The Infamous Decree of June 4, 1947: "About Criminal Responsibility for Theft of State and Socialist Property"

A distinctive feature of Stalin's criminal justice system was its more severe punishment of theft of state and collective property than of private property. Even the most petty of thefts carried mandatory Gulag sentences. The Law of August 7, 1932, "About the Protection of Social Property," was enacted as the famine of 1932-33 was ravaging Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and parts of Russia, and it punished the theft of small amounts of grain with death sentences or ten years in the Gulag. Collective farmers who took small amounts of grain from the fields or milk from "socialist" cows found themselves toiling in the mines and timber fields of Siberia, or worse.

The "mild" Law of August 10, 1940, punished petty theft from state enterprises with only one year in prison. The harsh anti-theft law, the infamous Decree of June 4, 1947, "About criminal responsibility for theft of state and socialist property," mandated minimum sentences of five to seven years for theft of state or socialist property. Under the June 1947 decree, stealing was punished with long prison terms whether one kilogram or one ton of grain was taken. Repeat offenders, thefts organized by groups, and thefts in large quantities were punished by sentences up to twenty years.

--Paul R. Gregory, Lenin's Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives, Hoover Institution Press Publication 555 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2008), 99.