Law on the Protection of Peace

a law enacted by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on Mar. 12, 1951, in response to an appeal by the Second World Congress of the World Peace Movement (Warsaw, 1950) to the parliaments of all countries for the enactment of laws for the protection of peace. The law considers prowar propaganda a very serious crime against humanity and establishes criminal liability for persons guilty of it in whatever form. Laws on the protection of peace were enacted in 1950 in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, the German Democratic Republic, Bulgaria, and Poland and in 1951 in Albania and the Mongolian People’s Republic. With the inclusion, on the initiative of the USSR, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1966) of a provision on the prohibition of prowar propaganda by law, such prohibition became an international treaty obligation.