Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars

The Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was the head of government of the Soviet Union during the existence of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1946. History The post of chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union – the head of the executive body of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union – was established by the Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which entered into force after approval by the First Congress of Soviets at a meeting on 30 December 1922. The first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union was appointed to the post at the 2nd session of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union on 6 July 1923. 1923–1930 The appointment of Vladimir Lenin to the post of the first chair of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union on 6 July 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 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!". In the fall of 1929, he publicly admitted his "mistakes", losing to Stalin.