Names of Myanmar the new country, being further amended as the "Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma" in 1974, following a 1962 military coup. While both the names "Bama" and "Myanma" historically referred only to the Burmans and not other ethnic minorities, Burmese governments in the post-independence period have instituted a differentiation of meaning between Myanmar and Bamar in the official Burmese language usage. The name Myanma/Myanmar was expanded to include all citizens of the country while the name Bama/Bamar was kept to its original meaning. Both are widespread use in colloquial usage. Most still use Bamar/Myanmar interchangeably, to refer to the
Capital punishment in the Soviet Union Capital punishment in the Soviet Union Capital punishment was a legal penalty in the Soviet Union for most of the country's existence. The legal justification of capital punishment was found in Article 22 of the Fundamental Principles of Criminal Legislation, which stated that the death penalty was permitted "as an exceptional measure of punishment, until its complete abolition". 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. The death penalty was not applied to minors or pregnant women. The first person to be sentenced