science

GOST

GOST is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand GOST rather than just read about it. In short: GOST (Russian: ГОСТ) refers to a set of international 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 nutritiona…

Key takeaways

GOST belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect GOST to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of GOST from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

GOST (Russian: ГОСТ) refers to a set of international 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. The latter have become generic, but may only be sold under the label if the technical standard is followed, or renamed if they are reformulated.

History

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 go'sudarstvennyy standart (Russian: государственный стандарт), which means 'government 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.

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 all or some of GOST standards in addition to their own, nationally developed standards: Russia, Belarus, 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. Ukraine scrapped its GOST (DSTU) standards in December 2015.

GOST standards and technical specifications 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, 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 creating and developing five standards:

GOST – State Standard of the Soviet Union RST – Republican standard IST – Industrial Standard STE – Standard of an Enterprise TU – Технические условия, literally "Technical conditions", a document setting technical requirements to which a specific product, material, substance, etc. must comply; example: TU 14-3-571-2004, for CrNi60WTi alloy The level of technical development, and the need to develop and introduce 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. As of 2020, seven 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 to 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.

Examples of more common GOST standards

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with GOST

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what GOST claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to GOST before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about GOST ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of GOST

In research: GOST appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses GOST in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: GOST is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Certification marks, Electrical safety standards organizations, Eurasian Economic Union, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for GOST outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “GOST” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study GOST in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what GOST means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain GOST out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is GOST in simple terms?

Why does GOST matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study GOST?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on GOST.