The Day of Stalin and the Return of the Death Penalty: An Outburst after a Military Journalist is Killed in Moscow

Angry demands for the return of the death penalty have been set off in Russia after the killing of a military journalist.

Tatarsky was killed by an improvised device at an event on Sunday. A 26-year old suspect, Daria Trepova, is now in custody in Moscow and charged in connection with his death, under a section of the Russian criminal code that deals with terrorism.

On another popular Russian show called “60 Minutes,” one senior regional official, Andrey Gurulev, said he longed for the “days of Stalin…when the enemies of the people would get a pick and an axe and have fun waving it at a [Siberian prison camp].”

The head of the military company was in attendance at the café where the explosion took place and joined the chorus calling for the return of the death penalty.

“There needs to be a return to the death penalty and the toughest measures in relation to those who participate in this kind of internal squabbling,” he said.

The demands from hardliners go beyond the already severe measures taken in Russia to stifle dissent and free expression. Dozens of non profit organizations and media outlets have been designated as foreign agents by the new law that was passed in December.

Hundreds and likely thousands of civic activists have left the country since the invasion began. mass arrests were made during anti-war protests.

The war in Ukraine is back on the streets: Dmitry Medvedev, the head of the United Russia faction in the Duma, and Alexey Navalny

Another figure prominent in demanding draconian punishment for dissent and opposition is former president and current security council head Dmitry Medvedev.

In November, he recalled how traitors were dealt with during World War II. “The verdict to such scoundrels was the same: execution by firing squad without trial. If you are a traitor who committed a crime then you have given up your right to life.

After the killing of Tatarsky, Medvedev said on Telegram that “terrorism is back on our streets,” and blamed those championed in the west as “fearless knights of justice and anti-corruption,” a not-so-veiled reference to jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

He said these people are executing their own countrymen in order to destroy Russia and our homeland.

There is no negotiation with terrorists. “They should be exterminated like rabid dogs… forgiveness and compassion do not apply to them.”

The official national anti-terrorism committee claimed Monday that the “explosion was planned by the special services of Ukraine with the involvement of agents from among persons collaborating with the so-called Anti-Corruption Foundation Navalny, of which the detained Daria Trepova is an active supporter.”

The deputy head of the United Russia party made a demand for stringent measures against informal opposition in Russia.

Andrei Isaev, deputy head of the “United Russia” faction in the Duma, said such opposition was “despite being relatively ideological, progressively turning into a gang of murders and terrorists during the war.”

Already detained on other charges, he was accused of high treason in October last year. His lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said the high treason charges related to Kara-Murza’s public criticism of the Russian authorities in international forums.

The death penalty can only be imposed for heinous crimes that have a serious impact on life. The death penalty may not be imposed on women, persons under the age of 18, and men who have reached the age of 65 at the moment of sentencing.”

Russia has imprisoned people on false charges in order to keep a dictator in power. At the peak of the Stalinist purges, when millions were swept into the Gulag, the secret police nevertheless insisted on giving a veneer of legality to the dragnet with formal charges, witnesses, mug shots and trials. As Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, recalled in her memoir, “We never asked, on hearing about the latest arrest, ‘What was he arrested for?’” The official crime was never the real reason.

An American, Evan Gershkovich, a 31-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal, has been detained since late March to demonstrate Mr. Putin’s disdain for the West and its democratic institutions.