[1] According to Western estimates, in the early 1980s Soviet courts passed around 2,000 death sentences every year, of which two-thirds were commuted to prison terms.
[2] A 1991 Helsinki Watch report stated that in January of that year the Soviet Union for the first time published capital punishment data.
[4] In addition to treason, espionage, terrorism and murder, capital punishment was imposed for economic crimes, such as "the pilfering of state or public property in especially large amounts".
[9] The death penalty was generally applied if the crime involved sums exceeding about 10,000 rubles, though there was no fixed threshold.
[11] Vladimir I. Rytov, a deputy Minister of Fisheries, was executed in 1982 for smuggling millions of dollars worth of caviar to the West.