Will Trepova be executed for the murder of Tatarsky: they proposed to toughen the punishment for women

Modern Russian legislation does not provide for women (as well as minors and persons over 65 years of age) the most severe punishment – life imprisonment. But the court has the right to assign them the maximum term prescribed under the article in which they are accused.

There are many examples of this. Recently, a graduate student of the Chelyabinsk State University, Alexander Borshcheva, received 18 years in prison for transporting drugs (they were in a car belonging to her husband, the girl did not admit her guilt). Former RAO manager Karina Turcan is serving a 15-year sentence for espionage (she also pleaded not guilty). In general, according to the totality of crimes, a woman can be given the same amount as a man – 35 years in prison. But there have definitely never been cases of appointing such a huge term in modern Russia.

– Who knows, maybe Daria Trepova will be the first? – one familiar ex-judge asked a question.

No matter how many years a woman is assigned, she can serve her sentence today only in a general regime colony (with a strict, special and prison regime, serving a sentence for women is not provided).

All this is an undoubted merit of the Russian society.

To sum up: neither a life sentence nor a strict regime are given to women in Russia. And in this sense, our country was and is almost ahead of the rest of the planet.

“In many states there is life imprisonment for women,” says criminologist Danil Sergeev. – And in no international document there is a restriction on his appointment to the weaker sex. There were cases when men in Russia challenged the fact that they were sentenced to PZh due to the fact that this punishment is allegedly discriminatory.

Aksenchik and Hamtohu, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders, reached the European Court of Human Rights. The essence of their complaint: since women are not prescribed pancreas, then men should not. The ECHR examined the position of the authorities of the Russian Federation, who explained that, firstly, this is a tradition, and secondly, a special way of protecting the rights of women, taking into account their physiological and biological characteristics.

In general, the ECtHR, in fact, confirmed the right of Russian women to a more lenient punishment compared to men. But it was not always so.

From the “Cathedral Code” to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

– If we go back centuries, then there was no difference between the punishments of men and women in Rus’, – says Anatoly Naumov, chief researcher at the Research Institute of the University of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, professor, Doctor of Law, Honored Scientist Anatoly Naumov. – Let’s take the “Cathedral Code”, the most impressive act (the code of laws of the Russian kingdom, adopted by the Zemsky Sobor in 1649 – Auth). There is equal punishment for all genders.

In tsarist Russia, the death penalty was applied to both men and women. In the history of the USSR of the early period, many executed women are known. In the post-war years, it was decided not to apply capital punishment to women. And during this period, an exception was made only three times throughout the country – for Antonina Makarova (Tonka the machine-gunner, who during the war years shot prisoners of war and civilians in the village of Lokot), Bella Borodkina (the “Queen of Gelendzhik”, convicted of bribery, who created a whole organized criminal group ) and Tamara Ivanyutina (poisoner from the school cafeteria).

– Life imprisonment in the USSR was an alternative to the death penalty, – says criminologist Danil Sergeev. – Therefore, all the restrictions that concerned capital punishment (namely, not to endure it for women, minors and criminals who have reached the age of 65) remained for life punishment. And they also moved to modern Russia.

“It surprises me when they say in all seriousness that if everyone is equal under the Constitution, then the punishment should be the same,” says Anatoly Naumov, one of the authors of the modern Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. – As an argument, they cite the very fact that women can commit serious crimes. They can. And they do. But!

First, they are not as dangerous as men. Secondly, they are physiologically more difficult to endure the conclusion (and there are studies confirming this). It is no coincidence that women and men compete separately in sports. They have different strengths. Women by their very nature are different from men. She is in her role a mother.

Thirdly, psychological differences. When our team of authors wrote the draft Criminal Code, no one had any doubts that the criteria for exactingness towards a woman are different. It is strange to me that this question now arises.

If a more humane treatment of women led to an increase in crime among them, this could be an argument. But nothing of the sort happened. Vice versa! Some statistics.

In 2009, there were 9,970 women convicted of murder (including manslaughter) in Russian colonies, in 2021 there are 6,474 such women.

Today, less than 10 percent of the total prison population is women. On average, the proportion of women imprisoned for violent crimes in all recent years is about 5 per cent. If we take such atrocities as robbery and robbery, then here it is about 2 percent. Mostly ladies were convicted for drugs and fraud, and the reasons for this are social. Fear of a more severe punishment hardly stopped them.

“Women are generally less likely to commit particularly serious crimes,” Sergeev continues. – So it makes sense to introduce life imprisonment for women into the Criminal Code? If this desire is provoked by a specific precedent, then in any case, in this case, life imprisonment can no longer be applied by law. And to be based on it, solving the problem for the future, is illogical.

It is clear that the State Duma may consider a bill with the initiative to introduce lifesaving for women, but in the explanatory note it is necessary to argue why the USSR and Russia used to take other positions and why we have become less humane towards this category of convicts.

“There is no such thing as mass female terrorism today”

“Before the revolution, there was a massive phenomenon of female terrorism,” says criminologist Danil Sergeev. – Historians and lawyers name many reasons for this. The state reacted harshly to the phenomenon – such terrorists were hanged and shot. There were exceptions – the justification of Vera Zasulich, but this is precisely the exception.

Let me remind you that on January 24, 1878, in St. Petersburg, Zasulich fired a revolver at the mayor, Adjutant General Trepov. “With the said shot, she caused severe damage, which did not entail the death of Trepov only due to special, unforeseen circumstances for the defendant Zasulich.”

So Zasulich “punished” Trepov for having publicly flogged the prisoner Bogolyubov, who did not take off his hat to him. Since then, she has been called “the first Russian woman with a revolver”, “Russian Charlotte Corday” (in 1793, Corday stabbed one of the leaders of the French Revolution, the main culprit of terror, Jean Paul Marat).

The city prosecutor did not consider Zasulich’s crime a political one, and therefore he was sent to the jury. This was, it should be noted, a historical process, which was attended by the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.

From the interrogation of Zasulich at the trial:

– When you went to Trepov, did you want to kill him or just …?

Kill or hurt, I didn’t care. I only wanted to show by this that it is impossible to abuse a person with impunity. I wanted it to have something to say…

– In your explanation at the preliminary investigation and placed in the indictment, it is said that you wanted to take revenge on the mayor.

– Yes, I wanted to draw the attention of public opinion to this incident and make it not so easy, not so possible to desecrate human dignity.

Vera Zasulich, perhaps, was largely justified thanks to the parting word with which the presiding judge Koni addressed the jury. He ended it with the words: “Perhaps her mournful, wandering youth will explain to you that bitterness accumulated in her, which made her less calm, more impressionable and more painful in relation to the life around her, and you will find reasons for indulgence.”

Some believe that it was after Zasulich’s acquittal that a wave of female terrorism arose. The government responded harshly to this.

Let me give you some facts.

Sofia Perovskaya was hanged in 1881 for the assassination of the tsar.

Vera Figner was sentenced to death for attempted murder, but the execution was replaced with indefinite hard labor

Sofya Ginsburg was sentenced to death for preparing an assassination attempt on the tsar, but committed suicide in prison.

Lydia Yezerskaya was sentenced to indefinite hard labor for the assassination attempt.

Fruma Frumkin was hanged for the assassination attempt.

Anna Rasputina, the organizer of the assassination attempt on the Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov, was hanged.

Anastasia Bitsenko – the death penalty was imposed for the murder of Minister of War Sakharov, which was later replaced by indefinite hard labor. After the revolution, she was released, but in 1938 she fell under repression.

Zinaida Konoplyannikova – hanged for the murder of General Min

Izmailovich terrorist sisters: Alexandra was sentenced to death, which was later replaced by a life sentence, and Ekaterina was shot in 1906.

Lydia Sture was hanged for the assassination attempt (Leonid Andreev wrote about her in The Tale of the Seven Hanged Men).

Yevstoliy Rogozinnikov was hanged for the murder of Alexander Maksimovsky, head of the imperial main prison department.

Fanny Kaplan was shot for the attempt on Lenin’s life.

“There are memories of prosecutors who admired how courageously they listened to the verdict and how they went to the scaffold with a smile,” says the well-known Russian lawyer Yuri Larin. – But basically in tsarist Russia, women were still pardoned, replacing the execution with long terms of hard labor. The fate of these women was sad. They were usually exiled to Siberia.

After the revolution, they were released and treated like heroines. But then they had friction with the Bolsheviks. And the main part of these terrorists was shot according to the verdicts of the military collegium of the Supreme Court in 1937-1938. And in this sense, there are very instructive stories.

One of them is the socialist-revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, who fired five bullets at the adviser to the Tambov governor (who was distinguished by cruelty in suppressing revolutionary movements) in 1906. She was sentenced to indefinite hard labor, served her sentence in the Maltsev prison. Then she was released and treated kindly by the Bolsheviks who came to power. But then they did not like her political activities.

She was arrested several times, the last in 1937. In the end, she was shot. It turned out that they did with Spiridonova and others what the tsarist government did not consider possible to do with them.

– In the USSR, after the assassination of Kirov, a decree of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of December 1, 1934 was adopted on amending the legislation, – says Sergeev. – In accordance with this document, the procedure for considering cases of terror was changed: the investigation time was reduced to 10 days, death sentences were ordered to be executed immediately after they were issued. And there were no differences between men and women.

Sergeev and other criminologists insist: in Soviet times, and even now, there is no such thing as mass female terrorism, and God forbid, there will not be.

This is true, but there were isolated cases of female terror. And again some facts.

On April 28, 1997, residents of Chechnya Aiset Dadashevv and Fatima Taymaskhanova planted a bomb at the Pyatigorsk railway station. Then 2 people died, 30 were injured. The women were sentenced to 16 and 19 years in prison. On October 6, 2000, Natalya Kurebeda, on the order of Chechen fighters, detonated bombs at a bus stop and the Kazachiy market in Nevinnomyssk. 2 people died, 50 injured. The court sentenced her to 18 years.

On the night of July 10, 2003 Zarema Muzhikhoeva, a native of Ingushetia, was detained with an explosive device in 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street in Moscow. FSB explosives engineer Georgy Trofimov died defusing the bomb. The court sentenced her to 20 years.

In total, over the past five years there have been perhaps less than a dozen such cases. That is, the absence of a life sentence did not affect the growth of crime under the article “terrorism”. And those new cases that have appeared are mainly related to aiding and financing terrorism.

It turns out that it makes no sense to toughen the punishment for women. And it will not bring anything good except for PR of those who offer it. But here I want to repeat the words of one of the authors of the Criminal Code: “A real man is manifested in that he clearly understands and he does not need to prove that a woman by her very nature is different from a representative of the strong half.”