Put in a word for Slavic character...

Having read Dostoevsky, it became really interesting to me, what the Slavs differ from the Europeans. All the time we are imposed that Europe is educated. But … In medieval England the people were hung up for the smallest thefts and in large numbers. Only in London region Tayburn in the reign of Edward VI annually on the average 560 people were executed.

In France, in the XIX—XX centuries the public executions occurred in boulevards or about prisons where the big crowd always gathered. In the states of Germany traditionally cut the head. In addition there were also other executions in the Middle Ages. In the United States the culture of execution was borrowed from Great Britain. Later “pupils” considerably overtook the transatlantic “teachers”. Except the official death penalties it was widely applied (especially concerning the black) the so-called Lynch law, even in the XX century: in 1901, 130 people were subjected to lynching. On December 26, 1862, during the Civil war, in the State of Minnesota thirty eight Indians were hung up on one gallow.

In 1913 there was Leo Frank's noisy case: on the basis of doubtful proofs the condemned he was sentenced to death, then pardoned, stolen and hung up by the group of prominent citizens. In the Middle East the means of execution which are using since ancient times take place: beating by stones, beheading with the help of sword and hanging. At the time of the Ottoman Empire the putting on a stake was extended.

In the Koran it is spoken about that the believers feared Allah who is very strict in punishments. According to laws of Shariah the persons who have committed a premeditated murder, paedophile, homosexuals, married women and the married men who have made adultery, have to be executed. The death penalty isn't applied for unintentional murder and material compensation can be appointed to a family of the killed. Moreover, the relatives of the killed can forgive the murderer instead of material compensation and the court replaces the death penalty with other type of punishment.

In the territory of London and the county Middlsex relating to it, 2 755 people were executed in 1810-1826. Gallows were one of the sights of the British capital. The main of the gallows of Britain had 21 loops on unequal height and worked 500 years running without any stops, prior to the beginning f the twentieth century.

In the same time, for bigger term 25 years, in days of Alexander's I board, from 1801 to 1825 twenty four persons were executed in all Russia already! Can you imagine?! One per year! It is one person from two million per year!

However, it is already in 1300 times less, than executed in the educated London. How the culture was high in Britain! Certainly, seeing as the British capital has fun and sings at the sight of the hung-up eight-year-old boy for theft from a barn.

Peter Dmitriyevich Boborykin, the Russian writer: “Who lived in Paris long as I am, that knows what it was the disgust: the public executions occurring about La Koquette prison. It was impossible to imagine more dirty, more mean than that! Thousand people, from secular vivers and the first-class cocottes to rabble – procurators of women, street chippies, thieves and fluent convicts spent all night long in neighbouring bars, drank, sang the obscene songs and from the dawn directed to the cordon of soldiers surrounding a platform where “justice trees” rose as officially were called this disgusting device. From a distance it was impossible to see properly, but all this weight felt in admiration only because that it “was on execution”, so dashingly and cheerfully spent the night waiting for such captivating show...”

The testimonies of the Dutches remained who saw Stepan Razin's execution in 1671. While the executioners cut the extremities to the criminal, the people were silent, women only sobbed and were christened. And at once, without waiting the death of “rakish ataman”, the people began to disperse silently. So the Russians did who came to execution of Yemelyan Pugachev in 1775.

Here what the Russian scientist of the XVIII century Andrey Bolotov wrote in the notes about Yemelyan Pugachev's execution: “The depressed people started dispersing right after execution, without wishing to look at beating by whips of accomplices of the rebel”. Really, these Muscovites were the barbarians. Why not to have fun and to dance?

The special measure of punishment (death penalty) admitted in the Old Testament. There are no instructions on need of its cancellation in the Holy Writ of the New Testament. At the same time, the Church often assumed a debt of a sorrow to the secular power about condemned on execution, asking for them favour and mitigations of punishment. Moreover, the Christian moral influence brought up the negative relation to the death penalty in the consciousness of people.

In Russia from the middle of the XVIII century before revolution of 1905 it was applied extremely seldom. The human life doesn't come to an end with corporal death for orthodox consciousness. In Europe in the Middle Ages the presence in a public execution was some kind of leisure for the adult. In Europe the execution was like entertainment, a show. The people met and gathered on execution as on theatrical representation, carried the wives and children. It was considered as a good form to know the names of executioners and with a type of experts to argue how they do. And the gallows and cruel tools so tenderly were called in all countries of Europe – “Small Mary” (in London), “Lean Gertrude” (in Konigsberg), “Fast Albert” – a cruel axe of the chief executioner in Augsburg.

The children were accustomed to look quietly at atrocities from infancy. In Britain there was a custom: if the baby touched the handle with the hand, so it is for fortunate, also the chips from the gallows were used as a toothache medicine. In Germany there was a belief that the rope of the hung up brings the happiness in the house and in Flanders – that the hand of the hung up can help to become the invisible being.

Public executions on Grevskaya Square in Paris caused surge in emotions – the crowd roared, had fun, sang, exulted. And when the gallows was changed for a guillotine, there were many dissatisfied –it became badly visible the death agonies of the executed!

In our century the public moral which hasn't grown to universal abolition of the death penalty, nevertheless grew to cancellation of public rituals of its execution (but not in all countries)”. And how the prudish Germans, British and French can get on with Muslims who “come in large numbers here" with their love to “beating by stones”?

It is enough to have a look at the picture “Morning of Streletsky Execution” to understand the abyss dividing the Slavs and the “educated” Europe.