Gossnab

Gossnab of USSR, State Supplies of the USSR (Russian: Госснаб СССР) was active from 1948 to 1953, and 1965 to 1991. It was the state committee for material technical supply in the Soviet Union. It was charged with the primary responsibility for the allocation of producer goods to enterprises, a critical state function in the absence of markets.

Gossnab was one of more than twenty state committees under the Council of Ministers, the administrative arm of the Soviet government, along with other economic organs such as Gosplan (the state planning committee) and Gosbank (the state bank). Created amid a series of economic reforms implemented under Premier Alexei Kosygin in the mid-1960s, Gossnab coordinated the allocation of resources not handled by Gosplan. Gossnab had mixed success in creating a wholesale trade system, based on direct contracts between suppliers and users.

Narkomprod

Originally founded in 1917 as the People's Commissariat for Food Supplies (Russian: Наркомпрод, Народный комиссариат продовольствия, translit. Narodny Commissariat Prodovolstviya, often abbreviated as Narkomprod) was the People's Commissariat (ministry) of the Russian SFSR in charge of food supplies and industrial goods. The first Commissar was Ivan Teodorovich.

There were several subsidiary organisations:

• 1918 - 1919 - Central Procurement Bureau (Tsentrozakup)
• 1917 - 1918 - Special Commissioner for the Supply of Food for Workers in Enterprises Preparing Fuel for the Country (Khleboles)
• 1918 - 1920 - General Directorate of the Distribution Products (Glavproduct)
• 1918 - 1920 - Extraordinary Regional Committee for Food and Supply of the South of Russia (Chokprod)
• 1918 - 1919 - United bureaus of Russian food and cooperative organizations for food
• 1919 - 1922 - Central Commission for the Supply of Workers (Tsekorabsnab)

The Narkomprod was responsible in June 1918 for the attempted organisation of 'committees of the poor' in provincial villages. This was an attempt to encourage a 'class war' in the countryside but it did not materialise, mainly because the peasants were not resentful of 'kulaks' (rich peasants) as there was a tendency for all peasants to have the same interests (for example, their own land ownership).

Commissars

• Ivan Teodorovich (1875-1937) (Russian Иван Адольфович Теодорович), 1917-1917
• Alexander Schlichter (1868-1940) (Russian Александр Григорьевич Шлихтер), 1917-1918
• Alexander Zjurupa (1870-1928) (Russian Александр Дмитриевич Цюрупа), 1918-1921
• Nikolai Bryukhanov (1878-1938) (Russian Николай Павлович Брюханов), 1921-1923
• Moisei Kalmanovich (1888-1937) (Russian Моисей Иосифович Калманович), 1923-1924

Reformation as Gossnab

See also

• Alexander Tsiuryupa
• Gosplan
• Soviet-type economic planning