Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Members of the institution formed on 26 October were all Bolsheviks (although a high portion of their staff within the commissariats were former tsarist and Provisional Government civil servants, who came to be termed “bourgeois specialists”), but within a few weeks Sovnarkom became a coalition, as a number of members of the Party of Left Socialists-Revolutionaries joined the government, some of them in newly created commissariats: A. L. Kolegaev (Commissar of Agriculture, from 24 November 1917); Isaak Steinberg (Commissar of Justice, from 12 December 1917); Karelin (State Properties, from 12 December 1917); Trutovskii (Local Government, from 12 December 1917, abolished June 1918); and P. P. Prosh′ian (Post and Telegraph, from 22 December 1917). The Left-SRs V. A. Algasov (“People’s Commissar without Portfolio but with a Casting Vote,” attached to the Commissariat for Internal Affairs, from 12 December 1917) and M. A. Brilliantov (“Member of the Collegiate of the Commissariat for Finance with Casting Vote,” from 19 January 1918) also joined Sovnarkom. However, all the Left-SRs resigned their portfolios on 26 March 1918, in protest against the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918).

During the civil wars, under Lenin’s chairmanship, Sovnarkom generally acted as the bona fide government of the RSFSR, although its decisions never contradicted policies determined in the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b)/RKP(b), and on occasion (e.g., the debates of January–February 1918 over the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), it was clearly the Central Committee, rather than Sovnarkom, that was prime. Moreover, it seems never to have attempted to influence decisions regarding military affairs and the most closely related matters of supply, which were all decided by the Revvoensovet of the Republic or the Council of Labor and Defense (although there was a considerable overlap of membership between the latter and Sovnarkom).

After nine months of uncertainty, Sovnarkom’s powers were finally defined in the July 1918 Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, although the fact that this document made Sovnarkom responsible before VTsIK and the Congress of Soviets for “the general administration of the affairs of the state” was hardly a definitive clarification. What the constitution did establish, though, was that Sovnarkom was empowered to issue decrees carrying the full force of law when the Congress of Soviets was not in session. The congress would then routinely approve Sovnarkom’s decrees at its next session. (Before the constitution was promulgated, Sovnarkom was, effectively, a provisional government.) From 1921, following Lenin’s illness, however, decision making and political power passed rapidly into the hands of party bodies, notably the Politbiuro of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Indeed, that body, from the day of its foundation (25 March 1919), had begun to impinge upon matters previously decided by Sovnarkom, and the latter degenerated completely into a rubber stamp.

SPECIAL COUNCIL. Founded by General M. V. Alekseev at Ekaterinodar, on 31 August 1918, in accordance with a scheme (“The Statute on the Special Council attached to the Supreme Ruler of the Volunteer Army”) drafted by V. V. Shul′gin and General A. M. Dragomirov, the Special Council attached to the commander in chief of the Volunteer Army—and later the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR)—was “the supreme organ of civil authority” in the White camp in South Russia. The Special Council could trace its roots to the Political Council, established at Novocherkassk in December 1917 by General L. G. Kornilov. It served as an advisory council, first to General Alekseev and then to General A. I. Denikin, in the fields of law making and governance and was a point of contact for and with other anti-Bolshevik polities around Russia and with their representatives abroad. Its structure, powers, and authority were further elaborated by a “Statute on the Special Council Attached to the Main Commander in chief of the AFSR” (ratified by General Denikin on 2 February 1919).