Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

Immediately before the seizure of power on the day of the revolution, the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks instructed Kamenev and Berzin to make political contact with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and begin negotiations with them on the composition of the future government. During the work of the Second Congress of Soviets, the Bolsheviks proposed that the Left Socialist Revolutionaries enter the government, but they refused. The factions of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks left the Second Congress of Soviets at the very beginning of its work – before the formation of the government. The Bolsheviks were forced to form a one-party government.[8]

The Council of People's Commissars was formed in accordance with the "Decree on the Establishment of the Council of People's Commissars" adopted by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies on October 27, 1917. The decree began with the words:

To form for the government of the country, until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, an interim workers' and peasants' government, which will be called the Council of People's Commissars.

In connection with the demarche of the executive committee of the railway trade union, Vikzhel, who did not recognize the October Revolution, and demanded the formation of a "homogeneous socialist government" of representatives of all socialist parties, the post of People's Commissar of Rail Affairs remained unsubstituted.

The Mensheviks, SRs, and Bolsheviks failed to reach an agreement in December 1917 to form a coalition administration.

In December, Six representatives from the Left SR entered the government, They are

• Andrei Kolegayev, People's Commissar of Agriculture
• Isaac Steinberg, People's Commissar of Justice
• Prosh Proshian, People's Commissar of Post and Telegraph
• Vladimir Trutovsky, People's Commissar of Local Government
• Vladimir Karelin, People's Commissar of State Property
• Mikhail Algasov, People's Commissar without Portfolio

Subsequently, in January 1918, the Bolsheviks managed to split the railway union by forming the Vikzhedor Executive Committee parallel to Vikzhel, which consisted mainly of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries. By March 1918, Vikzhel's resistance was finally broken, and the main powers of both Vikzhel and Vikzhedor were transferred to the People's Commissariat of Railways.

The Council of People's Commissars lost the character of an interim governing body after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, which was legislated by the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of 1918. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee received the right to form the Council of People's Commissars; the Council of People's Commissars was the general management body for the affairs of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic authorized to issue decrees, and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee was entitled to cancel or suspend any decision or decision of the Council of People's Commissars.

The issues considered by the Council of People's Commissars were decided by a simple majority of votes. The meetings were attended by members of the government, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, executive manager and secretaries of the Council of People's Commissars, representatives of departments.

The permanent working body of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was the Department of Affairs, which prepared questions for meetings of the Council of People's Commissars and its standing commissions, and received delegations. The staff of the executive administration in 1921 consisted of 135 people (according to the Central State Archive of the October Revolution of the Soviet Union).[9]

By the law of the Soviet Union of March 15, 1946 and the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of March 23, 1946, the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was transformed into the Council of Ministers of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. On March 18, the last decree of the government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was issued with the name "Council of People's Commissars".[10] On February 25, 1947, the corresponding amendments were made to the Constitution of the Soviet Union, and on March 13, 1948, the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

Researcher Mikhail Voslensky in his fundamental work "Nomenclature" notes that the "social origin" of the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars was of little use for the Bolshevik party, which declared itself "the vanguard of the working class". In fact, the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars was almost entirely intelligent, and in fact there were only two out of 16 workers in it: Alexander Shlyapnikov and Victor Nogin. In addition, in the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars, there were five nobles: Vladimir Lenin, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, Ivan Teodorovich and Georgy Oppokov. Trotsky's father was, according to the Soviet classification, a "fist", and Stalin a craftsman, that is, they both belonged, in the Soviet classification, to "petty-bourgeois elements". This state of affairs created the ground for the emergence of the so-called "Labour Opposition" at the end of the Civil War, which also expressed irritation that the workers were actually ruled by intellectuals on their behalf; oppositionists have accused of "degenerating the party leaders" and their "isolation from the party masses"[18] (see also Makhaevschina). At the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the "Workers' Opposition" was accused of:

...criticiz[ing] the intelligentsia in the sense that it sees all evil in our governing bodies and in the fact that intellectuals sit everywhere.[19]

The national composition of the Council of People's Commissars of Soviet Russia was a subject of speculation.

Vlasovets Andrey Dikiy in his work "Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union" claims that the composition of the Council of People's Commissars was allegedly as follows:

Council of People's Commissars, 1918:

Lenin – Chairman, Chicherin – Foreign Affairs, Russian; Lunacharsky – Enlightenment, Jew; Dzhugashvili (Stalin) – Nationalities, Georgian; Protian – Agriculture, Armenian; Larin (Lurie) – Economic Council, Jew; Schlichter – Supply, Jew; Trotsky (Bronstein) – Army and Navy, Jew; Lander – State Control, Jew; Kaufman – State Property, Jew; Vasily Schmidt – Work, Jew; Lilina (Knigissen) – Public Health, Jew; Svalbard – Cults, Jew; Zinoviev (Apfelbaum) – Internal Affairs, Jew; Anvelt – Hygiene, Jew; Isidor Gukovsky – Finance, Jew; Volodarsky – Print, Jew; Uritsky – Elections, Jew; I. Steinberg – Justice, Jew; Fengstein – Refugees, Jew.

In total, out of 20 people's commissars – one Russian, one Georgian, one Armenian and 17 Jews.

Yuri Emelyanov in his work "Trotsky. Myths and Personality" provides an analysis of this list. The analysis shows that the "Jewish" character of the Council of People's Commissars was obtained through fraud: it was not the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars that was published in the decree of the Second Congress of Soviets, but only those people's commissariats whose heads either were Jews. So, Leo Trotsky, who was appointed to this post on April 8, 1918, is mentioned as the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, and Alexander Schlichter, who really held this post until February 25, 1918, was mentioned as the People's Commissar of Food (here: "supply"), by the way, he was not a Jew either (Schlichter – Polish landowners of German origin). At the time when Trotsky really became the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, Alexander Tsyurupa instead of Schlichter already became the People's Commissar of Food.

Another method of fraud is the invention of a number of never-existing people's commissariats.[20] So, Andrei Dikiy in the list of people's commissariats mentioned the never-existent people's commissariats of cults, of elections, of refugees, of hygiene. Volodarsky is mentioned as the People's Commissar of the Press; in fact, he was indeed the commissar of the press, propaganda and agitation, but not the people's commissar, a member of the Council of People's Commissars (that is, in fact the government), but the commissar of the Union of Northern Communes[21] (regional union of Soviets),[22][23] an active conductor of the Bolshevik Press Decree.[24]

And, conversely, the list does not include, for example, the really existing People's Commissariat of Railways and the People's Commissariat of Posts and Telegraphs. As a result, Andrey Dikiy does not even agree on the number of people's commissariats: he mentions the number 20, although there were 14 people in the first composition, in 1918 the number was increased to 18.

Some posts are indicated with errors. So, the Chairman of the Petrograd Council Grigory Zinoviev was mentioned as the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, although he never held this position. The People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs Proshyan (here – "Protian") is attributed the leadership of "agriculture".

Jewish identity are arbitrarily attributed to a number of people, for example, Russian nobleman Anatoly Lunacharsky, Estonian Jan Anvelt, Russified Germans Vasily Schmidt, Alexander Schlichter, Latvian Karl Landers and others.

Some individuals are generally fictitious: Spitsberg (perhaps referring to the investigator of the 8th Liquidation Department of the People's Commissariat of Justice Ivan Spitsberg, who was famous for his aggressive atheistic position),[25][26] Lilina-Knigissen (possibly referring to actress Maria Lilina, who never entered the government, or Zlata Lilina (Bernshtein), who was also not a member of the Council of People's Commissars, but who worked as the head of the Department of Public Education at the executive committee of the Petrograd Council), Kaufman (possibly referring to the constitutional democrat Alexander Kaufman, who, according to some sources, was involved by the Bolsheviks as an expert in the development of land reform but never entered the Council of People's Commissars).

Also on the list are two leftist Socialist Revolutionaries whose rejection of Bolshevism is not indicated at all: People's Commissar of Justice Isaac Steinberg (referred to as "I. Steinberg") and People's Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs Prosh Proshyan, referred to as "Protian – Agriculture". Both politicians reacted extremely negatively to post-October Bolshevik politics. Prior to the revolution, Isidor Gukovsky was a Menshevik "liquidator" and he accepted the post of People's Commissar of Finance only under the pressure of Lenin.

Literary critic Vadim Kozhinov wrote about the membership in the Council of People's Commissars of one of the few Jews there, Leon Trotsky, objecting to the philosopher Vadim Rogovin:

Likewise – perhaps not without "imitation" to Abram Gotz – capable of foresight, Trotsky insisted that "there should not be a single Jew in the first revolutionary government, because otherwise the reactionary propaganda would portray the October Revolution as a "Jewish revolution"...". Commenting on this "position" of Trotsky, his current ardent admirer Vadim Rogovin seeks, in particular, to convince readers that Lev Davidovich was de lacking in power, had the firm intention "to remain outside the government after the coup and... agreed to take government posts only by persistent demand of the Central Committee". But these considerations are designed for completely simple-minded people, because Trotsky never refused membership in the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, and a member of the Political Bureau stood incomparably higher in the hierarchy of power than any people's commissar! And Trotsky, by the way, did not hide his extreme indignation when he was "released from duties of a member of the Political Bureau" in 1926...

— Vadim Kozhinov. "What Was the Role of the Jews in Post-Revolutionary Russia?"[27]

A similar point of view was shared by Igor Shafarevich.[28]

In 2013, speaking about the Schneerson Collection at the Moscow Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that "The decision to nationalize the library was made by the first Soviet government, and Jews were approximately 80–85% members".[29] According to historian Vladimir Ryzhkov, Putin's ignorant statement about the predominance of Jews in the Council of People's Commissars is due to the fact that "during the years of perestroika, he read the tabloid press".[30] Some media outlets also criticized the statements of the President of the Russian Federation. So the editors of the newspaper Vedomosti, condemning the head of state for marginality, posted the following statistics:[31][32]

"If we discard the speculations of pseudoscientists who know how to find the Jewish origin of every revolutionary, it turns out that in the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars of Jews there were 8%: of its 16 members, only Leon Trotsky was a Jew. In the government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of 1917–1922 Jews were 12% (six out of 50 people). Apart from the government, the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) on the eve of October 1917 had 20% Jews (6 out of 30), and in the first composition of the political bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) – 40% (3 out of 7)".

— "Vedomosti" dated June 17, 2013