for theft according to this decree was execution by shooting. Under extenuating circumstances, the punishment was at least 10 years of imprisonment. In all cases convicts' personal property was to be confiscated. Convicts for crimes covered by this decree were not subject to amnesty. The law was signed by Mikhail Kalinin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Avel Enukidze. The accompanying "Instruction on the Application of the Decree of 7/8/1932" (September 1932) detailed that the death sentence was to be applied with respect to organised and systematic theft, to theft accompanied with arson and other destruction. The death sentence was also applied (albeit with provisions for extenuating circumstances in some crimes) "with respect to "kulaks, former merchants and other socially alien elements" who: Were "working in "state enterprises or institutions" Were "exposed in the theft of goods or selling them to the private market and embezzlement of large sums of money" Had "penetrated the collective farm and those who are outside the collective farm and who organize or take part in the theft of collective farm property and bread" Ordinary kolkhosniks and non-collectivised peasants (edinolichniks), as well as minor theft on transport, was to be punished with 10 years of imprisonment or less. Practice In the first half of the year after the announcement of the decree, (by January 1, 1933) 150,000 people were convicted on it in the RSFSR, 3.5% of them (782) were sentenced to death. The transport courts (812 sentences in the USSR) and military tribunals (208 sentences for the USSR) also handed down death sentences, but the majority was discharged by highest courts. 60.3% of the defendants were convicted to 10 years in prison, and 36.2% for periods of less than 10 years. With regard to the latter category, 80% of the defendants received punishments not connected with deprivation of liberty. With the growing social tension due to famine, the number of those convicted in these cases in the RSFSR in the first half of 1933 reached 69,523 people, who mostly (84.5%) were sentenced to 10 years in prison. For every tenth case, a lighter sentence was imposed, and 5.4 per cent of the perpetrators were sentenced to death on cases, when the theft was committed in an organized group and hundreds of tons. By the spring of 1933 after the decision of the Politburo of the CPSU on February 1 and the decision of the Presidium of the