Law of Spikelets

The Law of Spikelets or Law of Three Spikelets (Russian: Закон о трёх колосках, Закон о пяти колосках, Закон семь-восемь) was a decree in the Soviet Union to protect state property of kolkhozes (Soviet collective farms)—especially the grain they produced—from theft, largely by desperate peasants during the Soviet famine of 1932–33. The decree was also known as the "Seven Eighths Law" (Закон 'семь восьмых', Zakon "sem' vos'mykh"), because the date in Russian is filled into forms as 7/8/1932 (7 August 1932).^[1] The law provided a severe punishment for stolen collective and cooperative property: "execution with confiscation of all property and replacement in mitigating circumstances with imprisonment for at least 10 years with confiscation of all property." Amnesty was prohibited in these cases.

Although the formal name of the law was longer, the common names Law of Spikelets and Law of Three Spikelets came into use because of the article and brochure of Prosecutor General A. Vyshinsky (1933), where he condemned the practice to prosecute both corrupt officials and also those who gleaned the grains (or spikelets) left behind in the fields after the entire harvest was officially collected and counted. The decree was accepted and harshly, sometimes overly harshly used during the Soviet famine of 1932–33. In 1936 the cases of the application of the law were reconsidered (Постановление №36/78 ЦИК и СНК СССР от 16 января 1936 года «О проверке дел лиц, осуждённых на основании постановления ЦИК и СНК СССР от 7 августа 1932 г. "Об охране имущества государственных предприятий, колхозов и кооперации и укреплении общественной (социалистической) собственности) and over 60% of the convicted were released. (1936: 118,360 inmates; 1937: 44,409 inmates)^[2]