, who has not given up, is going to introduce a bill to the Duma that will toughen the responsibility for high treason. Although it is more correct to say “deputies”.

The plural form of the first person used by Lugovoi when talking about his initiative – “we will prepare”, “we will submit”, “we are consulting” – says, of course, not that the parliamentarian considers himself a special imperial blood, but that he is not alone in your fight. True, it is not entirely clear on whose behalf he is broadcasting, but it would not be superfluous to mention that Andrei Konstantinovich is a member of the Duma Commission to investigate the facts of interference of foreign states in the internal affairs of Russia, holding the post of deputy chairman in it.

“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in Soviet times, for treachery – I will speak in a language that is understandable to everyone – execution was supposed to be,” the stern parliamentarian recalls. True, it is not yet so severe as to completely revive the Soviet practice that is destructive for traitors. For high treason, Lugovoy proposes to punish “with life imprisonment and deprivation of citizenship without the right to appeal.”

For reference: today the maximum punishment for such an act (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) is imprisonment for up to twenty years. In principle, adding an “eternal” term here is, as they say, a matter of technology. Life imprisonment today appears in many articles of the Criminal Code.

Such a punishment can be imposed, for example, for murder under aggravating circumstances, for a crime against sexual integrity, for terrorism and aiding it, for encroachment on the life of a statesman, judge, law enforcement officer … To add here also treason would be, I think, completely not difficult.

It will be much more difficult to supplement the list of punishments with deprivation of citizenship and the right to appeal the verdict. Here it will be necessary to change not only the Criminal Code, but also the Constitution, which in its current form is completely incompatible with these ideas. However, the main question, I think, is still not in punishment, but in crime – in how deputy Lugovoi and his associates understand him. And they understand him, judging by the statements of Andrei Konstantinovich, well, very widely.

“Enough we have given free rein to breed terry traitors who call themselves the liberal opposition,” – writes the deputy. The problem, he says, is that traitors do not always act openly. Recognizing them, Lugovoy warns, can be difficult: “The external enemy is not as terrible as those traitors who are among us. They are not branded, they live in the neighborhood, go the same routes as we do. and different values.

It reminds me a lot of something… Just some kind of déjà vu. Oh, yes, here it is: “What … is the strength of the modern wreckers, the Trotskyists? Their strength lies in the party card, in the possession of the party card. Their strength lies in the fact that the party card gives them political confidence and opens them access to all our institutions and organizations. Their advantage lies in the fact that, having party cards and pretending to be friends of the Soviet government, they deceived our people politically, abused confidence, did harm on the sly and revealed our state secrets to the enemies of the Soviet Union.

This is the speech of Comrade Stalin at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, which became the prologue to the Great Terror. In the same speech, Stalin gave an explanation of the phenomenon that the current fighters faced with the “enemies of the people”, but, apparently, due to less theoretical knowledge than that of the “leader of the peoples”, they left without any understanding: why the state becomes everything is stronger, life in it is better and more fun, and there are more and more internal enemies?

Comrade Stalin said the following about this: “The more we move forward, the more we have successes, the more the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes will become embittered, the sooner they will go to sharper forms of struggle, the more they will harm the Soviet state, the more they will seize upon the most desperate means of struggle as the last means of the doomed.”

Comrade Stalin, of course, would not have approved of Lugovoi and Co.’s softness: well, what is it, in fact, just a “life sentence” for “terry betrayal”? Under Comrade Stalin, “enemies of the people” were put against the wall without talking. However, in fairness, the point here is not in the liberalism that has not been outlived by the guardians, but in the shackles of the political system restraining their impulses. If it were their will, they would probably reproduce the Stalinist model of eradicating enemies on a 1:1 scale. Although the result is unlikely to be liked by the initiative guards themselves.

It is worth recalling that Comrade Stalin left alive less than a third of the participants in that fateful plenum. And if he were alive today, he would certainly ask who in the “dashing 1990s” guarded the “British intelligence agent” Berezovsky, who traveled to London to meet with the traitor and enemy agent Litvinenko. Ah, could it really be… In short, don’t wake up dashing, comrade Lugovoy.