ABSTRACT
In 1989, at the height of Gorbachev’s programme of reform, two publications brought the issue of the death penalty back into the public arena, this time however, triggering a debate that would in some ways become more complex and ambivalent than its pre-Revolutionary precedent. The first publication, The Death Penalty: For and Against, was an anthology comprising many of the views of those pre-revolutionary campaigners for the abolition of the death penalty that we discussed in the previous chapter.1 In addition, it incorporated the opinions of contemporary academics and specialists in law, such as Sergei Alekseev, a prominent figure of the Sverdlovsk Juridical Institute, and Vasily Kudryatsev, vice-president of the Academy of Sciences and Director of the Institute of State and Law in Moscow, both of whom enjoyed close contact with Gorbachev and played an important role in setting out the terms of the new political thinking.2 Other well-known names included the former dissident Andrei Sakharov, recently released from exile. Presenting the death penalty as a human rights issue, this landmark piece, rubber stamped with Gorbachev’s approval, was a high-profile attempt to link the perestroika principles of ‘socialism with a human face’ to the liberal credo of pre-Revolutionary predecessors.
