Article 107 of the RSFSR Criminal Code

Text of the Provision

Article 107 of the 1926 RSFSR Criminal Code stood in Chapter V, 'Economic Crimes' (Преступления хозяйственные), alongside offences such as Articles 99, 105 and 116. The chapter on official misconduct begins at Article 109, so Article 107 is distinguished from it.

The article punished the 'malicious raising of prices on goods through buying up, concealment, or withholding them from the market.' Its first part prescribed deprivation of freedom of up to one year, with confiscation of all or part of the property or without confiscation; the same acts, where a conspiracy (сговор) of traders was established, were raised to deprivation of freedom of up to three years with confiscation of all property.

The 1926 code was adopted by a VTsIK resolution of 22 November 1926 and entered into force on 1 January 1927; it was a substantially revised version of the 1922 code. With numerous amendments it remained in force until the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code took effect on 1 January 1961.

History

Article 107 was conceived to curb private-trader speculation at the close of the NEP era, but the grain procurement crisis of 1927–1928 changed its function. In January 1928 Stalin travelled secretly through Siberia, appearing in Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Rubtsovsk, Omsk and Krasnoyarsk, and at the 18 January 1928 meeting of the Siberian Territorial Committee bureau he directed that kulaks withholding grain be prosecuted under Article 107, ordered to surrender grain surpluses at state prices, and that 25 per cent of confiscated grain be distributed to poor peasants.

In his January 1928 address 'Grain Procurements and the Prospects for the Development of Agriculture' he said: 'If the kulaks are engaging in unbridled speculation on grain prices, why do you not prosecute them for speculation? Don't you know that there is a law against speculation, Article 107 of the Criminal Code of the R.S.F.S.R....', and proposed confiscating grain surpluses with 25 per cent distributed to poor and economically weaker middle peasants. From January 1928 the article began to be applied to persons refusing to hand over 'surpluses' of grain at state prices, and Siberian party organs were instructed to bring kulaks 'using grain difficulties for speculation, driving up prices, withholding and not releasing grain' to judicial responsibility under Article 107.

The Ural-Siberian method of grain procurement followed from this, tied in the literature to state grain seizures and widespread peasant resistance.

Enforcement Examples

Enforcement of Article 107 in the 1928 grain campaign produced mass prosecutions. In January–February 1928 the OGPU arrested 1,704 people in Siberia; in the North Caucasus 3,424 people were convicted in January–March, including more than two thousand middle and poor peasants; and by April 1928 RSFSR Narkomyust data recorded 5,597 people charged under Article 107, among them 1,700 middle and poor peasants, showing that the article was applied to the middle peasantry and the poorest strata as well.

Speculation, which Article 107 initially governed, included fartsovka, the black-market resale of foreign goods. The offence was later codified under Article 88 of the 1960 RSFSR Criminal Code and then under Article 154 in the late 1980s. Speculation and fartsovka were treated more harshly than speculation in domestic goods: punishments ranged from heavy fines and confiscation to corrective-labour terms of up to 15 years, and in cases of exceptionally large foreign-currency sums or organized smuggling the death penalty could apply. In the Rokotov–Faibishenko case of 1960–1961 a capital-punishment provision was applied retroactively, and Rokotov, Faibishenko and Yakovlev were executed in 1961.

Distinctions

Article 107 is distinct from the counter-revolutionary provisions of the same 1926 code, which were grouped as Article 58 and its indexed sub-articles (58-1 and others), establishing liability for counter-revolutionary activity. Article 107 belonged to the economic crimes and differed from the counter-revolutionary articles in its object and legal character. It is also distinct from later provisions: Articles 88 (1960) and 154 (late 1980s) of the RSFSR code carried the offence of speculation forward, and Article 107 of the present-day Russian Federation Criminal Code concerns murder in a state of affect and is unrelated.