On the Soviet standardization in 1918-1945

The state system of standardization in our country was shaped under the Soviet power. The first legal document which began the soviet standardization in 1918 was the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR "On Introduction of the International Metric System of Weights and Measures". In 1920 the GOELRO plan was adopted, which started the normative practice in different sectors of the national economy. The first guiding structures of Soviet standardization began their development in the early 1920s. In 1923 the Standards Committee was organized. The Bureau for Standardization was formed in 1924. In 1925 the Committee for Standardization within the Council of Labor and Defence guided all standardization activities. Its first chairman was V.V. Kuibyshev. In 1925 the All-Union standards (OST) were introduced. In the Soviet time the All-Union standards were equal to state documents which were obligatory for all enterprises and organizations of the country. If the standards in the USSR were not kept, a criminal sanction could be applied quite often. However, there were rare exceptions - some OSTs had a permissive character. In 1927 G.M. Krzhizhanovski was appointed chairman of the Committee for Standardization. He laid the foundations of a scientific approach to standardization activities. In 1930 metrology and standardization were unified. In the first decades of the Soviet power an effective system of standardization was built. It supported a high level of responsibility in production and it allowed to use primary goods effectively, minimize spoilage losses and master new equipment. As a result of standardization the state saved several hundreds of millions rubles a year. There was an enormous saving with materials which had often been bought for foreign currency before. In 1940 a new central body for standardization was founded - the Union Standardization Committee. Thus the State All-Union standards (GOSTs) replaced the All-Union standards (OSTs). During the Great Patriotic War the State military standards were introduced. They were designated as GOST V. The data about these standards were inaccessible for a long time. Many documents had the stamp ’top secret’. The standards at the time of the Great Patriotic War made their contribution to the victory over the Nazi. After the war some standards of the early 1940s still remained in great demand. They owe such longevity to their principles, especially to the principle of resource conservation.

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