Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, Decree on Criminal Responsibility for the Production of Inferior Goods and Failure to observe Standards. November 23, 1929

Original Source: Biulletin' finansovogo i ekonomicheskogo zakonodatel'stva, No. 3 (27 January 1930), p. 51.

Side by side with the immense growth in quantity of the production in State industry, there has recently been observed, in a series of cases, a falling off in the quality of goods produced not only for the open market but also for the needs of State industry and transport. Numerous enterprises are trying, by lowering the quality of the products, to solve the very important problem of how to lower costs by rationalization and by increasing the productivity of labor. This phenomenon acts as a serious obstacle to the work of the Socialist reconstruction of the national economy, and also does great harm to the interests of workers and peasants, as consumers of goods. In order to ensure the work of Socialist construction, it is essential that there should be a definite break away in the direction of improving and standardizing the quality of production.

With the object of intensifying the struggle against the production of inferior goods and the failure to observe fixed standards, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decree-

That on the basis of the second part of article 3 of the fundamental principles of the penal code of the USSR and allied republics (USSR Collection of Laws, 1927, No. 12, paragraph 122) the executive committees of the allied republics be instructed to provide in their criminal codes:

(1) As penalty for the systematic or mass production of inferior goods by industrial or commercial enterprises-Deprivation of liberty for not more than five years, or forced labor for not more than one year.

(2) As penalty for failure to observe the standards laid down- Deprivation of liberty for not more than two years, or forced labor for not more than one year.

Source: Selection of Documents Relative to the Labour Legislation in Force in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1931), p. 145.