Humane Gesture

This week Russia announced the abolition of the death penalty in peacetime.

Said the Moscow radio with a self-conscious tremolo: "The historic victory of the Soviet people over the enemy has . . . demonstrated . . . the exceptional devotion of the entire population . . . toward the Soviet motherland. . . . For crimes punishable by the death sentence under laws now in force [the courts will] apply in peacetime confinement in corrective labor camps for 25 years."

Official, fully legal execution has been used rather sparingly in the U.S.S.R. Since estimates of labor-camp prisoners run from five to 30 million, the number now made available to the camps will not greatly increase the forced labor supply.

In 1741 Czarist Russia abolished the death penalty, except for political offenses--used it rarely even then. The Revolution, made largely by men who had been imprisoned or exiled when they would have been executed in many other countries, abolished all capital punishment on Feb. 16, 1920, reinstated it three months later. Anti-Bolshevik Russians remember that Feb. 15, 1920, became known as the "Night of Blood" because the Communist executioners worked hard to beat the deadline.

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