Restoring Death Penalty Won’t Deter Terrorists but Will Further Degrade Russia, Shlosberg Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 24 – The restoration of the death penalty in Russia, something that would require constitutional change, won’t do anything to prevent future terrorist attacks but will further degrade Russian society, leading the state and the population to believe that they can take such actions against anyone they don’t like, Lev Shlosberg says.

            The opposition politician says that calls for the restoration of the death penalty are an inevitable form of populism in the wake of terrorist attacks, but those who make them don’t understand that terrorists ready to sacrifice themselves won’t be deterred and that if the state uses such violence, many in the population will conclude they have the right to do the same.

            That means that these calls may be part of a larger Kremlin effort to do away with the remaining fig leaf of democracy in Russia and turn it into an ever more violent dictatorship, Shlosberg says (t.me/shlosberg/7979 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/vozvrashhenie-smertnoj-kazni-dlya-terroristov-neizbezhno-privedyot-k-eyo-vozvrashheniyu-protiv-inakomyslyashhih).

            Tragically, he concludes, “there are quite a large number of people in Russia who want to open such gates to hell without completely understanding that these gates will open for everyone without exception.”