Disciplinary Code

(1) One of the general military codes of regulations of the armed forces of the USSR. It sets forth the fundamentals of Soviet military discipline, the duties and rights of servicemen in maintaining and strengthening military discipline, types of incentives and disciplinary punishments in reference to servicemen and the rights of commanders to apply them to subordinates, and the system by which complaints and declarations are submitted and reviewed.

The first disciplinary code in Russia, called the Military Code of Punishments, was adopted in May 1867 and replaced the military criminal code of 1839. In the Red Army the Disciplinary Code was ratified in January 1919; it was developed with due regard for the special characteristics of the RKKA (Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) as a new type of army. Adopted later were the Provisional Disciplinary Code of the RKKA (1925), the Disciplinary Code of the Red Army (1940) and the Disciplinary Code of the Navy of the USSR (1940), the Disciplinary Code (1946), which was uniform for all the armed forces of the USSR, and the Disciplinary Code of the armed forces of the USSR (1960), which was ratified by a ukase of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

The armies of the socialist countries that are members of the Warsaw Pact have disciplinary codes, as do the armies of some capitalist states (France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and others). In the armed forces of the US the maintenance of military discipline is based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice of 1951, which was refined in 1963; in the British armed forces it is based on the Army Act (1957).

(2) In the USSR, the disciplinary code is also a normative document that regulates the basic duties of workers and measures of incentive and disciplinary punishment within a sector of the national economy. Disciplinary codes operate in those sectors where the observance of labor discipline is especially important, including in railroad transportation (Collection of Decrees of the USSR 1964, no. 13, art. 91), maritime transportation, river transportation, civil aviation, DOSAAF (All-Union Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy) aviation, communications enterprises, and the commercial fishing fleet (Collection of Decrees of the USSR, 1966, no. 13, art. 124). Disciplinary codes are ratified by the Council of Ministers of the USSR (sometimes by the Councils of Ministers of the Union republics). Most of the disciplinary codes do not apply to all industrial and office workers in the corresponding sector of the national economy, but only to those who perform basic, specialized jobs. For example, the Disciplinary Code for Workers in Railroad Transportation applies to workers on railroads, at rolling-stock-repair plants, at communications stations, and in the central administrative apparatus of the Ministry of Railways. Disciplinary codes establish stricter measures of disciplinary punishment than do the office and factory labor regulations. Complaints by workers concerning the imposition of disciplinary punishment on the basis of a disciplinary code are not reviewed by commissions on labor disputes but only by higher bodies in the subordination order.