The Ministry of Foreign Trade (russian: Министерство внешней торговли СССР; Minvneshtorg) was a
government ministry
Ministry or department (also less commonly used secretariat, office, or directorate) are designations used by first-level executive bodies in the machinery of governments that manage a specific sector of public administration." Энцикло ...
in the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
The foreign trade of the USSR was a government monopoly and was conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Trade. This ministry maintained control over the planning and operation of foreign trade through main administrations for imports and exports and for certain large geographical areas, as well as through foreign-trade corporations holding monopolies for specific commodities or services.
Postwar industrialization and an expansion of foreign trade resulted in the proliferation of all-union foreign trade organizations (FTOs), the new name for foreign trade corporations and also known as foreign trade association.
History
In 1946 the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade was reorganized into the Ministry of Foreign Trade. The Ministry of Foreign Trade, through its FTOs, retained the exclusive right to negotiate and sign contracts with foreigners and to draft foreign trade plans.
The Ministry of Foreign Trade was merged with the
Ministry of Internal Trade on 15 March 1953 and was restored to separate status six months later, on 15 September.
[ ]
The
State Committee for Foreign Economic Relations (russian: Gosudarstvennyi komitet po vneshnim ekonomicheskim sviaziam — GKES), created in 1955, managed all foreign aid programs and the export of complete factories through the FTOs subordinate to it. Certain ministries, however, had the right to deal directly with foreign partners through their own FTOs.
On January 17, 1988, ''
Izvestia
''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in 1917, it was a newspaper of record in the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, and describes ...
'' reported the abolition of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and GKES. These two organizations were merged into the newly created Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, which had responsibility for administering foreign trade policy and foreign aid agreements. Other legislation provided for the establishment of joint enterprises. The government retained its monopoly on foreign trade through a streamlined version of the Soviet foreign trade bureaucracy as it existed before the January 17 decree.
List of ministers
''Source'':
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Leonid Krasin
Leonid Borisovich Krasin (russian: Леони́д Бори́сович Кра́син; 15 July 1870 – 24 November 1926) was a Russian Soviet politician, engineer, social entrepreneur, Bolshevik revolutionary politician and a Soviet diplomat. In 1 ...
(6.7.1923–18.11.1925)
*
Aleksandr Cyurupa (18.11.1925–6.1.1926)
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Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev. (''né'' Rozenfeld; – 25 August 1936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician.
Born in Moscow to parents who were both involved in revolutionary politics, Kamenev attended Imperial Moscow Uni ...
(8.1.1926–14.8.1926)
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Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (; russian: Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н; hy, Անաստաս Հովհաննեսի Միկոյան; 25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik an ...
(15.8.1926–22.10.1930)
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Arkadi Rozenholz (5.11.1930–14.6.1937)
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Evgeni Chivyalev (19.1.1938–30.11.1938)
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Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (; russian: Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н; hy, Անաստաս Հովհաննեսի Միկոյան; 25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik an ...
(30.11.1938–4.3.1949)
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Mikhail Menshikov
Mikhail Vasilyevich Menshikov (russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Ме́ньшиков; born January 17, 1948) is a Russian-British mathematician with publications in areas ranging from probability to combinatorics. He currently hol ...
(4.3.1949–10.11.1951)
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Pavel Kumykin
Pavel (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pavel ...
(10.11.1951–?)
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Ivan Kabanov
Ivan Andreyevich Kabanov ( rus, Иван Андреевич Кабанов; 1823 – November 30, 1869) was a Russian painter.
Biography
Ivan Kabanov was born in the village of Staroverskaya, Orenburg Governorate, Russian Empire.
In 1845–184 ...
(15.9.1953–26.8.1958)
*
Nikolai Patolichev
Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev (russian: Николай Семёнович Патоличев; 23 September 1908 – 1 December 1989) was a Soviet statesman who served as Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR from 1958 to 1985. Prior to that, he wa ...
(26.8.1958–19.10.1985)
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Boris Aristov
Boris Ivanovich Aristov (Борис Иванович Аристов) (13 September 1925, Kostroma – 27 November 2018, Moscow) was a Soviet politician and diplomat who served as Soviet Ambassador to Finland (1988–1992) and Poland
Poland ...
(19.10.1985–16.1.1988)
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Konstantin Katushev
Konstantin Fedorovich Katushev (October 1, 1927, Bolshoye Boldino, Bolsheboldinsky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast – April 5, 2010, Moscow) was a Soviet party official and statesman, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist ...
(16.1.1988–28.8.1991)
*
Valeri Mangazeyev
The French name Valery () is a male given name or surname of Germanic origin ''Walaric'' (see Walric of Leuconay), that has often been confused in modern times with the Latin name ''Valerius''—that explains the variant spelling Valéry (). The S ...
(28.8.1991-26.12.1991)
See also
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Foreign trade of the Soviet Union
Soviet foreign trade played only a minor role in the Soviet economy. In 1985, for example, exports and imports each accounted for only 4 percent of the Soviet gross national product. The Soviet Union maintained this low level because it could dra ...
References
External links
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{{Departments of the USSR
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...