Survey research group Russian Field showed that 53% of respondents would support the return of the death penalty. Irkutsk historians comment.
More often, residents of small towns and villages and men are in favor of the death penalty. Respondents without higher education, Odnoklassniki users and those who do not use social networks and instant messengers are also significantly more likely to support the restoration of capital punishment.
By age group, the fewest supporters of the death penalty are among young people 18-29 years old (60% against). Also, support for executions decreases as monthly family income increases, writes “Kommersant”.
- Historian, sociologist Mikhail Rozhansky:
– The dependencies between people’s attitudes towards the death penalty and their own social situation, which sociologists have noted, are indeed, in my opinion, a key topic in the never-ending discussion for more than a century. And these dependencies are the strongest argument against the death penalty. Speeches that fear of the death penalty will stop a terrorist or maniac are not based on any convincing evidence base – this fear does not even stop corrupt officials in countries where people are executed for bribes. But such speeches find emotional support. And the issue of the death penalty is a simple and effective tool for precisely managing people’s emotions.
- Historian, graduate student of the Department of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology of ISU Ruslan Rudenok:
– More than half of our fellow citizens already support the death penalty. This trend began in the mid-2010s, and the reasons are obvious. Until 2014, the topic of violence was broadcast in the media, especially state media (since they occupy a huge niche) quite moderately. After the start of an active global confrontation for influence and control over Ukraine: after the Maidan 2013, Crimea and Donbass, society began to move into a phase of political and power mobilization. This was a consistent government policy. This was, in part, preparation for the scenario that eventually came to fruition in the form of the SVO. At the same time, such an information policy has both subjectively useful and negative consequences for the current leadership of the country.
So, we are talking about information policy, but it does not act directly, but indirectly, that is, it generates not only righteous patriotic anger, but also a complex mixture of fear, guilt, shame, misunderstanding, disorientation, instability, ignorance of one’s future, that is, internal chaos. This, and not just political messages, awakens aggression in our society. And where there is aggression, there is destructiveness.
Let’s pay attention to who, according to the survey, most supports the introduction of the death penalty and for what crimes, what is the socio-psychological portrait of Russians from this group? These are rural residents or those who live in small towns. This means that the level of education, that is, competence, including in political issues, or everyday, psychological, if we are talking about everyday crimes, influences here. It is people without higher education, according to the survey, who tend to support the death penalty. Place of residence also influences the nature of work, which in such areas is not always associated with intellectual work. The death penalty is also supported by men, whose level of aggression is traditionally higher. The survey notes that these people more often do not use social networks and instant messengers (or use Odnoklassniki), from which we conclude that these are representatives of the older generation, who are always more tolerant of violence due to the inertia of thinking brought up in Soviet realities, and these are people , whose level of awareness is generally lower than that of other groups (it is important to note that they also have a lower level of motivation to be informed in a wide range of opinions).
The least supportive of the death penalty are young people aged 18-29 (60% against), which destroys the stereotype about the general, habitual aggressiveness of young people. It also indicates a tendency towards humanization, relative to the conventional Soviet approach of the thirst for retribution (Soviet, in this case, is used not as a political term, but only as a historical one).
People with higher incomes are less likely to support the death penalty. This factor is associated with both education and the general feeling of life. A poor person is embittered because of injustice, and a wealthier person is calm, so the level of aggression is lower, and the desire for retribution is lower. Moreover, it is also important what exactly the punishment should be for…
The survey indicates that most often people want to sentence pedophiles and rapists, murderers, and terrorists to death (that is, the possibility of a miscarriage of justice seems to be excluded), followed by corruption and economic crimes, as well as treason, espionage, desertion, that is more dubious articles, and here again envy and hatred are revealed towards those who most likely received money and power unjustly, as well as potential enemies of the people and traitors, hatred of whom is intensified through political propaganda (the question of whether the person was correctly recognized as a spy and the pest is again, as it were, removed). Next comes a group of cannibals, sadists and maniacs, but they can be combined with murderers, according to the general principle, this segment, according to the survey results, also includes drug dealers, this is also due to the general Soviet attitude towards drugs as something as different and alien as possible ( as opposed to conventional types of drugs such as alcohol and nicotine).
In general, the trends are negative, but there is hope for mitigation due to changes in the information background, political reforms and generational change.
