Solzhenitsyn stands up for capital punishment in Russia

The well-known Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn believes that Russia will stop terrorism only if it lifts the moratorium on capital punishment. "Sometimes, capital punishment is needed for the s ake of saving the nation and the state. In Russia matters stand this way at the moment," Solzhenitsyn has told Interfax. Chechnya remains "an unfinished chapter in Russian history, and a grim political problem. Therefore, the wave of terrorism is rising in this country," he said. He said that writer Vladimir Nabokov's father, under the influence of Leo Tolstoy's ideas, had spent 20 years campaigning against capital punishment in Russia. "But when the whole quagmire of the 1917 February revolution inundated Russia and the country was covered with a wave of unpunished murders, he admitted in the State Duma that he was wrong and that uncontrollable violence could be stopped only by the execution of capital punishment verdicts. "Those in Europe who are telling us to abolish capital punishment do not know the trials Russia has gone through. Europe has never experienced anything of the kind," Solzhenitsyn said.