Lawyers of pre-revolutionary Russia on the problem of death penalty

Questions of death penalty have always been topical for Russia in different periods of history. The analysis of use of this type of punishment has been carried out at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. On the ground of views of academic lawyers of pre-revolutionary Russia, it is possible to judge about the relation of the society and authority to the institute of death penalty. The article gives statistic data of implementation of death penalty. The author concludes that criminal penalty in the form of death penalty in the post-reform period was often used by military district courts. Originally, this institute was applied in the framework of a weak and belated Penal code of 1845. Later, in the context of the well-known “Regulations on protection of state order and public peace”, it became widely used in peacetime as a means of military justice, which executes justice on the basis of not only procedural but also material norms of military legislation.