Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union

The appointment of Vladimir Lenin to the post of the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union on July 6, 1923 was of purely symbolic significance, since Lenin's poor state of health did not allow him to actively engage in public affairs and since May 1923 he had been left without a break in the Gorky residence near Moscow under the supervision of doctors. Before the death of Lenin in 1924, the actual leadership of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was carried out by Alexei Rykov.

Having replaced Lenin as head of government, Alexei Rykov actively pursued a New Economic Policy and in the late 1920s opposed its curtailment. Together with Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tomsky, he opposed Stalin in a discussion about collectivization[1] and against forcing industrialization, opposed the adoption of a five-year economic development planning system, which caused dissatisfaction with the party elite. Joseph Stalin told the writer Maxim Gorky: "We are thinking of changing Rykov, he is getting confused at the feet!", to which Rykov directly told Stalin: "Your policy does not smell like an economy!".[2] In the fall of 1929, he publicly admitted his "mistakes", losing to Stalin.[1]

In 1924–1929, Rykov, simultaneously with the post of head of government of the Soviet Union, served as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. In December 1930, he was removed from the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union and was soon appointed People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin with Vyacheslav Molotov

The place of Alexey Rykov as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was taken by Vyacheslav Molotov, who held this position for the longest term (more than 10 years) and combined the post of head of government with other positions: chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense, Defense Committee, Economic Council under the Council People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and since 1939 – People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.

[Molotov] was greatly influenced by the fact that he lost his support. The new deputy chairmen of the Council of People's Commissars (Mikoyan, Bulganin, Kaganovich, Voznesensky) were Stalin's loyal associates. Most of the decisions of the Council of People's Commissars were previously discussed by Stalin’s inner circle at his dacha. And I know for sure that people from Kaganovich’s apparatus followed every step of Molotov and his assistants. Those, however, soon began to answer them the same.

— from the memoirs of Mikhail Smirtyukov, assistant to the deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union

On May 6, 1941, Molotov was relieved of his post as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, taking the post of deputy head of government. The official reason for Molotov's resignation was his many requests, motivated by the difficulty to fulfill the duties of head of government along with the duties of the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs.[3] According to some historians, the real reasons for the removal of Molotov from the leadership of the government were Joseph Stalin's personal dislike and the latter's decision to take the post of chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union to concentrate the party and executive state power in a difficult international situation on the eve of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union.[4]

During the Great Patriotic War, from June 30, 1941 to September 4, 1945, all power in the Soviet Union belonged to the State Defense Committee of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, who during this period combined the position of chairman of the State Defense Committee of the Soviet Union with posts Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union and People's Commissar of Defense. During the war, the activities of the People's Commissariats of the Soviet Union were subordinate to the State Committee of Defense of the Soviet Union, which did not have its own apparatus and relied on the administrative resources of the People's Commissariats.

By a decree of the State Defense Committee on October 15, 1941, the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, together with other bodies of state power and administration, was evacuated to the city of Kuibyshev, however, Joseph Stalin, being the chairman of the State Committee of Defense of the Soviet Union and the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, remained in Moscow.

In 1946, in connection with the transformation of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union into the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, the post of head of the government of the Soviet Union was changed to "Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union".[5]