GOST

GOST (Russian: ГОСТ) refers to a set of technical standards maintained by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC), a regional standards organization operating under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

All sorts of regulated standards are included, with examples ranging from charting rules for design documentation to recipes and nutritional facts of Soviet-era brand names (which have now become generic, but may only be sold under the label if the technical standard is followed, or renamed if they are reformulated).

History

Cover page of a Soviet-era GOST standard (welding in protective atmosphere)

GOST standards were originally developed by the government of the Soviet Union as part of its national standardization strategy. The word GOST (Russian: ГОСТ) is an acronym for gosudarstvennyy standart (Russian:государственный стандарт), which means state standard.

The history of national standards in the USSR can be traced back to 1925, when a government agency, later named Gosstandart, was established and put in charge of writing, updating, publishing, and disseminating the standards. After World War II, the national standardization program went through a major transformation. The first GOST standard, GOST 1 State Standardization System, was published in 1968.

The present

After the disintegration of the USSR, the GOST standards acquired a new status of the regional standards. They are now administered by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC), a standards organization chartered by the Commonwealth of Independent States.

At present, the collection of GOST standards includes over 20,000 titles used extensively in conformity assessment activities in 12 countries. Serving as the regulatory basis for government and private-sector certification programs throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the GOST standards cover energy, oil and gas, environmental protection, construction, transportation, telecommunications, mining, food processing, and other industries.

The following countries have adopted GOST standards in addition to their own, nationally developed standards: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, and Turkmenistan.

Because GOST standards are adopted by Russia, the largest and most influential member of the CIS, it is a common misconception to think of GOST standards as the national standards of Russia. They are not. Since the EASC, the organization responsible for the development and maintenance of the GOST standards, is recognized by ISO as a regional standards organization, the GOST standards are classified as the regional standards. The national standards of Russia are the GOST R standards.

GOST standards and technical conditions

The abbreviation GOST (rus) (SUST) (eng) stands for the State Union Standard. From its name we learn that most of the GOST standards of the Russian Federation came from the Soviet Union period. Creation and promotion of the Union Standards began in 1918 after introduction of the international systems of weights and measures.

The first body for standardization was created by the Council of Labor and Defense in 1925 and was named the Committee for Standardization. Its main objective was development and introduction of the Union standards OST standards. The first OST standards gave the requirements for iron and ferrous metals, selected sorts of wheat, and a number of consumer goods.

Until 1940 Narcomats (People's Commissariats) had approved the standards. But in that year the Union Standardization Committee was founded and the standardization was redirected to creation of OST standards.

In 1968 the state system of standardization (SSS) as the first in the world practice. It included creation and development of the following standards:

• GOST – State Standard of the Soviet Union;
• RST— Republican standard;
• IST — Industrial Standard;
• STE — Standard of an Enterprise.

The level of technical development as well as the need for development and introduction of informational calculating systems and many other factors lead to creating complexes of standards and a number of large general technical standard systems. They are named inter-industrial standards. Within the state standard system they have their own indexes and the SSS has index 1. Nowadays the following standard systems (GOST standards) are valid:

• USCD — The Uniform System of Constructor Documentation (index 2);
• USTD — The Uniform System of Technological Documentation (3);
• SIBD — The System of Information-Bibliographical Documentation (7);
• SSM - The State System of Providing the Uniformity of Measuring(8);
• SSLS— The System of Standards of Labor Safety(12);
• USPD — The Uniform System of Program Documentation (19);
• SSERTE — The System of Standards of Ergonomic Requirements and Technical Esthetic (29).

The USCD and USTD systems take special place among other inter-industrial systems. They are interrelated and they formulate requirements for general technical documentation in all industries of economy.

The task of harmonization of Russia's standards and the GOST standards was set in 1990 by the Soviet Council of Ministers at the beginning of the transit to market economy. At that time they formulated a direction that obeying the GOST standards may be obligatory or recommendable. The obligatory requirements are the ones that deal with safety, conformity of products, ecological friendliness and inter-changeability. The Act of the USSR Government permitted applying of national standards existing in other countries, international requirements if they meet the requirements of the people's economy.

During the past years a large number of GOST standards were developed and approved. Nowadays there is a process of their revision so that they conform international standard requirements. As the base is the system of international standards ISO, in Russia they created series of Russian standards such as GOST ISO 9001 or GOST ISO 14001, which absorbed the best developments of the world community but they also consider the Russia's specific.

In Russia certification can be performed both for the GOST standards and Technical Conditions. Certificates, declarations and other kinds of permissive documents must be drawn up in the chief State Certification Organ Rostest.

Examples

• GOST 7.67: Country codes
• GOST 5284-84: Tushonka (canned stewed beef)
• GOST 7396: standard for power plugs and sockets used in Russia and throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States
• GOST 10859: A 1964 character set for computers, includes non-ASCII/non-Unicode characters required when programming in the ALGOL programming language.
• GOST 16876-71: a standard for Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration
• GOST 27974-88: Programming language ALGOL 68 - Язык программирования АЛГОЛ 68
• GOST 27975-88: Programming language ALGOL 68 extended - Язык программирования АЛГОЛ 68 расширенный
• GOST 28147-89 block cipher—commonly referred to as just GOST in cryptography

External links

• Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology and Certification (EASC) official website