POLITICAL-LEGAL ISSUES OF FULFILLMENT OF RUSSIA’S INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS ON DEATH PENALTY ABOLITION IN THE COUNTRY

Resumo

the research topicality is due to the necessity to anchor the humanistic values in the Russian public conscience, especially among the youth. One of these values is the human right to life. The previous sociological polls, referring to the Russian citizens’ attitude to legitimate coercion of the state as its right to deprivation of life, showed the high but gradually decreasing level of support of death penalty. The processes of integration with the global culture, the reforms of the social-political and legal systems of the recent decades caused the increase of the level of humanism in Russia. Thus, the present research is aimed at applying empirical methods to reveal the political reasons of inconsistency between the Russian international obligations to abolish the death penalty and the national law-making practice, the above inconsistency being in place for over two decades. The leading research method was the content analysis of the legal and public information, which allowed the comprehensive examination of the processes of humanization of the political-legal conscience in Russia. The article presents the sources of international law, the result of polling the Russian citizens, and the revealed interconnections between the law-making processes and the internal policy of the authorities taking into account the public agenda. The authors assert the relation between the public policy pursued by the authorities for preserving the death penalty in the country, and the number of its proponents, which is decreasing, though slowly. The authors conducted a sociological poll on the attitude of young people, university students, to applying the death penalty in the country. The poll results substantiate the conclusions on the increasing trend of humanization of the young Russians’ public consciences, which is related to their education level: the majority of those supporting the death penalty for grave crimes are the first-year students; those inclined to recognize the right to life by rejecting the death penalty in the country are mostly senior students. The materials of the article are of practical value for specialists in the sphere of international relations, education, national and foreign affairs of national states.