Sovnarkom in the Rykov Era

Abstract

The Union Sovnarkom was very different to the body which had been ‘Lenin’s government’ in the early years of Bolshevik rule. This had received de jure recognition in the RSFSR Constitution of 1918, but the USSR Constitution of 1924, the details of which were worked out during Lenin’s final illness and which became law ten days after his death,¹ involved changes as a result of the federal structure introduced following the December 1922 Treaty of Union.² In addition to the republican commissariats, two varieties of commissariats: ‘unified’ (ob″edinennyi) and ‘all-union’, were created at the union level. ‘Unified’ commissariats were to function through parallel apparatuses in identically named republican commissariats; ‘all-union’ through plenipotentiaries of the Union Sovnarkom directly subordinate to union commissars attached to republican Sovnarkoms, where there were no equivalent commissariats. The commissariats of justice, internal affairs, social security, education, agriculture and public health now existed at the republican level only; ‘unified’ commissariats included food supplies, labour, workers’ and peasants’ inspection, finance and VSNKh, (the last technically not a commissariat, but always treated as one);