The role of Nicholas II as final decision maker concerning Death Penalties

[Nicolas Peucelle]

Dear Alexander Palace Forum friends! I wish to improve my knowledge about Nicholas II and his time and regime by also entering into the "gray-zone" of his power. I wish to find out more about the way decisions were taken concerning the sentencing to deportation and also to death. I often read in biographies of revolutionaries that they had developed a very big hate against the Romanovs and the monarchy following execution of friends and family members. I especialy noticed that a revelutionary who himself participated in the killing of one member of the Romanov Family stated later that he hated the Tsar and his family because Nicholas II had "turned down" an appeal against a death sentence. So I was again reminded that the Tsar as suppreme chief of the justice in his state also had the final decision power to modify any death sentence pronounced by whatever court, into something less hard for the subject. There are for sure examples of such modifications of a death sentences into deportation and jail, fortress etc.. but also those decsisions when the Tsar just refused the appeal of the convict or relatives to spare the convicts life. I think that a research and a discussion in this good forum may help a lot of people to understand what is another background of the history of the Romanovs. Are there available lists, or notes at least concerning the number of accepted or refused appeals for death penalties? Were these tens or hundreds per year? It will be of cause also interesting to discover for what facts convictions were done, too.

[Naslednik]

Dear Nicolas, This is an interesting question and undoubtedly somewhere in Russia there are records of these decisions made in the name of Law.  As documents go, I doubt that the Bolsheviks would have gotten rid of any evidence that proves Tsarism had the power to kill, beyond the law of the Courts.  That is what I would like to know -- what was the relationship of Nicholas' decisions and the decisions made thru the courts.  I read a lot of Dostoevsky this year and was so surprised at how much more developed the trial system was in Russia, mid-19th century, than I expected.  It may be that almost all non-political defendants faced the decision of jury/judge, but political agitators faced a more amorphous law of the Government.  There is the purported story of Nicholas being contacted by (Benckendorff?) after Nicholas had 'retired' for the day, and deciding to commute a death sentence as the prisoner was terminally ill.

Actually what interests me most about this question is how easily Westerners can judge a Tsar for using the death penalty or prison to handle political prisoners.  It is horrible to consider.  But I cannot imagine being Tsar and trying to maintain some type of order amid all of the sweeping political and economic changes happening in Russia after 1900.  It is that 'walk in a man's shoes' issue once again -- how to be a Liberal at that time without getting into trouble, how to be a Tsar at that time without losing control of the entire country.