Eight HSE employees talk about whether Raskolnikov was a good person

A group of researchers from the Higher School Economics delivered a large report “Terrorism: inadmissibility of justification. Historical, ethical and legal aspects" .

The report as a whole is a work rather journalistic than expert, refers too much to artistic literature instead of studies on terrorism, and besides, he is simply bad edited. Therefore, it is difficult and, apparently, it is not worth arguing with him in particulars.

However, such a journalistic demarche with the side of a large group of HSE employees still deserves attention. And not as a reaction to the public statements of Gasan Huseynov - in this vein, the report, will undoubtedly receive its responses - but as an important public statement on the traces of the verdict Svetlana Prokopieva .

The authors of the report do not refer to her case. They in general, they speak only casually and with errors about the legal aspects of the problem. As a matter of fact, they generally argue, in essence, not about law, not about history, not about sociology. They talk about public morality. And it is in this area that they make a statement that directly concerns the Prokopieva case and all possible similar cases in the future. This statement can be summed up simply: about terrorists and whatever their activities, nothing good can be said with terrorism should not have any positive connotation. This they are not the first to make the statement, but even more so it needs to be discussed.

The authors of the report call terrorism politically motivated and targeted use of violence against civilians. It is forbidden to say that such an understanding of the term corresponds to its legal understanding: the simple reason that the generally accepted legal understanding of terrorism in the world no, but Russian by definition it is not matches too. But for public discussion, such a definition is quite fits, the main thing is to consistently stick to it.

The authors write: “the terrorists themselves are completely are aware that their victims are not to blame for the problems that With the help of these victims, they are trying to solve it.” Apparently, this means that from the concept terrorist attack as an "attack on civilians" the authors implicitly exclude, for example, attempts by Narodnaya Volya on the kings, who are definitely "guilty of the problems", and to that such attacks (and indeed, the authors pay attention to the “side effects” victims" of such attempts). It can be assumed that if the attempt on state leaders - not a terrorist attack, but an attempt on their security forces, on the police, for example, are also not terrorist attacks, but this is not discussed in the report. A after all, this is an important topic for discussion, missed by the authors, as, indeed, others, such as the relationship between terrorism and civilian participation in non-international military conflict (and this topic is very important in the Russian context).

But, returning to the cited thesis, even if you exclude the rulers and the police, it cannot be said that the terrorists consider their victims "not to blame for the problems." On the contrary, attacks on civilian were repeatedly explained by the ideological leaders of the terrorists precisely by the fact that civilians bear joint and several political responsibility for "problems": how “servants of the regime”, as those who vote for the enemies of terrorists, as supporting the fight against terrorists, even as indifferent to the tasks of terrorists and therefore politically harmful, or even simpler - on ethnic, religious, etc. signs.

Therefore, the conclusion that is drawn directly in the next sentence rests on a flimsy foundation. This conclusion is: terrorists are “not heroes, not freedom fighters, but fanatics who know that are creating." But even so, it is clear that this conclusion is not so much false as simply illogical: for freedom (from colonizers, from dictatorship, or else from something) different groups are fighting both peacefully and militarily (mutiny, civil war), including terrorist attacks, i.e. deliberate attacks on civilians in addition to hostilities (because within the framework of hostilities, these are military crime, not terrorism). The aims of this struggle and the underlying ideas different people will evaluate differently, but methods are a subject of a separate qualifications and assessments. The same applies to the concept of "hero", at least if understand heroism as courage and other qualities that are not determined by the purpose of this heroism. In politics, as in everyday life, we can categorically condemn crime no matter how high or low we, the criminal or anyone else, are presented with his motives.

Further, the authors go on a confusing argument about that, since the "national liberation struggle" is a positive colored term, then its use in the context of a conversation about terrorist attacks is explained by the “desire ... extenuate the guilt of the perpetrators. Such reasoning is at the level of an ordinary maxim “to understand is to forgive”, which any researchers should recognize absolutely false. The task of the researcher is to understand the motivation and mechanisms activities of both the terrorist and the head of the political regime exercising political terror, and the structures they create, in order to explain it later society. It is impossible to explain anything if you do not speak at the same time, as objects students themselves see and describe their activity, and they describe it, naturally, in positively perceived terms. Yes, speaking publicly the motivations of the offender – be it an already convicted offender, or a person who, we think committed a crime, it is necessary to show tact towards to its actual or potential victims. But not to the extent that lose the ability to explain something.

The Russian criminal norm is about justification terrorism is formulated quite well (although in vain they entered an obscure “ideology of terrorism”, which the authors also commemorate): the Criminal Code calls justification public recognition of terrorist acts as right and meritorious imitations. Everything that can be called "glorifying" terrorists, creating a positive image of them, but without direct assertions that their actions are correct and need to be imitated. Such statements should be regulated not by criminal law, but by mechanisms public discussion. Apparently, the authors of the report imagine their role - as an authoritative actor in such discussion. But, not distinguishing the glorification terrorism and discussion of such, they actually propose no measures regulation, and the complete exclusion of discussion.

Those who brought the case of Svetlana to the verdict Prokopyeva, abused the criminal code, accusing her of discussing the terrorist act in asserting the correctness of such actions. This precedent threatens only to journalists, but also to researchers working in fields in which terrorism is affected. The authors of the report continue the same line, offering marginalize researchers who are willing to talk about terrorism more serious than they are.