Gossnab

Gossnab of USSR, State Supplies of the USSR (Russian: Госснаб СССР) was active in 1948-1953, 1965-1991. 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.

See: Alexander Tsiuryupa

History

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.

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).

If a class war had emerged, the less wealthy peasants could have been used as a tool to spy out hidden stocks of grain being hoarded by the 'kulaks' which was forcing the price of grain in Russia up. Consequently, facilitating the job of the Narkomprod.

Eventually Narkomprod was reformed to the Gossnab.