Sabotage

sabotage

[′sab·ə‚täzh]

(ordnance)

Action by enemy agents or sympathizers with intent to stop or otherwise hinder a nation's war effort or to interfere with or obstruct the defense of a nation.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

sabotage

With regard to computers, sabotage is the deliberate damage to equipment. Infecting a website with malware is an example of information sabotage. A more extreme example is causing the power grid in a nation to go down. See cyberattack.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Sabotage

 

(Russian, diversiia from the Latin diversio, deflection, distraction). (1) Subversive actions (arson, demolition) carried out by specially trained agents or groups in time of war or peace on the territory of a particular state or in territory occupied by an enemy for the purpose of weakening his economic and military strength and his morale.

(2) Under Soviet criminal law, sabotage is an especially dangerous crime against the state (art. 5, Law on Criminal Responsibility for Crimes Against the State of 1958; art. 68, Criminal Code of the RSFSR). An act of sabotage is intended to cause substantial harm to the economic foundations of the state. It may be carried out either by destroying or damaging (by explosion, arson, or other methods) enterprises, structures, roads and means of transportation, means of communication, or other state or social property or by mass poisoning or the spreading of epidemics and epizootics for the purpose of weakening the Soviet state. It is punishable by deprivation of freedom for a term of eight to 15 years, with confiscation of property. In addition to the deprivation of freedom, exile for a term of two to five years may be prescribed. The deliberate destruction or damaging of state or social property, committed without the intention of weakening the Soviet state, is not considered sabotage and is treated as a crime against socialist property (art. 98, Criminal Code of the RSFSR).

(3) In political writing the term “ideological sabotage” is applied to the provocative propaganda of imperialist states (by radio, television, or publications) directed against the socialist countries.

V. I. KURLIANDSKII

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Sabotage

 

the deliberate disruption of any activity; the evasion of work or its deliberately careless execution.

In Soviet criminal law, sabotage is the conscious failure to execute one’s defined duties or the deliberately careless performance of them for the purpose of weakening the Soviet state. Until 1958, Soviet law had a special norm establishing liability for sabotage. Under existing legislation, there is no provision for liability for sabotage as an independent crime, because there are practically no cases of sabotage in the USSR. Actions resembling sabotage are classified as wrecking and subversive actions.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.