Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union

The Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was the highest collegial body of executive and administrative authority of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1946.

As the government of the Soviet Union, the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union and the People's Commissariats led by it played a key role in such significant events for the country and society as the economic recovery after the Civil War, the New Economic Policy, agricultural collectivization, electrification, industrialization, five-year plans for the development of national economy, censorship, the fight against religion, repression and political persecution, the Gulag, the deportation of peoples, the annexation of the Baltic States and other territories by the Soviet Union, the organization of the partisan movement, the organization of industrial production in the rear during the Great Patriotic War.

In 1946, it was transformed into the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union.

History

The creation of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union as the executive body of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union was provided for by the Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union. For the first time the abbreviation "Sovnarkom" was used in this treaty.

Leon Trotsky had originally suggested Lenin’s government be named Council of People’s Commissars.

The prototype of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia – the first in the history of the Soviet state a panel of chairmen of commissions entrusted with "managing certain branches of state life". Formed by the decrees of the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on November 9, 1917, five years before the formation of the Soviet Union, the Council of People's Commissars chaired by Vladimir Lenin was the government of the Russian Soviet Republic (since 1918 – the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic). After the formation of the Soviet Union, the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic coordinated the activities of the Soviet republics that became part of the Soviet Union, actually becoming the first government of the Soviet Union between the signing of the Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union on December 29, 1922 and the formation of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union on July 6, 1923.

The first composition of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was approved at the 2nd session of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union on July 6, 1923: Chairman – Vladimir Lenin; Vice-chairmen: Lev Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Alexander Tsiurupa, Vlas Chubar, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Mamia Orakhelashvili; People's Commissars of the All-Union People's Commissars: for foreign affairs – Georgy Chicherin, for military and maritime affairs – Leon Trotsky, foreign trade – Leonid Krasin, communications – Felix Dzerzhinsky, posts and telegraphs – Ivan Smirnov; People's Commissars of the United People's Commissars: the Supreme Council of the National Economy – Alexei Rykov, food – Nikolai Bryukhanov, labor – Vasily Schmidt, finance – Grigori Sokolnikov, Workers' and Peasants' Inspection – Valerian Kuybyshev.

On July 17, 1923, the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union notified the Central Executive Committees of the Union Republics and their Councils of People's Commissars that the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union had begun to fulfill the tasks entrusted to it.

In the Constitution of the Soviet Union of 1924, the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was defined as the executive and administrative body of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, and with the adoption of the Constitution of the Soviet Union of 1936, it received an alternative name – the Government of the Soviet Union – and became the highest executive and administrative body management of the Soviet Union.

During the Great Patriotic War, the activities of the people's commissariats of the Soviet Union were subordinated to the State Defense Committee – an emergency management body under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, which was created during the war and had full power in the Soviet Union.