Counter-Revolution and High Treason

Central Executive Committee, Decrees Supplementing the Criminal Code. June 8, 1934

Original Source: Izvestiia, 9 June 1934.

The Central Executive Committee of the USSR decrees: To supplement the Code of Crimes against the State (crimes against the order of government, counter-revolutionary and especially dangerous for the USSR) with the following clauses from 1 (1) to 1 (4).

(1). High treason, i.e., acts committed by citizens of the USSR, with intention to damage the military power of the USSR or to violate its State independence or the integrity of its territory, such as: espionage, betrayal of military secrets, desertion to the enemy, escape or flight abroad -- are to be punished by the supreme criminal punishment - - shooting - - with confiscation of all property, or, if there are mitigating circumstances, by imprisonment for a term of ten years with the confiscation of all property.

(2). The above crimes committed by persons on active military service are to be punished by the supreme criminal punishment -- shooting -- with the confiscation of all property.

(3). In case of an escape or flight abroad of a person on active military service the adult members of his family, if they, in whatever respect, have aided in the preparation or in the carrying out of the act of high treason or if they knew of such an act but failed to inform the authorities, are to be punished by imprisonment for a term of from five to ten years, with confiscation of all property. The remaining adult members of the family of the traitor, who have lived with him or were dependent on him at the time when the crime was committed, are to be disfranchised and exiled to the remotest districts of Siberia for a term of five years.

(4). Failure on the part of a person on active military service to denounce an act of treason, whether in the course of preparation or actually committed, is to be punished by imprisonment for a term of ten years. Failure to denounce, on the part of all other citizens (not on active military service), is to be prosecuted in conformity with clause 12 of the present Code.

President of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, M. Kalinin
Assistant Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, A. Medvedev

Source: "Decrees Supplementing the Criminal Code, June 8, 1934," The Slavonic (and East European) Review, XIII, No. 38 (January, 1935), 436-438.